NHRA Pro Pre-season testing results

[02SE]

Here are the results from the Pro Pre-season shootout.

Scroll down

https://competitionplus.com/2025-pro-superstar-shootout-event-results/

 

[bdcardinal]

Watching it now on Flo, its pretty cool that they do this.

 

[racer12306]

Austin Prock runs the first 3.7 pass since the swept back header era, the class better watch out this year, again.

 

[userfriendly]

The time has come to shorten the track another 120 feet to 880’ or 1/6th of a mile.

 

[tnt_motorsports]

The time has come to shorten the track another 120 feet to 880’ or 1/6th of a mile.

Still not happy about the 1000' thing. IMO, stop shortening the track and focus on enhancing the safety features and shutdown areas.

Just my $0.02

 

[RDY4WAR]

At many tracks, you physically can't lengthen them. The NHRA (and every other racing organization) is fighting a growing problem of urbanization. Tracks that were built 30+ years ago, that were 10+ miles away from the nearest city limit, are now finding the land around them bought up by developers and high density housing thrown up as fast as they can put ink to paper. Those same developers want nothing more than to see the track shut down so they can buy up the land the track sits on to build more houses and keep going. Then you have people buying those houses, knowing good and well there's a race track right there and that race tracks are loud, who want to see it shut down as well due to noise. Even though the track was there first, they face an uphill battle to keep the gates open. Things like purchasing more land to extend the track's shutdown area isn't feasible. Paying the higher insurance that comes with ever increasing speed isn't feasible. Because of curfews, attempts to appease the local neighborhoods, risking more crashes and oil/fluid spills on the track with more downtime for cleanup may mean a race doesn't get finished. This was a problem at MDIR some years ago where for a few years straight, a big event had to be called, and payouts split up, before the semis due to running into curfew. I was there one of those years and watched a car leave an oil slick from about the 100 ft mark all the way down the track into the shut down area. It took 2 hours to get it cleaned up and track prepped again.

While I would love to see 1/4-mile nitro cars again, it's never going to happen. I've accepted that.

 

[TimeFlies]

They need to go back to the 1/4 mile, this short track crap sucks.
Why even bother is how I feel about 1000 feet.
If a driver has such poor reactions they cannot throw the chutes as soon as they cross the line, then they shouldn't be out there to begin with.
For the losers who can't drive well, just put in a gravel trap at the end of the track to stop their car for them.
Then send them back to driving school, where they teach about braking, and skills. These are supposed to be good drivers, not somebody who is just learning on day 1 ever behind the wheel.

 

[userfriendly]

At many tracks, you physically can't lengthen them. The NHRA (and every other racing organization) is fighting a growing problem of urbanization. Tracks that were built 30+ years ago, that were 10+ miles away from the nearest city limit, are now finding the land around them bought up by developers and high density housing thrown up as fast as they can put ink to paper. Those same developers want nothing more than to see the track shut down so they can buy up the land the track sits on to build more houses and keep going. Then you have people buying those houses, knowing good and well there's a race track right there and that race tracks are loud, who want to see it shut down as well due to noise. Even though the track was there first, they face an uphill battle to keep the gates open. Things like purchasing more land to extend the track's shutdown area isn't feasible. Paying the higher insurance that comes with ever increasing speed isn't feasible. Because of curfews, attempts to appease the local neighborhoods, risking more crashes and oil/fluid spills on the track with more downtime for cleanup may mean a race doesn't get finished. This was a problem at MDIR some years ago where for a few years straight, a big event had to be called, and payouts split up, before the semis due to running into curfew. I was there one of those years and watched a car leave an oil slick from about the 100 ft mark all the way down the track into the shut down area. It took 2 hours to get it cleaned up and track prepped again.

While I would love to see 1/4-mile nitro cars again, it's never going to happen. I've accepted that.

Thanks for putting in the effort to write all that out.
From a mechanical perspective, could the engines, especially the valve train, fuel system and magnetos handle another thousand RPM if the track was restored to 1320 feet?
If not, there would have to be rule changes to gears and tire diameter to increase speed without increasing the engine RPM.

 

[RDY4WAR]

They need to go back to the 1/4 mile, this short track crap sucks.
Why even bother is how I feel about 1000 feet.
If a driver has such poor reactions they cannot throw the chutes as soon as they cross the line, then they shouldn't be out there to begin with.
For the losers who can't drive well, just put in a gravel trap at the end of the track to stop their car for them.
Then send them back to driving school, where they teach about braking, and skills. These are supposed to be good drivers, not somebody who is just learning on day 1 ever behind the wheel.

Spoken like someone who's never around them. There's racers with 30+ years experience and multiple championships who end up in sand traps for reasons out of their control. Chutes sometimes fail to open, stuck throttles and runaway engines aren't unusual things (even with the best equipment and failsafes), and other circumstances can mean a veteran driver, with multiple championships, goes into the sand trap every now and then. Racers have died from going into the sand trap due to circumstances out of their control.

There's also the cost of racing to worry about. Finding sponsors willing to shell out millions a year to field one car and crew is already hard enough. They already don't have enough competitors to make a full 16 car field at most events mostly due to the cost.

 

[02SE]

Watching it now on Flo, its pretty cool that they do this.

It was good to work with lots of friends again this week for the testing.

 

[raaizin]

At many tracks, you physically can't lengthen them. The NHRA (and every other racing organization) is fighting a growing problem of urbanization. Tracks that were built 30+ years ago, that were 10+ miles away from the nearest city limit, are now finding the land around them bought up by developers and high density housing thrown up as fast as they can put ink to paper. Those same developers want nothing more than to see the track shut down so they can buy up the land the track sits on to build more houses and keep going. Then you have people buying those houses, knowing good and well there's a race track right there and that race tracks are loud, who want to see it shut down as well due to noise. Even though the track was there first, they face an uphill battle to keep the gates open. Things like purchasing more land to extend the track's shutdown area isn't feasible. Paying the higher insurance that comes with ever increasing speed isn't feasible. Because of curfews, attempts to appease the local neighborhoods, risking more crashes and oil/fluid spills on the track with more downtime for cleanup may mean a race doesn't get finished. This was a problem at MDIR some years ago where for a few years straight, a big event had to be called, and payouts split up, before the semis due to running into curfew. I was there one of those years and watched a car leave an oil slick from about the 100 ft mark all the way down the track into the shut down area. It took 2 hours to get it cleaned up and track prepped again.

While I would love to see 1/4-mile nitro cars again, it's never going to happen. I've accepted that.

Drag racing is a dying sport. Look at a NHRA crowd today vs in the 1970's 0r 1980's. Bunch of old men today in the stands and I am an old guy! Regular cars are so expensive for kids today. NHRA is NOT relevant to kids today.

 

[userfriendly]

Drag racing is a dying sport. Look at a NHRA crowd today vs in the 1970's 0r 1980's. Bunch of old men today in the stands and I am an old guy! Regular cars are so expensive for kids today. NHRA is NOT relevant to kids today.

The last national event I went to had over 160 super gas entrants alone.
The stands emptied out except for family members and people wandered around the pits for two hours when eliminations began.
Now we’re down to the last 80 super gas cars that will take another two rounds to get to 20.

Sportsman category drivers aren’t race fans. Otherwise they wouldn’t trailer up and leave Friday night after red lighting in round one.
If friends and family members in the stands had a clue what was going on, they would tell their drivers that the last 6 rounds were double break outs, the air is obviously improving so you might want to dial back a tenth or two.
But no.

 

[rszappa1]

Drag racing is a dying sport. Look at a NHRA crowd today vs in the 1970's 0r 1980's. Bunch of old men today in the stands and I am an old guy! Regular cars are so expensive for kids today. NHRA is NOT relevant to kids today.

I think the peak for NHRA was in the 60s and the 70s...IMO

 

[SubieRubyRoo]

Drag racing is a dying sport. Look at a NHRA crowd today vs in the 1970's 0r 1980's. Bunch of old men today in the stands and I am an old guy! Regular cars are so expensive for kids today. NHRA is NOT relevant to kids today.

So, rather than encourage behaviors and sustain places where it’s possible to more safely harness the need for speed with minimum safety standards, safety equipment and special licensing, let’s close all the racetracks down so they can be torn down to build subdivisions.

Let’s make the only place left where that itch for speed can be scratched is on public roadways where some of these idiots are exceeding 150mph racing in/through traffic, right?

Heck no. I say give every single extant road race or dragstrip today, along with any newly built tracks more than 10 miles from any cities (not just towns) a federal grandfather clause that protects their rights as landowners to use their property as they desire. So, if some builder is dumb enough to build a subdivision nearby due to urban sprawl, well, sorry neighbors, but you moved near them and they have the right to continue their livelihood.

While overall small in percentage of the total population, racing has a HUGE $ spend per person involved, and has built and sustained generations of working families, local businesses and even driven the development of new technologies. To displace & destroy recreational areas artificially via suburban creep and legislative strangulation has a much-farther reach than just affecting local tracks.

US 30 Dragway in Hobart, IN was one of the more famous tracks in the country, located out in the cornfields of Indiana, far from any neighborhood. As suburban crawl grew, things happened exactly as RDY4WAR referenced. First it was noise restrictions, and then schedule restrictions, and so on and so on because “the community was expanding!”, and those restrictions were a noose that made it impossible to operate the dragstrip in a financially-feasible manner, and the track was closed.

Well, guess what. Nearly 50 years later, the houses that were built across the street from the entrance to the track are still the only ones in the area. There was no more expansion, partly because people realized it wasn’t a great place to live, and partly because now a major revenue generator in the county was gone forever, and so were a massive majority of all the customers associated with that revenue. After it had killed the track, the neighborhood that did it basically died as well. Some of the starting line asphalt is still out there in the cornfields as a somber reminder.

 

[raaizin]

So, rather than encourage behaviors and sustain places where it’s possible to more safely harness the need for speed with minimum safety standards, safety equipment and special licensing, let’s close all the racetracks down so they can be torn down to build subdivisions.

Let’s make the only place left where that itch for speed can be scratched is on public roadways where some of these idiots are exceeding 150mph racing in/through traffic, right?

Heck no. I say give every single extant road race or dragstrip today, along with any newly built tracks more than 10 miles from any cities (not just towns) a federal grandfather clause that protects their rights as landowners to use their property as they desire. So, if some builder is dumb enough to build a subdivision nearby due to urban sprawl, well, sorry neighbors, but you moved near them and they have the right to continue their livelihood.

While overall small in percentage of the total population, racing has a HUGE $ spend per person involved, and has built and sustained generations of working families, local businesses and even driven the development of new technologies. To displace & destroy recreational areas artificially via suburban creep and legislative strangulation has a much-farther reach than just affecting local tracks.

US 30 Dragway in Hobart, IN was one of the more famous tracks in the country, located out in the cornfields of Indiana, far from any neighborhood. As suburban crawl grew, things happened exactly as RDY4WAR referenced. First it was noise restrictions, and then schedule restrictions, and so on and so on because “the community was expanding!”, and those restrictions were a noose that made it impossible to operate the dragstrip in a financially-feasible manner, and the track was closed.

Well, guess what. Nearly 50 years later, the houses that were built across the street from the entrance to the track are still the only ones in the area. There was no more expansion, partly because people realized it wasn’t a great place to live, and partly because now a major revenue generator in the county was gone forever, and so were a massive majority of all the customers associated with that revenue. After it had killed the track, the neighborhood that did it basically died as well. Some of the starting line asphalt is still out there in the cornfields as a somber reminder.

We live in a Capitalistic society. It is not a financially viable business. I live close to Englishtown NJ which is a pretty historic and significant track. The drag strip closed down because it couldnt make money nothing more. I was at the Summernationals about 10 or 15 years ago. The stands on pitside were 3/4 full. The other stands were 1/4 at best. Taxes insurance maintenance, salaries are expensive. They still have drifting, motocross Monster truck show just the drag racing shut down. They store salvage cars now on the dragstrip btw.

People will do stupid things dragstrip or not. In this day of 500-800 ho Mustangs Challengers and Corvettes that these drivers cant control who think the gas pedal is an on/off switch its a wonder we dont have more serious accidents.

 

[02SE]

We live in a Capitalistic society. It is not a financially viable business. I live close to Englishtown NJ which is a pretty historic and significant track. The drag strip closed down because it couldnt make money nothing more. I was at the Summernationals about 10 or 15 years ago. The stands on pitside were 3/4 full. The other stands were 1/4 at best. Taxes insurance maintenance, salaries are expensive. They still have drifting, motocross Monster truck show just the drag racing shut down. They store salvage cars now on the dragstrip btw.

People will do stupid things dragstrip or not. In this day of 500-800 ho Mustangs Challengers and Corvettes that these drivers cant control who think the gas pedal is an on/off switch its a wonder we dont have more serious accidents.

I never cared for E-town. It wasn't one of the better tracks on the Tour. I'm glad it was removed from the Tour. Most of the competitors felt the same way, especially after a poorly implemented shut-down area ended up being a factor in killing my friend Scott Kalitta.

As for the NHRA dying, I would say that ALL Motorsports are slowly dying. When an ever increasing number of kids only care about their phone, and don't even bother getting a drivers license, it seems inevitable. In the not too distant future, most people will summon a driverless UBER, and won't have any interest in driving themselves.

 

[racer12306]

Here's how I look at it....

Go to a race, enjoy it until the day it folds up

or

Piss and moan about it and be a grump.


I like option 1. I'll be going to the 4 wides in Charlotte this year.

 

[userfriendly]

Here's how I look at it....

Go to a race, enjoy it until the day it folds up

or

Piss and moan about it and be a grump.


I like option 1. I'll be going to the 4 wides in Charlotte this year.

As a group, drag racers are a bunch of self centred pissers and moaners, want all their parts for free and think everyone should sponsor them.
Half of them can’t afford groceries, but will spend thousands of dollars a year on their cars instead of basic family needs.

 

[racer12306]

Different session, but still pre-season testing

Brittany goes 302.69 to the 1/8th. Popped near the finish line to "only" run 334.40.

 

[02SE]

Different session, but still pre-season testing

Brittany goes 302.69 to the 1/8th. Popped near the finish line to "only" run 334.40.

That makes her car the 3rd (IIRC) TF/D to exceed 300 mph in 660ft. It should be a good weekend here in Gainesville.