NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

Two races into the 2022 NHRA Camping World Drag Racing Series season, we’re already seeing some noticeable trends, and as we put the NHRA Arizona Nationals in our rearview mirror, here’s a look at five things that crystalized for us in Phoenix.

Momentum is a real thing

Strike while the iron is hot, they say, and three winners from the season-opening Lucas Oil NHRA Winternationals presented by ProtectTheHarvest.com did just that, with Robert Hight (Funny Car), Leo Glasbrenner (Stock), and Don Meziere (Top Sportsman) all backing up their Pomona wins by grabbing second Wallys in Phoenix.

Add in a second Pro Stock win by Elite Performance – Pomona runner-up Aaron Stanfield getting the win this time over fellow Elite driver Troy Coughlin Jr. – and you can see some possible trends developing.

In the almost category, James Glenn nearly pulled off the double-up feat in Super Comp, reaching the final round in Phoenix before falling to Dan Foley, and Moe Trujillo went to the semifinals a week after winning Top Dragster in Pomona.

Hight’s Auto Club team is back

After running just two events in 2020 due to the pandemic and having a rough 2021 season, Robert Hight and the Jimmy Prock- and Chris Cunningham-led Auto Club Funny Car are off to an amazing start with two straight wins in Funny Car.

After reverting to the clutch combination that won them the 2019 world championship, they’ve run 3.8-second passes on 13 of 14 runs this season, their only miss being a Q2 run in Pomona, where a bad clutch disc hobbled them. Hight is optimistic about the season ahead, but we’ll have to see what happens when we hit the summer months to see just how great this car can be.

Top Fuel, as advertised

All winter, we and everyone in the NHRA universe were pointing in awe at how tough we thought Top Fuel would be this year, and two races in, we’re all correct. At the cool events like Pomona and Phoenix, it’s clear it’s going to take a 3.6-second runs to win rounds, and with so many good cars, it’s going to be tough for anyone to get on a roll.

Four-time world champ Steve Torrence has yet to win an event, Doug Kalitta was the low qualifier in Phoenix just two events into a new season coming off perhaps his worst season ever, and Justin Ashley has emerged as a top-tier championship contender.

Austin Prock stumbled in Phoenix after his Pomona runner-up, but it won’t be long before he and fellow 2022 returnee Tony Schumacher begin to regularly string together late-round outings.

Despite impressive showings with his now-self-owned team last year, Tripp Tatum was off of everyone’s radar, but a pair of 3.6-second qualifying blasts in Phoenix means no one will take him lightly in the future.

Scrappers are scrappy

We all knew how tough Mike Salinas was at the end of last season, finishing third in the point with a strong fall push, but people openly wondered how he’d do without Alan Johnson turning the knobs. When Rob Flynn was hired as the tuner, some questioned the choice; after all, the veteran wrench had been released by Team Kalitta in the midst of a tough season for them.

But through the first two events, we’ve seen that Rob Flynn still knows what he’s doing. He’ll be the first to admit that he inherited a good tune-up from AJ, but with more than a dozen runs between testing, Pomona, and Phoenix, he’s shown that he knows how to follow a good blueprint and even improve on it in some places, and Salinas has stepped up his driving game to compliment that.

Elite vs KB is a very real thing

The media and announcers love to dig into rivalries, and over the last few seasons, there have been few rivalries like Elite Performance vs. KB Racing in Pro Stock.

Greg Anderson won the championship for KB last year, handing a bitter pill to the Erica Enders-led Elite group, but Elite has bounced back by winning in both Pomona (Enders) and Phoenix (Aaron Stanfield), and both times it’s been an all-Elite final round.

KB’s Kyle Koretsky qualified No. 1 in Phoenix to slow the Elite momentum a bit and made no bones about what it meant to the KB crew, noting, “We're gonna give [Elite Performance team] a run. That's just a little taste of it."

After Stanfield won in Phoenix, defeating Elite’s Troy Coughlin jr. in the final to give Elite the last laugh (for now), I asked Stanfield point-blank in the media center if we’re over-hyping the rivalry.

“It is intense,” he said, very straightforward. “From an engine-building standpoint, you're very proud of your work, so it's definitely a personal thing whenever one team or the other is getting outrun, so I don't think y'all are making it too big. It's a pretty big deal. A lot of these guys make the living doing this, and they take a lot of pride in their work, so I don't think there is a way to over-hype how big it is.”

Can’t wait to see what happens next …