NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

You know someone has had an incredible season in professional sports when it’s more fun to look at how great and all-conquering their victories were as opposed to the volume of their accumulation. In the case of Austin Prock and his entire John Force Racing, Cornwell Quality Tools team, we have plenty to choose from. The incredible 15 No. 1 qualifiers, the eight triumphs, and three runners-up mean that the group collectively appeared in more than half of the available finals in 2024. 

So, how does one go about picking “the best” win? In the case of this example, it comes in the form of two important factors: The car’s consistency and raw performance along with the handler’s job in the seat. To the detriment of everyone else in the Funny Car class, these two elements converged in perfect fashion at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway during the Ford Performance NHRA Nationals. While we’re not saying that no one else stood a chance here, it is drag racing after all, we are saying that the odds of beating this team on this weekend were akin to pulling one handle, one time, for a million-dollar payment on Las Vegas Boulevard. Slim to none. 

Some of you stat-o-philes out there may be screaming that the Toyota NHRA U.S. Nationals victory was the team’s most significant and impressive because, after all, it’s Indy! As you’ll learn, they were neck and neck for many reasons, but the capper in this situation is that the performance in Las Vegas was for title-clinching glory. As hard and arduous as it is to win the U.S. Nationals, and it is, the ultimate goal of any team is to win a championship, and therein also lies the ultimate pressure. 

Step One: Qualify No. 1

As we know, Prock garnered more No. 1 qualifying positions than any single driver in the history of NHRA Funny Car competition has in one season, knocking his team owner and boss John Force back a peg. Las Vegas was one of the 15 that they racked up, and it wasn’t easy by any stretch. 

Opening the weekend with a class-leading 3.843 at 333 mph, they seemed to be on greased rails once again. Qualifying session two would prove more tricky to not only Prock but also his teammate and closest competitor, Jack Beckman. They both spun the tires with six- and seven-second runs, respectively. 

Ah-ha! You say. In Indy, the car made nine straight runs with no smoke at all. This proves that Indy was the better win! The counter-argument to that statement was delivered on Saturday with a 3.817 at 333.09 mph. This was both quicker than his Indy qualifying and showed that Friday night’s tire smoker was an attempt to rip a hole in the time-space continuum, and the team still had a perfect handle on the race car and what it wanted. Friday in Vegas was not a mistake, it was a science experiment, one that virtually no other teams were in a position to replicate. 

They closed out qualifying session four with a 3.845 at 327 mph for good measure, locking in the No. 1 spot. 

Sunday: A Master Class in Funny Car Racing

The great teams in this sport are larger than the sum of their parts. This happens through hard work, dedication, the ability to learn and adapt, as well as being able to work in the changing conditions of every race day. It should come as no surprise that good teams meld into great teams by a season’s end. This is what we saw out of the entire Prock outfit in Las Vegas. A race of great raw performance both human and mechanical. 

Prock’s season average reaction time coming into the Ford Performance Nationals was .063. That trailed only J.R. Todd, who carried an average of .059 into the event, which is otherworldly for its own reasons. 

Prock’s day at the Tree looked like this:

It’s the first half of a two-pronged attack that didn’t let up all season long. He’s leaving by a minimum of one-hundredth of a second on everyone here, sometimes three- and four-hundredths-plus. It is one thing to be doing that in a slower car that may need the help to score a holeshot win, but when you take the next part of this and look at it, you can see how terrifying this team had to have been to compete with at this time of the season.

So. knowing what Prock was doing in the seat, what about the team behind him with the wrenches? Coming into Las Vegas, the team had the lowest average eliminations e.t. average in the class at 4.072. Next up was Jack Beckman, averaging 4.250, a pretty wide spread. 

The Cornwell car’s performance was shattering: 

This, with respect to the other cars that lined up against Prock, was slaughterous. Not only that, but one also needs to consider that the semi’s and finals were run the next day (Monday) due to the weather conditions in Las Vegas. So, to see a car run 3.859 on Sunday and then roll off the trailer and replicate it to the thousandth of a second on Monday is incredible. 

The real capper here, though, is the final-round elapsed time. Having seen Paul Lee run 3.834 in his victory over Jack Beckman in the semifinals, Jimmy Prock, Thomas Prock, and their band of merry men cranked their car up to run a 3.830 in the final. This is, again, an example of the handle they had developed on their machine by the end of the 2024 season. 

Of course, we’d see the ultimate examples of this in Pomona with the 3.804-second run and then the historic 341.68-mph rocket ride, but alas, they didn’t win that one. 

So, in the end, their Indy win was great, but Las Vegas was the Mona Lisa. Prock averaged .058 on the Tree in Indy, two-hundredths behind his .056 in Las Vegas. The team averaged a 3.875 e.t. in eliminations at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park, two-hundredths behind the 3.855 of Las Vegas. They qualified No. 1 at both races. It was a 3.187 that did the job in Las Vegas and a 3.855 in Indy. 

With a three-year deal signed with Cornwell Quality Tools, a family unit forming the nucleus of a team that is stacked with veteran talent, and performances unseen in NHRA Drag Racing for roughly a decade at the last race of the season, the Procks may be at the beginning of a dynastic period of Funny Car rule. That being said, the rest of the class was making tracks of their own by the end of 2024. The 2025 NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series season will bring out the best in everyone, and they’re sure going to need it to stop this car.