The Lucas Oil NHRA Winternationals lived up to the tradition of Southern California drama that’s been present since the race debuted in 1961. The racing was wonderfully close and exciting, and the winners engaged in the thrill of winning one of NHRA’s “majors” that are the Winternationals. Here’s our five big takeaways from the race.
THOSE SoCAL FANS …
The weekend was a bit of a marathon event, with some on-track incidents on Saturday and rain and more oil on Sunday, making for a long day, but the fans hung tough.
The early-week forecast for the race was not optimistic, but it got better as the week wore on. What initially looked like a complete washout of Friday and then Saturday moved into possible rain on Sunday, and thankfully, most of that did not materialize.
It rained Sunday morning, putting the show behind schedule as we didn’t start until 12:30, and then after Tony Schumacher grenaded a rear end for the second straight day, leading to a cleanup of more than an hour, patience was definitely a virtue both in the pits and in the grandstands.
The fans, God love ‘em, took it all in stride and hung in there until the end, which didn’t come until 8 p.m. Sunday night, right as the curfew hit.
Of course they had plenty of things to do during the downtime because, once again, the legends from the sport’s history were all over the place, the racers were welcoming to fans, and the interviews on the Nitro Stage in the pits and the multitude of interactive displays and games on Nitro Alley kept everyone engaged, and it didn’t hurt that In-N-Out Burger was serving its world-famous burgers to keep the hunger at bay.
LEGEND-ARY WEEKEND
As mentioned above, there were a lot of drag racing legends on hand at the event as NHRA continues to celebrate its 75th anniversary. In addition to the drivers who were celebrated as part of NHRA’s 1,000th Funny Car race — bringing back former racers like Bruce Larson and Johnny Gray to add the compliment of current drivers who won on the 100s — we had a lot of drivers in attendance to pick up their special crystal awards for being on the prestigious list of NHRA’s Top 75 Drivers, including multitime Top Fuel world champ Gary Beck, and Kenny Bernstein returned to accompany Susie Arnold Armstrong, wife of late mechanical genius Dale Armstrong. Danny Thompson was there to accept for his late father, Mickey Thompson, and three-time Top Alcohol Funny Car champ Brad Anderson was saluted by the partial SoCal fans.
Shirley Shahan, who made drag racing history in Pomona at the 1966 Winternationals, when she became the sport’s first female national event winner, was again hanging out with Top Fuel rookie sensation Maddi Gordon, who was NHRA’s 100th female winner a couple of years ago. We introduced the duo a few years back, and they became fast friends, and the Drag-On Lady was back again to hang out with the newest fan sensation for the weekend.
Drag racing icon Don “the Snake” Prudhomme, who lives not far from Pomona, came out again and brought along his old racing buddy Richard Tharp, who took part in another of the legends autograph sessions. Bob Muravez, aka Floyd Lippencott Jr., the unforgettable Top Gas winner from the 1963 Winternationals, was also there, enjoying himself and getting up close and personal with today’s stars and reuniting with his old buddies from the past.
THAT POMONA REVERENCE
Tony Stewart had a great weekend, scoring Elite Motorsports’ first Top Fuel win and being joined in the winner’s circle by Tony Stewart Racing Funny Car ace Matt Hagan. They shared the stage in the Media Center after the event, and both acknowledged the gravity of winning one of NHRA’s legendary events.
“I’ve been [in NHRA] for five years now, and following Leah [Pruett] around and being a part of it, but it doesn’t take long to realize how special Pomona is in drag racing and how much it means to everybody; it’s one of the crown jewels in NHRA,” said Stewart. “And then the impact that Leah has had on my career here and to be a part of it in NHRA’s 75th Anniversary and win here at the Winternationals, this is her home track, and it just feels extra special to me because of her and because of her story of telling me that when she was a kid, she’d sneak out of school just to come to the drag races on Friday. So when you think about it, and for me to think about how important this place is to her.
“We’re honored to be a part of NHRA’s 75th Anniversary. These trophies this year are just unbelievable, and everybody within NHRA should be proud of what NHRA has meant for 75 years. Wally Parks built a great foundation and still to this day, after 75 years, gives us a great place to race. The camaraderie in the pit area with all the people here, it is truly a large, large family, and it’s an honor to race here.”
“This is such a magical place,” Hagan echoed. “I mean, I was pulling up at the staging lanes, and I just couldn’t get my eyes off the mountains behind us, I should have been focused on what we were doing, but the sun was setting, and the mountains were just amazing. And you just look at California. Man, this place is just amazing. So just to be in that moment when you’re going to pull up to the starting line and fire up a 12,000-horsepower race car, and you get to go down to there 330 miles an hour, that’s just magical in itself, and there’s probably only 50 people in the world who get to know what that feels like. I tell this dude [Stewart] every time we win, ‘Thank you for letting me drive your race car.’ There are plenty of people I’d like to take my place. It’s just very special, not just to win but to win at the Winternationals.”
THAT ASHLEY MAGIC
As much as Stewart and Hagan are loving Pomona, Just Ashley again flashed that Pomona magic with a runner-up finish behind Stewart in what was truly a bounce-back weekend for the Scag team after two tough openers in Gainesville and Phoenix.
Ashley, who won the Winternationals three straight years (2022-24 and was runner-up in 2021 when he couldn’t run the final round due to heat prostration), was a machine on the starting line with three straight 025 reaction times in a class where anything below .050 is considered world-beating. It’s not only superhuman but almost robotic. He’s a true starting-line artist. And even his “slow” light of .036 in the final still beat Stewart off the line. In six leaves this year, he’s averaging .028.
Last year, he left on 47 of the 49 opponents he raced, and he’s six-for-six already this year.
Not only that, but apparently this kind of thing is contagious because his Scag Racing Top Fuel teammate, Will Smith, cut a .029 light in round one in the Bluebird Turf machine. I don’t know what they’re putting in the water over there, but everyone else probably wants a drink.
READY FOR LAUNCH?
There’s no doubting that the early 2026 returns for the Prock family after leaving John Force Racing to align with Tasca Racing have not been good, but the Winternationals appears to have marked yet another step in the right direction that seems to have the “Prock Rocket” ready to launch in the way we’ve seen him dominate the last two seasons.
The trials of the team have been well documented in how, leaving the JFR universe, tuning mastermind Jimmy Prock was forced to try to assemble a combination based on available parts with which he does not have great familiarity. It has been a work in progress, marked by gains and losses as they sought the correct power level, but the team came into Pomona optimistic because this was the first race where they were able to get all the parts they wanted and needed to go fast.
Although Austin, the two-time world champ, lost in the first round for the second straight race after failing to qualify at the season opener in Gainesville, you can just get the sense that they’re climbing closer. Although their qualifying effort was still a little bit checkered, with only two solid runs, one was a three-second time that qualified them fifth. Their peers all knew the team would struggle, so this is not unexpected for them or even for the Procks themselves, but those teams had better start looking in the rearview mirror because pretty soon the Prock Rocket is going to be blasting after them.