NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

It happens to the best of teams and organizations in every pro sport. A hard year. A down year. A downright hard year. No competition is as unforgiving in this regard as professional drag racing. The brutal abruptness of our beloved motorsport makes bad feelings worse and the lingering days, sometimes weeks, between races can make life downright miserable. As it has been said, winning cures all ills, but losing early and frequently in drag racing can turn a mild cold into a virus so nasty that it can drive apart even the most seasoned of organizations. 

The teams mentioned in this story did not set out in 2024 to make this list. No one did. Over the course of 20 races, perhaps aside from fleeting moments of joy, though, they struggled. They worked harder and, in some cases, struggled harder. But the only way forward is through it. And through it they went. The question we seek to answer here is how they avoid doing it again. 

Let’s look at the Pro Stock and Pro Stock Motorcycle teams that, on paper, have the wherewithal to make 2024 look as distant as 1924 in terms of their performance improvement. As good as the race to the end of the season was, it could have been that much better with the following cadre of teams in a more competitive position. 

Last in a three-part series

Matt Hartford

After a 2023 season that had him in the true thick of a championship hunt, much of 2024 looked like it was straight out of a drag racing horror movie. A new car that seemingly threw the team for an unfortunate loop brought chaos and frustration in spades, including back-to-back DNQs at both of the early-season four-wide races. By the time the NHRA U.S. Nationals had closed, the team had amassed just two round-wins. Committing to their old car, they took a known commodity into the Countdown to the Championship. 

They proceeded to go six straight races without a first-round loss, made a semifinal in Dallas (their season highpoint being a holeshot victory over Erica Enders in the second round), and, in seemingly impossible fashion, ended up sixth in the points. At their nadir, they were 14th, and it was a distant 14th. 

Now, to balance things, the team was not incredible in the Countdown. Sure, they never lost in the first round, but they only made it past the second round once. It was still mighty progress. So, how do they take it a half step further and contend on the regular in 2025?

It’s perhaps trickier than it first appears. The most critical decision seems to be rooted in whether they start the campaign with their old trusty car or their new piece, which, obviously, they had not fully gotten the handle on by Indy. Perhaps preseason testing of both cars will set their direction. It’s impossible to take an objective look at the season-long numbers of the team because there was such a dividing line between B.C. (before Countdown) and A.C. (after Countdown) with two different cars. If they can come out like they did for the last six races and qualify top half, that would be a massive improvement. If the driver can re-establish himself as a consistent .030s or .040s average guy, the team will be a quantum leap ahead of where they were through the first 14 races of 2024. We’ll have our answers pretty quickly once Gainesville qualifying starts. 

Troy Coughlin Jr. 

The ninth-place finish of the JEGS.com Camaro out of the Elite Motorsports camp was an unpleasant surprise not only to fans but surely to the team itself. The operation, the effort, and the skill behind the wheel seem to add up to more than the end result, so where are the areas that the yellow-and-black Chevrolet can get better in and thereby finish better in 2025? 

The car’s Achilles’ Heel in 2024 was qualifying position, especially in the Countdown. At 10 races, the car was qualified in the bottom half of the field, and at all 10 of them, the car was 10th or worse. The machine qualified No. 2 twice at back-to-back races, the second one being the NHRA New England Nationals in Epping, the race that he won in 2024. With his driver statistics, Coughlin stands in the arena with the best names in the class, but raw performance is still a foundational key to being effective in Pro Stock. He won four rounds via holeshot while losing only one all season. 

Coming into the Countdown, Coughlin was sixth in the points, a position he had held for the previous eight races. Unfortunately, that is as good as it was going to get. The car qualified 13th at three of the six Countdown races with eighth, 10th, and 12th being the other starting spots. In modern Pro Stock racing, even if you are the most explosive leaver in the class, the three- to five-hundredths Coughlin was behind on the qualifying sheet is essentially insurmountable. The results bear this out. 

With the way that Elite Motorsports works and their dedication to keeping their cars as close to the front of the pack as possible, we can only imagine that there will be a full-court press in moving this machine up the qualifying order. If this happens and the machine can pick up that few hundredths in car performance, you can count on Coughlin to deliver with his clutch foot to keep the car in the game and in the winner’s circle more frequently. 

Now, let’s switch gears to Pro Stock Motorcycle ...

Jianna Evaristo

One of the neatest things about being a fan or observer of drag racing is watching a racer evolve their career. We have seen Jianna Evaristo do just that over the last several seasons. We’ve seen her acumen, her control of the motorcycle, and her ability to go rounds come along with measured progress. We chose to look at Evaristo in this exploration because we feel that there is one thing that she can unlock to truly become a consistent race-win contender. That thing? The starting line. 

When she is locked in, she’s as good as anyone wearing a set of leathers. At the fall Charlotte event, she took Steve Johnson down with a .047 in the first round (she had a strong performance advantage on the motorcycle), but the real magic came with a .010 in the next round and a .017 following that. She lost in the semi’s, but that’s strong. In Dallas, she opened the day with a .004, followed it with a .008, and then had a distraction in the semi's, leaving with a .266. 

If one looks at the micro examples of Evaristo’s performance in the season, it’s clear that the will and the ability are present and accounted for. In the “if it were easy, everyone would be doing it” file, taking those micro examples and turning them into consistent results would make her a huge factor. A runner-up and multiple semifinals show these facts in their own way. 

She has an unbridled passion for the category and the competition, is one of the most fun races to see succeed with her joy, and could be the bane of the class if she can lock in for the long haul. 

Steve Johnson

One of the hardest-working guys in straight-line show business had tough sledding in 2024. Combing through the numbers and statistics can tell numerous stories of the year, but many of the numbers lead back to one critical factor. Johnson’s motorcycle only completed about 50% of its runs at full song, according to our Speed Index measurement. More specifically, over the course of 2024 and 74 total runs, only 52.7% of them were made with an e.t. of 7.00 and a speed of more than 193 mph. As the old saying goes, “In order to finish first, first we must finish.”

Johnson is a one-man band in so many respects. The guy keeps a cot in his shop to sleep on. His dedication borders on mania. The lingering question centers around his ability to address the potential soft spots in his program in the offseason and make them better. 

He did qualify fourth at the 2024 NHRA Gatornationals, and during the season, he averaged an overall 8.6 position, meaning it was a relatively mid-pack motorcycle and one that was likely capable of more round-wins than were ultimately recorded. 

Johnson’s name got pulled into some of the class drama that erupted at times over 2024, specifically in the front half of the season, and we’re always tempted to think that stuff like that can provide a distraction, whether in the shop or on the Tree. A charismatic guy, the man wears his heart on his sleeve, love it or not. 

If Steve Johnson completes an order of 70% of his runs (ideally higher) at full song, enters the headlines for on-track performance only, and maybe finds a few sponsor dollars along the way, he could be back into the fighting shape we saw him in a contending year, just a few seasons ago. 

So, that’s it, the final installment of our peek into the various NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series categories at teams who are seemingly on the verge of busting out and changing the dynamic of the whole season, if they can. These are the teams looking forward to improve, and there are many ahead of them glancing over their shoulders to make sure they don’t close in too far. That’s what makes this sport so great.  

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