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The NHRA 4-Wide Nationals in Las Vegas was the fourth race of the 2025 NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series season, and we're still learning a lot. Here's our five big takeaways from the race.

Where there’s ‘Smoke,’ there’s victory

Given his racing history, a Top Fuel win by Tony Stewart seemed almost like a given, and now, it’s a fact. 

Stewart, who runner-upped in Top Alcohol Dragster at this track in his class debut in the fall of 2022 and won his first in that class in four-wide fashion when the tour returned to Vegas the next spring, became the Top Fuel class’ 112th winner with another four-wide victory, beating Antron Brown, Justin Ashley, and Jasmine Salinas to the stripe.

He won both of his preliminary quads on holeshots and relied on the steady tuning of Neal Strausbaugh and company to help him win the final.

Although it has only been 24 events in his Top Fuel career, even he admitted it feels like a lot longer because he has had almost immediate success in every other motorsports discipline he's undertaken. He bore the slings and arrows of fan outrage last year, people who suggested wife Leah should get back into the car that almost won the world championship in 2023.

But he learned a lot last year. How to steel himself for the line and how to pedal the throttle and, perhaps even tougher, how to handle the adrenaline roller coaster that comes when your runs are 90 minutes apart.

"Everything I drove before, I was 70% of the equation, and the car and the crew were 30% of the equation. Over here, it's the opposite. Now I'm 30% of the equation, and that car and the team are that 70%, so when it's not going down the racetrack and it's got my name on the car, they look and go, 'He sucks,' but I didn't suck. I mean, I had finished fifth in reaction time average for the season.

"But I'm never one to go, 'That's good enough.' If you want to catch the Justin Ashleys and the Antron Browns and the Doug Kalittas and the Shawn Langdons — those are the four guys that were in front of me all year — it's going to take a lot of time to catch those guys. They're craftsmen. They perfect their craft, so if you're going to beat them, you've got to find a way to be as good as those guys. And so to sit there and be fifth and go, 'Yeah, that was great,' but if you're going to beat them and beat them on a regular basis, you've got to figure out how to beat them on the Tree, too."

The car is there. The driver is there. What comes next as we head to NASCAR country could be really something.

Feels like the first time (almost)

In a preseason article earlier this year, the NHRA National Dragster staff identified an amazing 22 racers who could win their first Pro Wally this year. Paul Lee became the sport’s newest first-time Pro winner with his Funny Car win in Phoenix, and we had four drivers — Tony Stewart and Jasmine Salinas in Top Fuel, Dave Richards in Funny Car, and Matt Latino in Pro Stock  — with a chance to join him in the final rounds this weekend.

Stewart got the job done, which, of course, meant that Salinas did not. She finished fourth but had a tremendous weekend in the Scrappers Racing entry. Salinas took a lot of knocks in her rookie Top Fuel season for her tardy reaction times (she averaged a .104 light), but she was first off the line ahead of her three rivals in two of her three quads, including a dazzling .040 in round one. Salinas, who won just four rounds in her rookie campaign, has now won at least one round in each of the year’s first four events and already has seven round-wins this season.

Richards was another feel-good story for all that he and the Bluebird Turf team have endured the last two seasons, including being rear-ended by Dale Creasy Jr. at the 2023 Dallas event and his run-in with the guardwall in Seattle last season. Richards won just one round-win (actually a second-place finish in round one of the first round of the Charlotte four-wide race) and DNQ’d in Gainesville to kick off the season but now has two “win lights” to his credit after finishing second in his first two quads.

Latino was the third great story as the second-generation Pro Stock pilot reached the final in just his third race and second race-day start. After a DNQ in Phoenix, he collected his first round-win two weeks ago in Pomona, where he beat his father, Eric, on a holeshot in round one. Latino won his first-round quad here and finished second in the semifinals to reach the final.

How many first-time winners will we see this year? If this race is any indication, Lee won't be the last.

'Prock Rocket' is back (in the winner's circle)

After the championship-winning season they had last year — eight wins, 12 final rounds, and a class-record 15 No. 1 qualifying berths — the Prock family — driver Austin and the tuning tandem of his father Jimmy and brother Thomas — had a tough act to follow, and when they started the year with just one round-win in the first three events, the thought was maybe they were pushing too hard.

They were, because that’s what Jimmy Prock does. That’s what he has always done. You don’t get to the top without pressing the edges of the envelope, and you sure don’t stay there by mailing in that same envelope year after year.

The Prock team started well in Las Vegas — just one of five cars to run in the threes in a very tricky Q1 — but when they poured the coals to it in Q4 with a 3.948 that was a clear two-hundredths better than the next car, you knew they were back.

They romped through the first two rounds, but an error in setting the timing in the pits before the final was almost their undoing.

"We had a brain fart setting the mags, and they were x from being perfect; and we wanted to go one way, and they accidentally went the other way. When we fired it up in the finals, I could see on my dad's face that something was wrong. I was like, 'I better chop the Tree, because that's our only hope.' And I got a hold of it pretty good, and it was enough to win. I think it had three or four cylinders out downtrack because that thing was doing anything but going straight. 

“I said this morning, 'If my wins are all ugly, but that blinking [win] light is on, I don't care as long as we're better than everybody else in the other lanes,' and that's the name of this drag race. You don't have to be perfect all the time. You just got to be better than everyone else.”

Prock was also one of the first to greet Top Fuel winner Tony Stewart at the top end, a serendipitous meeting as it was Stewart who, years ago, allowed Austin and Thomas to work on their go-kart in his shop in Indy.

“He gave me an opportunity when I was, you know, a lot younger than I am now, and I always had a gut feeling that when Tony won his first Top Fuel race, we were going to double up with him,” he said. “So, it was kind of cool to see that come true.”

Spencer Hyde is for real

If you toss out the first two races of the season — where he and the Jim Head-owned team failed to qualify at the Amalie Motor Oil NHRA Gatornationals and NHRA Arizona Nationals — Spencer Hyde looks like the runaway early leader in the NHRA Rookie of the Year chase. Heck, he’s that even if you do count those DNQs.

Hyde and Head qualified for the first time at the Lucas Oil NHRA  Winternationals and impressively went to the semifinals, then won the Mission #2Fast2Tasty NHRA Challenge on Saturday in Las Vegas. Not bad for a guy with less than two dozen runs under his belt.

“Obviously, we had a little rough start to the season — didn't qualify in Gainesville, didn't qualify in Phoenix — but we're putting that behind us. Great outing in Pomona to the semifinals, and obviously here with this win,” he said. “I'm getting more comfortable in the car, getting some good, clean runs in.”

Although Hyde has a lot of experience in fast cars, the Funny Car is a unique beast.

“It really relates to nothing I’ve driven,” he said. “I've got 1,000 or so runs in a Pro Modified car, and I've got 18 or 20 runs in a Top Fuel car. There's some similarities to a Top Fuel car, but really it's only the acceleration. Everything else is different. These things move around. They're wild. You steer the Top Fuel car, just kind of have to correct it a little bit, but this thing, you really have to move around. It’s been a good learning experience.”

Hyde was unfazed by both his first final round and his first blower explosion, which came on his winning run.

“I tried to just think of it as qualifying," he said. "Even though I knew it was a race, I just went up there to think of it as another qualifying run. Same thing I do first round any race: Just try to not let race day get in your head and go up there and do your thing. 

“I have been kind of waiting for it to blow up, and there it was," he shared. "It wasn't too bad. It really just popped the blower off. There was no big fireball or anything, so all good. The first thing I asked when the guys lifted the body? ‘So, did we win?’ "

There’s a Funny Car racer for you.

Nothing lasts forever

Six-time Pro Stock world champ Erica Enders’ long run of successful qualifying efforts ended this week, a streak of 158 races dating back to the fall Charlotte event in 2016. 

Enders has yet ot win a round this year, and the Elite Motorsports team has gone to great lengths in testing to chase their problems and even put Enders back into her reliable 2017 car, but she missed the field by one spot and just .003-second.

“We changed everything but putting the back tires on the front — everything electrical, the entire fuel system,” she said. “From front to back, we have swapped everything on this car. I'm in my old girl from seven years ago, so we've won a lot of championships together. We're just fighting through some mess right now, and it's super freaking frustrating. We're gonna keep our heads held high; we’ve accomplished a lot out here, but this sucks.”

True to form, the Elite team wasted no time heading home to improve, leaving the track not long after qualifying ended.

Three-time Funny Car world champ Ron Capps almost joined Enders on the DNQ list, needing until Q4 to make the field. Interestingly, Capps’ last DNQ also was in 2016, but at this race, a span of 189 events.