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In a few weeks, we’ll be celebrating an incredible milestone in the history of our sport, the 1,000th Top Fuel race, which will take place during the NHRA 4-Wide Nationals in Charlotte in late April.

It will be a celebration of the class’ history and, incredibly, the winners of all of its milestone victories — Don Garlits (1st), Kelly Brown (100th), Darrell Gwynn (200th), Doug Herbert (300th), Cory McClenathan (400th), Doug Kalitta (500th), Brandon Bernstein (600th), Spencer Massey (700th), Antron Brown (800th), and Brittany Force 900th) — will be there, with a number of them in competition.

Although drag racers had been burning nitro since the 1950s, Top Fuel didn’t become an official NHRA eliminator until the 1963 NHRA Winternationals, shortly after the end of the so-called “nitro ban,” which lasted from early 1957 through early 1963. (Drag racing historian Bret Kepner wrote perhaps the definitive article about the Nitro Ban, which you can find .)

Top Fuel replaced Top Eliminator, which had been the highest honor at the Nationals since Great Bend, Kan., in 1955, where Cavin Rice (above) was our first overall winner. Top Eliminator, of course, was a lopsided runoff among all the other class winners, from dragsters to door cars, and were almost always won by the dragsters, so a special dragster eliminator made sense.

Garlits won that first event in his winged Swamp Rat V at Pomona Raceway, and although the 1963 Nationals in Indy did not include Top Fuel, the class resumed at the 1964 Winternationals and has been at the top of the food chain since then.

Garlits won two of the first three events — the 1963 and 1964 Nationals, sandwiched around Jack Williams’ win at the ’64 Winternationals — and Don Prudhomme won two of the next three: the 1965 Winternationals and ’65 Nationals, interrupted only by Maynard Rupp’s win at the 1965 Springnationals. Prudhomme’s third win, at the 1967 Springnationals, briefly made him the class’ top winner, and he and Garlits went back and forth until Garlits scored his sixth career win at the 1971 Winternationals in his revolutionary rear-engined Swamp Rat 14. Prudhomme, who had five Top Fuel wins at the time, of course switched to and would dominate Funny Car through the 1970s, and wouldn’t win in Top Fuel again until 1991.

Garlits was Top Fuel’s winningest driver for years afterward, winning 21 times between 1963 and 1979, when he began running only a few NHRA events a year until 1985. How dominating was Garlits over those two decades? His 21 wins were nearly triple that of the next best driver, Kelly Brown, who had just eight. That’s how dominant he was.

Garlits made his big comeback by winning the 1984 U.S. Nationals and scored his 35th and final Top Fuel win at the 1987 Winternationals. By that time, Gary Beck had moved into second place, but his 19 wins were little more than half of Garlits’ total, and Shirley Muldowney had 18, and neither would ever pass Garlits.

It wasn’t until the 1996 World Finals — nearly 10 years after “Big Daddy’s” final win — that Joe Amato finally supplanted him as the class’ winningest driver with his 36th victory.

Amato would win 52 Top Fuel titles – his last at the 2000 Reading event – before, like Garlits, detached retinas from high-speed decelerations finally stopped him. Amato maintained the title as the winningest Top Fuel driver for just eight years.

Tony Schumacher, who had just five Top Fuel wins when Amato won his 52nd, scored his 53rd in Charlotte in 2008 and never looked back and scored his 88th win last year.

Antron Brown, who has 65 Top Fuel wins, may someday surpass him, but among active drivers, it’s a long drop to Doug Kalitta’s and Steve Torrence's 55 wins, which rank fourth and fifth overall behind currently inactive Larry Dixon’s 62 wins.

As incredible as it sounds, even with 1,000 events, only four drivers — Garlits, Prudhomme, Amato, and Schumacher — could ever proclaim themselves as NHRA’s winningest Top Fuel driver.

With the conclusion of the 2025 Lucas Oil NHRA Winternationals, there have been 111 different winners over those 998 events, including 40 who only won once. Crazily enough, there have been just about the same number of drivers who have set low e.t. (110), top speed (114), and been No. 1 qualifiers (117), and although the leaders in those categories comprise mostly the same names, not everyone is included on all four lists. Thanks to drag racing statsmeister Bob Frey for sharing this data with me.

Anyway, Charlotte will be the 1,000th event where Top Fuel has been contested, so here’s a look at the results of some of the milestone Top Fuel events.

RACE 1: 1963 WINTERNATIONALS, POMONA

Winner: Don Garlits | Low e.t.: 8.11 (Garlits) | Top Speed: 188.66 mph (Norm Weekly)

Not only was it Don Garlits’ first Top Fuel win but the first win of “Big Daddy’s” career. The famed winged Swamp Rat V was built in the summer of 1962 but originally was going to be another gas dragster until Garlits got a challenge from Vance Hunt to his No. 1 spot on the Drag News 1320 list and took this car to Texas to race instead. It was light, and Garlits liked how it ran on fuel, but he found that at many strips, it overpowered the track. 

At the suggestion of Bruce Crower of Crower Cams fame, they added a fiberglass wing over the engine — modeled after an upside-down small-aircraft wing — when Garlits came to California. Garlits triumphed over a field that included Art Malone, Steve Porter, Ted Cyr, Lefty Mudersbach, Ron Rivero, Leland Kolb, Jack Reed, Don Yates, and Bill Alexander. 

Garlits ran as quick as 8.11 in time trials in Pomona, set the national record to 8.24, and defeated Malone in the final with an 8.26.

RACE 100: 1979 NHRA MILE-HIGH NATIONALS, DENVER

Winner: Kelly Brown | Low e.t.: 6.065 (Rob Bruins) | Top speed: 240.64 mph (Brown)

Kelly Brown, the 1978 Top Fuel champ, had a terrific 1979, winning four times, including the Silver Anniversary U.S. Nationals and, after opening the year with wins in Gainesville and Baton Rouge, La., drove his Bill Schultz-tuned, Arias-powered Over the Hill Gang dragster to the win in the high-altitude climes of Denver. (Crazily enough, four wins in the nine-event schedule were not enough to win him the championship again as it went to Rob Bruins, who famously won the championship that year without winning a national event.)

Brown qualified No. 1 in Denver’s eight-car field with a 6.085, just .003-second ahead of Bruins and .004 ahead of Garth Widdison. After a five-hour rain delay Sunday, the final rounds were run at 1:30 a.m. Brown had defeated local favorite Johnny Abbott and Dave Settles in the Blue Max entry, then took down tire-smoking Bruins in the final.

RACE 200: 1987 CHIEF AUTO PARTS NHRA NATIONALS, DALLAS

Winner: Darrell Gwynn | Low e.t.: 5.084 (Gwynn) | Top speed: 287.72 mph (Joe Amato)

In just his second full year in the class, Darrell Gwynn had a tremendous 1987 with four race wins and a third-place finish behind Dick LaHaie and Joe Amato. His fourth win of the year came in a dominating performance in Dallas. 

Gwynn qualified his Budweiser dragster, still sporting the small airplane-style front tires that were on the car when it originally had a streamliner nose on it, with a sizzling 5.13 and then rattled off times of 5.12, 5.16, and 5.09 to beat Earl Whiting, Frank Bradley, and Gary Ormsby, and, in the final, ran low e.t. and a new national record at 5.084 to win handily over homestate favorite Eddie Hill’s 5.25.

RACE 300: 1993 NHRA SPRINGNATIONALS, COLUMBUS

Winner: Doug Herbert | Low e.t.: 4.905 (Scott Kalitta) | Top speed: 298.90 mph (Herbert)

As it was for Garlits at Race No. 1, Doug Herbert’s Top Fuel win at Race No. 300 at National Trail Raceway was the first of his career, which encompassed 10 wins.

After qualifying No. 3 with a 4.925 behind Scott Kalitta’s 4.905 and Eddie Hill’s 4.918, Herbert beat Rance McDaniel, reigning Top Fuel champ Joe Amato, and Hill with a pair of 4.97s and a 5.00 to face off with Kenny Bernstein in a final-round battle between the sport’s first two 300-mph runners. Herbert had clocked his first 300 (301.60) at that year’s Winternationals, nearly a year after Bernstein broke the barrier with a 301.70 at the 1992 Gatornationals.

Herbert saved his best Sunday run for the final, where his 4.93 defeated the Bud King’s 5.04.

RACE 400: 1998 NHRA MILE-HIGH NATIONALS, DENVER

Winner: Cory McClenathan | Low e.t.: 4.852 (Mike Dunn) | Top speed: 299.50 mph (Dunn)

Cory McClenathan, who remains ninth on the all-time Top Fuel wins list nearly 15 years after his 34th and final win, scored his 21st Top Fuel at Bandimere Speedway, the place where he scored his first of four Top Alcohol Dragster wins in 1989.

Cory Mac qualified his Mike Green-tuned, Joe Gibbs-owned McDonald’s dragster on the pole with a 4.868, a number matched by Joe Amato but at a slower speed, then beat Vicky Fanning and Mike Dunn; a round earlier, Dunn had reset low e.t. and in beating Larry Dixon, almost ran the first mile-high 300-mph pass (299.50). McClenathan then took down reigning (and soon-to-be repeat) world champ Gary Scelzi in the semifinals.

McClenathan then took down a troubled Amato in the final, 4.92 to 5.24.

RACE NO. 500: 2002 O'REILLY AUTO PARTS 91���� FALLNATIONALS, DALLAS

Winner: Doug Kalitta | Low e.t.: 4.550 (Andrew Cowin) | Top speed: 326.67 mph (Tony Schumacher)

Doug Kalitta, who has more career Top Fuel starts than anyone in the sport (610 and counting), was in just his fourth year in the class when he won at Texas Motorplex in his familiar Mac Tools dragster, just the 11th win of his still-young career.

Kalitta qualified midpack, well behind surprise polesitter Andrew Cowin in Darrell Gwynn’s New York Yankees entry, whom he beat in round two after dispatching Clay Millican in the opening frame. Kalitta then took down reigning Top Fuel champ Kenny Bernstein in the semifinals. Oddly enough, Herbert (win No. 300) and Cory McClenathan (win No. 400) also both had to beat a reigning champ to win the event.

In the final, Kalitta denied Cory Mac the rare chance to win two milestone events, beating him, 4.58 to a troubled 6.56.

RACE 600: 2007 SUMMIT RACING EQUIPMENT NHRA SOUTHERN NATIONALS, ATLANTA

Winner: Brandon Bernstein | Low e.t.: 4.506 (Rod Fuller) | Top speed: 329.42 mph (Bernstein)

Ten years after his famous father Kenny won the NHRA Southern Nationals for the fourth and final time (twice in Top Fuel), Brandon Bernstein joined him as an Atlanta winner in the Tim Richards-tuned Budweiser King dragster.

Brandon was in his fifth year in the class and had won at least two events every year (including three in his truncated-by-crash 2003 season), but 2007 was his best campaign with five wins.

Like 500th race winner Doug Kalitta, Bernstein qualified just eighth in the field, but that was only two hundredths behind “Hot Rod” Fuller in the pre-Antron Brown David Powers Matco rail. Bernstein took down “Aussie Dave” Grubnic in Connie Kalitta’s Zantrex-3 entry and advanced on Doug Kalitta’s rare foul in round two. After ending longshot Doug Foley’s bid for a first win in the semifinals, Bernstein stopped Doug Herbert from claiming the 600th win as he did the 300th on a 4.66 to 4.71 count.

RACE 700: 2011 MOPAR MILE-HIGH NHRA NATIONALS, DENVER

Winner: Spencer Massey | Low e.t.: 3.933 (Del Worsham) | Top speed: 314.53 mph (Worsham)

After racing in A/Fuel for Gene Snow and in Top Fuel for Don Prudhomme in the 2000s, Spencer Massey was hired by yet another drag racing legend, Don Schumacher, for the 2011 season in the Fram dragster.

Massey qualified fourth in Denver, which makes this milestone list for the third time. Massey crowned Brandon Bernstein in round one, then got by red-lighting Shawn Langdon, who would win the championship in 2013, in round two and another 2012 world champ, Antron Brown, in the semifinals.

In the final, Massey left on and outran Tony Schumacher to collect the victory, 4.15 to 4.25.

RACE 800: 2015 NHRA CAROLINA NATIONALS, CHARLOTTE

Winner: Antron Brown | Low e.t.: 3.758 (Clay Millican) | Top speed: 322.11 mph (Doug Kalitta)

After winning the 2012 world championship, Antron Brown used this event, the first of the Countdown to the Championship playoff events that year, as a springboard to his second title, as he’d also win the next two playoff races that year, in St. Louis and Reading.

A.B. qualified just sixth, a solid tenth behind polesitter Clay Millican, but ripped off a quartet of low- to mid-3.8-second runs on Sunday, besting Terry McMillen, a broken Steve Torrence, and Don Schumacher Racing teammate Tony Schumacher in the first three rounds.

In the final, Brown defeated J.R. Todd, who was in his second-to-last season in Top Fuel in Connie Kalitta’s Red Line Oil entry.

RACE 900: 2019 FALL DODGE NHRA NATIONALS, LAS VEGAS 

Winner: Brittany Force | Low e.t.: 3.652 (Force) | Top speed: 338.17 mph (Force) 

Brittany Force has 17 career wins, and nearly a quarter of them (four) have come in Las Vegas, including three at the fall event that she win in 2019.    

Although she qualified her David Grubnic-tuned Advance Auto Parts dragster No. 2 at 3.659, five-thousandths behind Leah Pruett, race day belonged to Force. She took down Pat Dakin, teammate Austin Prock, and then the father-son duo of Billy and Steve Torrence in the final two frames, the latter coming on a 3.652 that took low e.t. away from Pritchett by just a few thousandths.

Who will win race No. 1000? Will we finally have a racer that wins two of them? Kalitta, Brown, and Force will all be there, and Massey will likely be driving Krista Baldwin’s car at the event.

It’s been an amazing history of our sport’s most recognizable and high-profile class, and kind of stunning when you think about 1,000 races. We’ve come a long way since 1963 …

Phil Burgess can be reached at pburgess@nhra.com

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