NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

The 2017 NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series season kicks off in just over a month with the Circle K NHRA Winternationals Feb. 9-12 at Auto Club Raceway at Pomona.

 

Every February since 1961, fans have flocked to Southern California for one of drag racing’s grandest traditions: the unveiling of new cars, drivers, teams, and sponsorships at the Winternationals, where teams hope to use the season kickoff as a springboard in their pursuit of a spot in the Countdown to the Championship.

 

Here’s a look at some of the top storylines:

 

No team will begin the new season with more question marks than Kalitta Motorsports, which underwent a number of surprising changes following the conclusion of the 2016 season. First, two-time world champion Del Worsham stunned everyone when he announced that he was leaving the Kalitta fold to return to racing with his father, Chuck, leaving open the seat in his strong DHL Toyota Funny Car. In a major surprise, that spot was filled by Kalitta Top Fuel driver J.R. Todd.

 

Todd, a dragster driver his entire career, has already spent some time in the Worsham family Funny Car to get some laps, and will no doubt get a whole lot more seat time between now and the Winternationals. The car is good enough and Todd talented enough to make this combination strong right out of the gate.

 

Todd’s move from in front of the engine to behind it left open the seat of his SealMaster dragster to rookie Troy Coughlin Jr. Coughlin, a former Sportsman racing star and Pro Mod driver who has already looked impressive in limited testing in Top Fuel, initially had not been expected to run an entire season this year, but now will get a full shot at a championship or, more likely, the Auto Club Road to the Future Award as the season’s top rookie.

 

The second-generation driver should supply the stiffest challenge to Coughlin’s bid for the rookie award. Gray takes over the seat of the family’s Pro Stock Camaro from his father, Shane. The teenage driver has already made many strong test runs in Florida in the car, and also has many years of experience racing in sprint cars, but the Winternationals will mark his first drag racing competition.

 

The veteran driver finally broke through for his first season championship last year and is looking forward to defending it at a race he considers his home event. The Carlsbad, Calif.-based ace raced for more than 20 years to earn the right to wear the big No. 1 on his car and certainly won’t relinquish it easily, but he’ll be fighting to do so not just in the sport’s most competitive class but also bucking history, as no driver has won back-to-back championships in the class since 2001-02.

 

Worsham, one of the elite few to win championships in both Top Fuel and Funny Car, hasn’t spoken much of his motivation to rejoin the family team where he cut his teeth in 1991, nor of his schedule plans or sponsorship possibilities. Despite his departure from their organization, the Kalitta team has said it will assist the Worshams in whatever ways they can to ensure their success in the new venture.

 

The KB Racing team of Jason Line and Greg Anderson kicked off the first year of fuel-injected Pro Stock racing by combining to win the first 13 events and finished 1-2 in the standings. The pack closed in on them in the last half of the season as they won just twice (once each) in the last nine events of the year, so it’s doubtful they’ll begin the new season with that kind of dominance.

 

There will be a lot of new faces in new places in the pits this year. Tuning genius Jimmy Prock left the Don Schumacher camp where he had been wrenching Jack Beckman’s Infinite Hero Dodge and is rumored to be ready to return to John Force Racing, where he had so much success with driver Robert Hight. If he does land there, it will be interesting to see if he’s paired again with Hight.

 

On the flip side, Dean Antonelli left the Force camp to join DSR, where he’ll partner up with John Medlen and Neal Strausbaugh – the latter the longtime assistant crew chief on Tony Schumacher’s Army dragster – to tune Beckman’s entry.

 

Meanwhile, back at Kamp Kalitta, Nick Boninfante Jr., will move from the DHL Toyota to work with Tommy DeLago as co-crew chief on Alexis DeJoria's Teqiula Patron team. Boninfante’s spot on the DHL team will be filled by veteran Todd Smith, who tuned for Kalitta driver Paul Lee at the end of last season. Smith will work with longtime DHL tuner Jon Oberhofer. Glen Huszar, who worked last season with DeLago, will now oversee Lee's part-time machine with help from Nick Casertano, a former JFR crewmember.

 

The Circle K NHRA Winternationals kicks off Feb. 9-12 at Auto Club Raceway at Pomona, preceded by several days of testing at Wild Horse Pass Motorsports Park outside of Phoenix, where we’ll begin to get the answers to some of these question marks.