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JUSTIN ASHLEY + MIKE GREEN + TOMMY DELAGO = TROUBLE

When Justin Ashley hired Mike Green to tune his fast-rising Top Fuel program in the offseason between the 2020 and 2021 seasons, he brought to the team championship experience with more than 50 wins under his belt and had just helped Austin Prock through his rookie season. They added respected Tommy DeLago, who had tuned Matt Hagan to his first world championship, in early 2022 to form a tough triumvirate that scored three wins in seven final-round appearances and led the points up until the last two events before slipping to fourth after back-to-back first-round losses.

After a tough outing at the season opener in Gainesville, the Phillips Connect team has been on fire, winning the NHRA Arizona Nationals, the Mission #2Fast2Tasty NHRA Challenge in Pomona, and then the Lucas Oil NHRA Winternationals, racking up 10 straight win lights. They also were the No. 1 qualifiers in Pomona, and, as he did in winning Phoenix, Ashley left on all of his opponents, including quick-draw Prock in the final.

EARLY NEW THREATS ARE FOR REAL

A fearsome foursome of drivers who have shown promise early in the season — Camrie Caruso, Chad Green, Leah Pruett, and Matt Hartford — looked great again in Pomona and appear en route to better seasons than they experienced in 2022.

After her breakthrough Pro Stock win at the NHRA Arizona Nationals, Caruso showed in Pomona that was no fluke as she qualified No. 1 and reached the semifinals and even entered Pomona eliminations with the first points lead of her young career before slipping into a tie for second place with Matt Hartford.

Green scored the first major win of his Funny Car career, taking Saturday’s Mission #2Fast2Tasty NHRA Challenge to go with the back-to-back semifinal finishes that have launched his season.

The rejuvenated Pruett, who also started with a pair of semifinal finishes in Top Fuel, was runner-up behind Justin Ashley in the Mission #2Fast2Tasty NHRA Challenge in Pomona, where she qualified No. 4 and, despite smoking the tires in round one, showed extreme promise again.

Hartford, who won the Pro Stock Mission Challenge after a strong semifinal finish in Phoenix, reached the final round in Pomona, where he left on Dallas Glenn but suffered when his car unexpectedly slowed from its earlier torrid pace.

These four will definitely bear watching the rest of the season.

YOU JUST NEVER KNOW

Hats off to Terry Haddock, the tenacious Texan who is always a wild card in Funny Car. The low-on-dollars, high-on-ambition driver opened a lot of eyes in Pomona when he reached the semifinals, working his way past three-time world champ Robert Hight on Hight’s home turf and veteran Tim Wilkerson with the kind of solid A-to-B passes that he is known for. It was just the second semifinal appearance of Haddock’s long career but drew strong applause from the knowledgeable Pomona crowd.

It will be fun to see Haddock in the Mission Challenge in Chicago, where he will rematch with Matt Hagan.

CORY MAC STILL HAS IT

It’s been more than a dozen years since Cory McClenathan has won a national event – he scored 34 of them in a decorated career in Top Alcohol Dragster and Top Fuel before the funding game took him out of the saddle – but the always popular Southern Californian showed in Pomona that he still has the winning knack by taking home the Legends Funny Car title over an eight-car field of Nostalgia Funny Cars.

At the wheel of the Rick Akers-owned Firebird, painted in McClenathan’s trademark blue and black-and-white checkered Mac Attack colors and tuned by nitro veteran Glenn Mikres, the 60-year-old vet defeated Bill Windham on a first-round holeshot then took down Billy Morris and Tim Boychuk for the win.

The win was a huge moment for the team, which had to skip the season-opening Good Vibrations March Meet after a Mikres family emergency, so they came into the event with an untested car and still won the day.

IT’S NOT WHERE YOU START ...

Over the last 200 NHRA races dating back to mid-2014, the top four qualifiers in Funny Cars have won 63% of the races, but Matt Hagan won Pomona from the No. 10 spot, which had accounted for just 5% of all wins in that span. Robert Hight won in Phoenix from the tough No. 9 spot (just 4.5% of previous winners), and Hagan also won the Gatornationals from No. 5 (also 4.5%).

Austin Prock reached the Winternationals Top Fuel final from the No. 12 spot, which had accounted for just 3% of all Top Fuel winners over the last nine seasons. Ironically, Prock's first career win, in Seattle in 2019, also came from the No. 12 spot.

Funny Car semifinalist Terry Haddock started from the No. 14 spot, which hasn’t produced a winner since Jack Beckman did it at the 2018 Brainerd event. It's extremely rare for someone to win out of the bottom eight in all of the four Pro classes, accounting for just about 10% across all classes.

Our teachers always insisted that we show our work, so here’s our math from the last 200 events (does not include Winternationals results):Ìý