NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

It may be hard to be perfect, but don’t tell that to NHRA’s Sportsman racers, who flirt with perfection with regularity at both ends of the racetrack.

NHRA has two programs in place to reward perfection on the racetrack, the Trip Zip club for drivers who cut perfect .000 reaction times in national event eliminations and the Right Trailers Right on the Number program that rewards drivers who run right on their predicted dial-ins or indexes at NHRA national events.

Over the course of the season, NHRA handed out 143 of the special Trip Zip challenge coins to 130 drivers, 11 of whom did it on multiple occasions.

• Super Gas standout Joey Shipp was perfect at the Christmas Tree an amazing three times at the Amalie Motor Oil NHRA Gatornationals, Gerber Collision and Glass Route 66 NHRA Nationals, and Texas NHRA FallNationals.
• Super Comp racer Chris DiPascale did it twice at the same event, the Pep Boys NHRA Nationals in Reading, where he was perfect in both the semifinals and final round to collect the event win, as did Ray Miller III in rounds two and four at the Gatornationals.
• Super Street racer Mark McCall also had back-to-back perfect lights in the third and fourth rounds at the Texas NHRA FallNationals.
• Super Comp racer Nathan Prose had perfect lights at both the Chicago event and the JEGS NHRA SPORTSnationals, as did fellow 8.90 racer Sherman Adcock Jr. at the spring Charlotte event at the Toyota NHRA U.S. Nationals.
• Dual-class threat Chris Sullivan was perfect on the Tree in Super Comp at the Gerber Collision and Glass Route 66 NHRA Nationals and again later in the year, at the NHRA Midwest Nationals, where he did it in Top Dragster.
• Larry Scarth pulled off a similar feat, being perfect on the starting line in round one of Super Stock at the Ford Performance NHRA Nationals and in round two of Super Gas at the In-N-Out Burger NHRA Finals.

• Dan Fletcher, one of the sport’s all-time greats, cut perfect lights in Stock in his G/SA Camaro in the first rounds at both the NHRA 4-Wide Nationals in Charlotte and the Toyota NHRA U.S. Nationals.
• Stock pilot Larry McLanahan also had two perfect lights in his FS/SA Mustang at the Lucas Oil NHRA Winternationals and the NHRA Arizona Nationals. Clifton Hanson also was perfect twice during the Lucas Oil NHRA Winternationals in his A/SA ’69 Camaro.
• Super Comp ace Jerron Settles was also perfect in the opening rounds at the NHRA 4-Wide Nationals in Las Vegas and the In-N-Out Burger NHRA Finals.

Perfection at the other end of the racetrack, either by running right on the class index or selected dial-in, was recognized by the Right Trailers Right on the Number program, which celebrated its third year in 2024.

Unlike the Trip Zip Club, the payday in the Right on the Number program comes only when the program decal is riding on the car, which happened on 70 of 105 perfect runs.

Austin Williams in Super Gas and Larry Hodge in Super Stock were the only ones to collect the bonus money twice, with Williams doing it at the U.S. Nationals and Midwest Nationals and Hodge nailing his number at the Lucas Oil NHRA Nationals and the U.S. Nationals.

Right on the dial/index performances occurred at 18 of the 20 national events with the most coming, as one could expect, at the biggest race of the season, the Toyota NHRA U.S. Nationals, where 13 drivers ran right on their number.