NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

THE ROCK WAS ROARIN’

NHRA Championship Drag Racing returned to Rockingham for the first time since the final Winston Invitational in 1998 and for the first time with points on the line, and the fans showed up in droves to welcome the tour back to The Rock.

Drivers universally spoke about how the fans thanked them for coming back, and the sellout crowd Saturday was overwhelming. They came early, and, with this being doorslammer country, the fact that they had packed the grandstands for Pro Mod ahead of the nitro teams spoke volumes about their passion.

When track owners Dan VanHorn and Al Gennarelli took the stage during the pre-race ceremony, they were wildly cheered by the fans. NHRA National Dragster also presented a commemorative cover to them on Saturday to celebrate the return of nitro to The Rock.

The sellout was the 10th of NHRA’s milestone 75th anniversary season, including the season opener at the NHRA Gatornationals, as well as all four of the new tracks on the circuit, including South Georgia Motorsports Park, Maryland International Raceway, and U.S. 131 Motorsports Park.

KALITTA TEAMS FLYING AWAY FROM FIELD

The Countdown to the Championship may only be one-third complete, but the Kalitta Motorsports team of Shawn Langdon and Doug Kalitta are running away with the points race.

On a day when both made it to the final round, Nos. 3 through 8 in the points were on the trailer by the end of round two.

The final round was their fourth of the season, with Langdon winning in Adel and Maryland and Kalitta in Charlotte, and Langdon's win means that the Team Kalitta Top Fuel dragsters will have won the last six races. Kalitta won Sonoma, Seattle, and Brainerd; Langdon won Indianapolis and Michigan.

Team Kalitta has won 11 of the season’s 16 races to date, and the Team Kalitta Top Fuel dragsters have competed in 61 of the 63 rounds of racing this season. The team missed only being part of the final rounds in Pomona and Norwalk.

Langdon’s seventh win of the season extended his winning streak to 12 straight rounds and not only marked his second three-race monopoly but also completed an unusual run of having won at all four of the new venues on the schedule this year, having previously won in Adel, Ga., Budds Creek, Med., and Martin, Mich.

MOMENTUM IS A FICKLE THING

Every Countdown race seems to carry its own weight, and after a series of outcomes at rain-delayed Martin event, some drivers were able to continue their momentum while others fell flat.

We’ve already discussed Shawn Langdon’s continuing freight-training of the Top Fuel field, but Funny Car winner Jordan Vandergriff was on the trailer after round two, while runner-up Matt Hagan went one round further to take his fourth win of the season and opened his lead on Vandergriff from 23 points to 84. Pro Stock winner Troy Coughlin shook himself out of competition in the second round, and runner-up Matt Hartford, despite qualifying No. 1 for the third straight race, went out in the semifinals and lost his hard-won points lead to Greg Stannfield. John Hall, who took advantage of a calamitous day in Pro Stock Motorcycle, was out in round one in Rockingham and was runner-up to Marc Ingwersen.

Here’s a quick look at the winners and losers in Rockingham.

ELITE TEAMS PUNCH BACK

Ahead of the event, a lot was made about the fact that the KB Titan Pro Stock teams regularly test at Rockingham Dragway from their nearby Mooresville, N.C., base, but when the final win light shone, it bathed an Elite Performance driver, Greg Stanfield, who emerged from a semifinal round that contained three KB Titan cars and him, and pushed him into the points lead.

It was Elite’s second straight win in the Countdown following Troy Coughlin Jr.’s victory last weekend in Martin after the KB-powered cars won 11 of the season’s first 14 events, with only Stanfield (Sonoma) and his son, Aaron (Chicago and Norwalk), breaking up the domination.

While celebrating his team's success, Stanfield is not ready to celebrate quite yet.

"That's a tough team over there; they've been hard on Elite for the past two years, but guys at Elite are not giving up," he said. "They're working hard, and I think we've made some ground. We just need to get more cars out of our stable as good as me, so we can have the whole team try to be good."

It’s worth noting that KB-powered Matt Hartford qualified No. 1 for the third straight time this season but that the KB team provides only his engine and not the horsepower or chassis tuning data that they’ve accumulated, which is pretty impressive for him to have been leading the points until this weekend.

SPORTSMAN STARS SHINE

The skill of NHRA’s Sportsman racers never fails to amaze me, especially those who have won and keep winning for decades. Brad Plourd is a great example.

The all-star driver, who was named this year as one of NHRA’s Top 50 Sportsman Racers of all time, has won in Comp, Super Stock, Stock, Super Comp, Super Gas, and Super Street and came inches from winning his second national event double in Rockingham, winning in Right Trailers Top Dragster but losing a tight final-round battle in Stock.

Plourd, one of 48 drivers to have doubled in national event competition, having won in both Stock and Super Comp 14 years ago in Seattle, got the first half easily after Steven Furr was minusculely early (-.0002-second) against him in the Right Trailers Top Dragster final, but 15 minutes later, the timers flipped the other way as Cody Phillips was .000 perfect against Plourd in the Stock final, while Plourd was unusually late with a .049 that even his near-perfect 10.634 couldn’t rescue.

Joe Santangelo, another on the Top 50 Sportsman Racers list, also was in line for a double, which, remarkably, would have been his first, but he lost in semi’s of both Super Stock and Stock, and Dan Fletcher, the winningest Sportsman racer in NHRA history (and, obviously, also part of that prestigious Top 50 list) went to the Super Stock final, where he red-lighted.