NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

Let’s get a few things straight right off the bat. We’re not here to root against anyone, pick a side, endorse one competitor over the other, or anything like that. We’re fans of competition. Raw, nasty, sometimes contentious, emotionally draining, engine-eating competition. With all that being said, we recently kicked around the idea of going into the drag racing lab and building from scratch a racer and a team with the combined acumen behind the wheel and with the wrenches to take down the reigning NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series Funny Car champion, Austin Prock. 

We’re not out to lunch in saying that the foundational pieces for a potential dynasty are in place with this team. A long-term sponsor locked in with Cornwell Quality Tools, two generations of brilliant Prock men leading the tuning charge on the car, and a young driver who is clearly playing for keeps every time his car roars to life. Rather than go through the simple “how do you beat these guys” by the numbers, let’s build a racer to stem the tide of this title-winning team. 

Qualifying

The weekend begins in qualifying, and because we know that Prock will be on the attack on every run, we need to pick the right driver and team for our composite racer to match or even better him. We don’t have to look far: Jack Beckman gets the nod here. Why? He led the league in qualifying elapsed time with a 3.856 average and qualifying speed with a 329.65-mph number to his credit. Sure, you may squawk and say that he only did that because of a limited schedule, but as a reminder, he did run nearly half the season (eight of 20 races) in John Force’s stead. Not only that, but the car was also getting better over the eight-race stretch, so we have reason to believe 2025 will be sporting for Beckman right out of the chute. 

The starting line 

So, we have Beckman’s qualifying prowess as our first building block. Now we need someone who can flash the header flames in another driver’s face as they leave the starting line first. For this element of our composite driver, we’re going with J.R. Todd. With a .059 season-long reaction-time average, a record of leaving first in 31 of his 43 elimination rounds, and a race-day disposition akin to an under-fed pit bull, Todd has approach, results, and fire we need on the starting line. 

We’re also hedging our bets here by adding in a dash of Matt Hagan to the mix. Why? His five holeshot wins were the most in the category over the course of 2025. The dude is also one of the most rock-solid, year-in and year-out racers. He is typically not a guy who finds himself in any sort of gamesmanship on the starting line, and his reputation as a four-time champion and hard-nosed racer is something he wears with pride.   

Leading the fight to the stripe

The answer here may surprise you, but it’s John Force. Until his accident in Virginia, Force had the best Speed Index rating in the class. Beckman’s eight-race run was legitimately identical to the boss’, and because he’s John Force, he gets the nod here; 82.08% of the time Force’s Peak Camaro made it to the finish line under power. Ahead of even his own teammate, Austin Prock. 

We’re also going to throw a wild card in this one, and his name is Daniel Wilkerson. Wilkerson had one of the highest percentages of upset wins in the class in 2024. This is not some sort of emotional rating, but it means winning from the worst qualifying position in any given round. He pulled that trick five times in 2024, and in case we need to grab some of that magic in an early round to beat Prock, Wilkerson is our guy. 

Intangibles, intimidation, and a conclusion

In order to complete this assembled super weapon of a racer, we’re going to add a guy who is off the charts in experience and intangible value (not to mention the multiple championships): Ron Capps. If you have the quality of car that we have assembled here and don’t have the mindset to handle the opportunity the right way, all is lost. Bringing the cool, unflappable, and winning attitude of Capps means our guy has his head screwed on straight. 

The top of any given scoreboard wins races, but the bottom tends to send a message. The top, of course, is elapsed time in most scenarios, and the bottom is speed. Bob Tasca III had top speed of the meet nine times in 2024. When the team was ripping, competitors were tripping over their shoelaces while trying to beat them. A little bit of that would be good to have in our back pocket. 

So, that’s how we’d assemble the pieces currently existing in NHRA Funny Car drag racing to beat Austin Prock and his team. The funny part is, while many of these drivers were category leaders, Prock was so close to them in second in many categories, the end result is likely still a toss-up. If anything, this is an exercise that illustrates that in the end, over the course of a season, it is not about leading every category, and it is not about leading one category; it’s about being rock-solid in all of them. 

Does the Super Racer exist in 2025? Will the Prock team run into more stalwart competition? Will they go back-to-back and legitimately kick off a dynasty? All these questions and more will be answered starting at the 2025 Amalie Motor Oil NHRA Gatornationals.