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In each and every season in all sports, people talk about teams entering and exiting so-called “championship windows.” What does it mean? Simply, it’s a period of time when the right people, the right processes, and the right parts are all together at once and there’s the potential for great things to happen.��

It’s hard enough to create a team capable of winning a title and doubly more so to keep it together and grow it into a perennial contender. This is why when we look across NHRA Drag Racing, we can find operations beginning to enter this window, being firmly in it, or, perhaps, over time, being on the backside of their highest potential as a team.��

Let’s look at some teams in our NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series categories that have our attention in this matter.��

Pro Stock Motorcycle

Matt Smith Racing

With his return to V-Twin power in 2024, Matt Smith reasserted himself as the largest threat to the dominant Vance & Hines team in the Pro Stock Motorcycle category. Had he stayed with a Suzuki program that was not delivering the results he wanted, we’d assess that Smith’s title window had closed, but with some impressive victories, including running the table at the In-N-Out Burger 91���� Finals in Pomona, he left the season with a reminder that he had the chutzpah and horsepower to see eye to eye with anyone in the class.��

Buoyed by the late-season success, racing with the famed Smith family chip on his shoulder, and clearly on the right track with power, clutch, and chassis tuning, MSR’s championship window is wide open.��

Vance & Hines

Perhaps the largest two factors in keeping a team “in the window” are people and resources. Vance & Hines stands as an example of a team that has cultivated and kept some of the best people while bringing in some of the most robust sponsorship in the class to provide those same people with the tools they need to do their jobs. Oh, but if it were only that easy.��

The management and execution of the race team is largely invisible to most fans, but the results speak for themselves, and this is why we’ll be talking about V&H as a perennial front-running team for as long as they choose to continue. With two crew chiefs in Andrew Hines and Eddie Krawiec who combined for 105 wins as riders and two riders in Gaige Herrera and Richard Gadson who are as professional in their approach as the class has ever seen, this is a team built for titles, and they’ve been earning them. As long as this foursome stays together, the window is open.��

Pro Stock��

KB Titan Racing

When taking into consideration the Pro Stock teams, a lot of elements need to be considered. For instance, it wouldn’t be beyond the realm of reason to say that KB’s championship window was actually closer to closing than opening if you forgot about Dallas Glenn. This is how one person can really make a difference here.��

Greg Anderson’s performance at the 2024 91���� Finals ranks up with few others in NHRA history. Like Kirk Gibson heroically hobbling around the bases with his junked knees in the 1988 World Series, Anderson wore his Pro Stock battle scars on his sleeve in 2024. He had questioned himself and his abilities, but he delivered when put to the ultimate test. The question that comes up naturally centers around how deep that well still is and how many trips he can go to it after decades in the seat. Adding in Glenn’s last two seasons takes the KB Titan championship window and not only opens it wider, it makes it nearly panoramic.��

Elite Motorsports

It is still accurate to say right up to the moment you are reading this, that the dynastic reign of Elite Motorsports in 91���� Pro Stock is still in place. With six championships in 10 seasons (2014-2023) and four championships in five years (2019-2023), it’s a true drag racing dynasty. As all sports fans know, all dynasties end sometime, but in our view, that isn’t now. Only once in the last decade have Elite Motorsports gone back-to-back seasons without a title, and those were the dark ages of 2016 and 2017 when first Jason Line and then Bo Butner claimed the honors. Greg Anderson broke up their fun in 2024.

Having added Greg Stanfield and Steven Bell part time as well as (from what we have heard) an expansion on their engine leasing program, Elite’s sizable organization will once again be taxed to capacity in 2025. With Mark Ingersoll continuing to recover from his lung transplant, and perhaps another health situation sidelining another of the team’s all-star mechanical minds for a period, their depth will be tested. Such was the case at the end of 2024, and the organization still came within a breath of a championship.��

The window is not closing on Elite in 2025, but it likely may be tougher to hold the entire way open.��

Top Fuel

Kalitta Motorsports

There is one team in the sport’s tightest division that to some degree stands above the rest in terms of its year-over-year performance, consistency, and experience. Kalitta Motorsports garnered a championship with Doug Kalitta in 2023 and carried him to second place last year and completely revitalized its second Top Fuel car with Shawn Langdon finishing fourth in points. Langdon’s seven final rounds resulted in a pair of victories with Brian Husen in his first year as a crew chief, a stunning turnaround that changed the complexion of the class.��

If there is any team that is primed to be entering a potential multiyear championship window, it is this one. Success begets success in sports, and the fact that these teams have retained every key member in every key position is enormous. A couple of rounds different in the Countdown to the Championship and Kalitta would have been a back-to-back champion. Had Langdon not suffered the calamity he did in Las Vegas, the pair of them could have been racing for a title right down to the wire.��

Scag Power Equipment team

If there is a single team in Top Fuel that has been on the verge of it being “their year” a couple of times, it’s this one. For a large portion of the season, 2024 seemed as though it was certainly going to be Justin Ashley’s time. With four victories and six final rounds, the Scag Power Equipment team placed third in the points, had their strongest Countdown yet, and could have won the title in the last breaths of the season but were felled in the first round in Pomona.��

In our opinion, this team is in the middle of its championship window. The team has matured and improved in each of the last three seasons, and like an NFL franchise that earns a winning record then wins a playoff game and then makes it deeper into that tournament over a few seasons, the same process is taking place before our eyes with this team.��

That said, as we all know, making the jump from a playoff contender and winner to a world champion is a big one. This group seems primed and ready to seize it in 2025.

Matco Tools/Toyota team

If there is one team that has scrapped, scraped, and clawed its way to title contention over the last few seasons, it’s the AB Motorsports team of Antron Brown. These guys have had top-five finishes and steadily climbed until they reached the top of the mountain in 2024. Their championship also marked the close of the career of the great Mark Oswald, a man who has been a cornerstone of the team’s success for years. For this reason, there’s a shot that the team garnered their championship at the tail end of their current championship window.��

Maintaining their experienced core of Brian Corradi and Brad Mason among others, they still have the knowledge and experience to threaten anyone, clearly, but the loss of Oswald cannot be overlooked for the 2025 season. Unlike teams in other sports that often win and are totally disassembled, this was akin to a championship club losing a great coordinator or bench coach to retirement. Time will tell us if the team can smoothly absorb the absence of Oswald and prevent their window from closing far quicker than they want it to.��

Funny Car

DHL Toyota GR Supra

The biggest news of the 2024 offseason in Funny Car was Kalitta Motorsports’ acquisition of Dickie Venables to take the reins of the J.R. Todd-driven DHL GR Supra. Venables’ championship pedigree, which spans the decades, comes with him as does his aggressive approach that took the likes of Matt Hagan to performance territory few have ever been in over the years.��

With a hot start in 2024 and a frustrating middle and end to the year, the team decided that it was time for a change, and when Venables became available, they pounced. In some respects, people may view this as some sort of a building year, but in reality, there’s enough experience across the board that they should hit the ground with a combination that can win right out of the gate. The cars are proven, the crew is battle-tested, the driver is in the prime of his career, and the new leader of the team surely wants to be competitive from the first burnout of the season.��

Championship window? They're smack dab in the middle of the opening paragraph of one here. We’ve seen the stories in all sports where a new head coach can have a seemingly outsized effect on an experienced operation. All eyes will be on them in Gainesville.��

Cornwell Quality Tools Chevy Camaro

In some ways, it seems like we are in the beginning scenes of a movie we have all watched before. An intense, funny, energetic young driver breaks through for a dominating championship, lands a long-term sponsor, and keeps his brilliant crew chief and band of merry wrenchers intact for years. The first time this movie aired, the driver’s name was John Force. This time, his name is Austin Prock and, not to be overly dramatic, this is the one team in any Professional category that has the immediate potential to kick off a dynastic run.��

The competition began to tighten up to Prock by the end of the season, but as a pound-for-pound 20-race effort, they were unmatched in virtually every category. If we look at the base elements of what creates dynasties in sports, it’s leadership, talent, and an obsession with excellence in every aspect of every job. We saw what that looked like with this team last year, and with no measurable personnel changes, rules changes, or drastic mechanical changes, the stage is set for this team to run for another title in 2025, and beyond.��

Ford Motorcraft Quick Lane Mustang

There is no doubt that Bob Tasca III entered the 2024 season with the best team, the best car, and the best headlines of his entire career. A 341.68-mph preseason shot heard ‘round the world made that very, very clear. Overcoming hurdles that had stymied the team in 2023 made anyone with a pair of eyeballs and a brain understand that this operation was primed for a championship run. Unfortunately, even with three wins and four finals, the car’s performance faded like a dimmer switch down the stretch, making just two semifinals in the Countdown.��

Between the team’s back-half season performance and the fact that the other premier cars in the field had matched the blazing Ford’s performance by the close of the year, it’s our belief that this team’s window is closing. If Aaron Brooks and Todd Okuhara have been able to reconnoiter their tune-up, they could surely prove us wrong, and we know that is their aim, but the trend here seems to indicate otherwise. Advantages, mechanical or otherwise, are insanely difficult to create in this sport, and when you have one, you’ve got to wear it out before others decipher it. They seemingly had one in their back pocket, but it faded over time.��

The most magical part of the start of every season is that hope springs eternal for all. The “window” is open for every team in every class to go on their own title runs. Obviously, as time grinds on, we see who is capable and who is not, which is what we’ll all be intently following once competition begins in Gainesville. It will be incredibly exciting to see which teams on this list and those across the sport take advantage of their talents, their parts, and their brains to make title runs in 2025.��
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