NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

As part of NHRA’s 75th Anniversary celebration, an elite panel of Sportsman racing legends — Dan Fletcher, David Rampy, Peter Biondo, Luke Bogacki, Justin Lamb, Gary Stinnett, Jeff Taylor, and Austin Williams, who have combined for 411 NHRA national event victories and 35 world championships — has collaborated to select the Top 50 Sportsman Racers from NHRA’s first 75 years.

Each racer named to the Top 50 Sportsman Racers list will receive a large commemorative NHRA challenge coin recognizing their place among the most accomplished Sportsman competitors in NHRA history.

The Top 50 Sportsman Racers list will be unveiled in groups of 10 over five consecutive Tuesdays. Here's the third group, selected randomly from the list and presented here in alphabetical order.

Bo Butner

Two-time world champion Bo Butner has made a habit of diversity on the dragstrip, and it's paid off in spades.

There are only two drivers in NHRA history to have won a national event in seven different categories, and Butner joins Jeg Coughlin Jr. in this elite club. In addition to wins in Pro Stock, Comp, Super Stock, Stock, Super Street, Super Gas, and Mountain Motor Pro Stock, North Central Division racer Butner was also the first winner of the Factory Stock Showdown, which was run as an exhibition at the 2012 NHRA U.S. Nationals and not recorded as a national event win.

Over the course of a career that was sparked when a '72 Nova rolled through the used car lot owned by his family, Butner has earned 34 national event wins, including three consecutive Super Gas wins at the U.S. Nationals (2022-24), as well as the 2006 Comp and 2017 Pro Stock world championships. 

Mark Faul

Stock and Super Stock ace Mark Faul, who hails from the Northwest Division, earned a reputation as one you certainly don't want to find in the other lane.

Faul was hooked after winning his first race in 1988, and his first divisional win came in Super Stock at Mission Raceway Park in 1997. The trophy case expanded to include 36 glimmering pieces of hardware — 16 of them at the national level. Faul has been to the final at racetracks all around the country, from at home in Seattle to down south in Valdosta, Ga., and at the U.S. Nationals, where he won in 2006. He earned the division championship a remarkable 10 times.

Aside from the 2008 season when Faul claimed the Pacific Division, all of his season titles came in the Northwest, including a 2010 double-up with Stock and Super Stock championships. Faul was a JEGS Allstars winner back-to-back in 2010 and 2011.

Jeff Hefler

At 7 years old, South Central Division racer Jeff Hefler made his first trip down a racetrack aboard a Honda 50. Since then, the founder of Pro 1 Racing has accrued a generous assortment of accolades in a variety of race cars.

The 1998 Stock world champion also has four NHRA Summit Racing Series championships (2010, 2013, 2016, and 2020), as well as a pair of division titles and track championships many times over. Hefler's 10 national event wins in 23 final rounds cross three categories: Stock, Super Stock, and Super Gas, and the two-time JEGS Allstars winner has a hard-fought double on his scorecard as well, with wins in Stock and Super Gas at the 1997 Phoenix divisional.

It runs in the family: Hefler and brother Jeromy, a former IHRA champ and two-time NHRA national event winner (including the 2004 brother vs. brother Dallas Stock final), are the sons of 2002 E.T. Series national champion Jerry.

Jim Hughes

Winning an NHRA world championship in Stock eliminator is a difficult feat for anyone to achieve, and winning two of them can help define true greatness. Now, add the challenge of racing a manually shifted race car, and that achievement becomes the stuff of legend.

Such is the career of Colorado’s Jim Hughes, who has a pair of world titles and 10 national events to his credit, all of them in a four-speed Stocker. Hughes won his first national event at his home event in Denver in 1983 and used that as a springboard to his first world title. In 1989, Hughes won his second title, holding off Division 2 ace Grant Lewis in the final weeks of the season.

His most recent win came in Topeka in 2006 when he defeated fellow Top 50 driver David Rampy in the final. Nearly a half century after his first win, Hughes remains active at select events. 
 

Jeff Lane

The Northwest Division inducted Jeff Lane into their Hall of Fame in 2025, and the honor had been a long time coming.

Washington native Lane's national and divisional wins combine for a monumental total of 79, and twice he has won the prestigious JEGS Allstars: 1996 in Super Stock and 2015 in Comp. Lane has 66 division wins, his earliest claimed in 1986, and he's earned multiple trophies in most seasons ever since. His 13 national event victories, including the Mission SPORTSnationals win in 2026, are evenly distributed between Comp and Super Stock, and they've come over multitime champions such as Dan Fletcher, Jimmy DeFrank, and Justin Lamb.

A 14-time Northwest Division champion — including both the Division 6 Comp and Stock titles in 2006 — Lane narrowly missed the 2025 NHRA Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series world championship in Comp, a title son Cody held at the conclusion of the 2024 season.
 

John Lingenfelter

It didn’t matter whether it was a door car or a dragster, whether it ran on the strip, around corners, or on test tracks; John Lingenfelter was a master at producing horsepower.

His shop, Lingenfelter Performance Engineering in Decatur, Ind., built drag racing engines for many top Sportsman competitors, and Lingenfelter wheeled his own machines to 14 NHRA national events, including three prestigious U.S. Nationals titles. His first win came in Indy in 1972 in a ragtop Camaro, his first of three wins in Super Stock, before switching to Comp in 1977, where he first raced a B/Econo Altered Monza, and then claimed two more U.S. Nationals wins (1978 and 1986) in econo dragsters and ended up with 10 victories in the class. In his A/ED, he was the first Comp driver to break the six-second quarter-mile barrier.

Lingenfelter later competed in Pro Stock Truck, where he won once, then moved into the NHRA Sport Compact Drag Racing Series in the early 2000s to explore the limits of newer engine technology in a Chevy Cavalier. Away from the track, Lingenfelter drew national acclaim with the 254-mph turbocharged Callaway Sledgehammer Corvette and other GM-branded powerful street machines.

Lingenfelter passed away Dec. 25, 2003, more than a year after being critically injured in a sport compact crash in Pomona, Calif.

David Nickens

David Nickens is one of NHRA’s most successful Comp eliminator racers with 29 Wallys on his shelf (second only to David Rampy). He also has six division championships and 21 divisional wins to his credit, and untold more as an engine builder with brother Robert, operating out of their Houston-based Nickens Bros. Racing shop.

It was a long way to the top for Nickens, who began racing in 1976 and lost five final rounds before claiming his first, at the 1985 NHRA World Finals. With brother Robert and longtime partner Karenina Sydney at his side, they cut a swath through Comp throughout the late 1980s and early 1990s as part of the Castrol GTX superteam, highlighted by his victory at the 1991 U.S. Nationals, which led to his first world championship.

Nickens went on to mentor his son, Bo, who scored seven national event wins and the 1996 world championship in Comp, and nephew Buddy (Robert’s son), who collected nine Wallys.

Last year, Nickens reunited with longtime friend and fellow Top 50 Sportsman Racer Jeff Taylor, and together they won the 2025 Comp world championship.

David Rampy

On the silver screen, “Rambo” was a Sylvester Stallone action-figure capable of laying waste to the enemy regardless of weapon choice, and the same goes for drag racing’s “Rambo,” David Rampy, who accumulated 100 career national event wins split among five classes — Comp, Super Stock, Stock, Super Comp, and Super Gas — and five world championships, three in Comp and one each in Super Gas and Super Comp.

Rampy’s first national event win was in Super Stock at the NHRA Cajun Nationals in 1983 in a car owned by his father-in-law, Sonny Ray, whose daughter, Kelly, would be a key part of Rampy's career along with lifer crewmember Barry Davis. Rampy won the Super Gas championship in 1989, then switched to Comp with team owner Harold Stout in 1990 and won the world championship.

Rampy’s 81 career wins in Comp are nearly triple that of second-place David Nickens’ 29 victories. After winning the Super Comp world championship in 1995, Rampy won two more Comp crowns, in 2014 and 2017, and his vaunted red Bantam B/Street Roadster is one of Comp’s most successful cars.

Kyle Seipel

Kyle Seipel’s life and career were relatively short, but his impact on the sport is undeniable. Before he passed away from cancer in 2021 at the age of 50, Seipel established himself as not only one of the sport’s best drivers but also a premier driving coach and event promoter who left an indelible mark on virtually everyone he came into contact with.

Seipel’s 12 national event wins and 22 divisional wins don’t begin to tell the story of a second-generation racer who practically had a reserved seat at the Pacific Division awards banquet with 10 championships between 1990 and 2000.

When it came to predicting a dial-in or adjusting for conditions, no one was more skilled than Seipel, who often helped his many friends reach the winner’s circle. Later, he also joined good friend Peter Biondo to launch the hugely successful Fling series of high-stakes E.T. bracket races.  
 

Jeff Taylor

When it comes to skill sets, Jeff Taylor is the complete package with equal talent as a driver, crew chief, and engine builder. Taylor can seemingly do it all, and that’s reflected in a 40-plus-year career that is nearly unrivaled.

Taylor was just 21 when he won the Stock world championship in 1981, sharing the stage with his older brother, Charlie, who won Super Stock. Since then, he has added four more titles, two in Super Stock (1988, 1991) and two more in Comp (2005, 2025).

The list of Sportsman drivers with 50 or more national event wins is short, but Taylor is on it with 52 wins (and counting) in Comp, Super Stock, Stock, and Super Gas to go with more than 40 divisional titles.

Taylor-built engines have also set too many records to count and are used by some of the most successful racers in the sport. 
 

Top 50 Sportsman Racers to date (30 of 50 announced)

Group 1 bios

Group 2 bios

Group 3