5 Biggest Offseason Stories Heading Into 2025 NHRA Season

Yahoo

28-01-2025

While it's been a relatively quiet NHRA offseason with few driver changes, there's plenty of intriguing storylines to ponder going into the 2025 season. Here's five that caught our attention:West Texas businessman Chad Green marks his fifth Funny Car season by adding a Funny Car to his team, one that his son, Hunter Green, will share with established Blake Alexander.
Alexander, 36, will drive for 13-14 races, and the 29-year-old Green will start his pro career with five. For Alexander, it's a boost to his visibility and a chance to build on his up-trending 2024 season that resulted in a career-best sixth-place finish, a victory, and a 22-17 record. That was his most productive season since 2018, when he won two of his three finals and was 23-9 on race day.
For Green, whose only on-track experience has been in a sportsman-level Top Alcohol Dragster, it's an opportunity to give a younger face to the sport.
Canadian multi-class veteran Spencer Hyde, 33, will succeed Alexander at Jim Head Racing.At least to start the season, eight-time champion and 88-time race winner Tony Schumacher will be missing from the entry list because of finances. JCM Racing team owner Joe Maynard will move forward with an all-female lineup of full-time Funny Car driver Alexis DeJoria and part-time Top Fuel racer Ida Zetterström.
Schumacher's absence, particularly in the wake of legend John Force's traumatic brain injury diagnosis, is a disappointment and squandered chance for the charismatic Schumacher to rise to the role of the NHRA's most dynamic ambassador.As late as two weeks before the Feb. 6-8 non-NHRA-sanctioned PRO Superstar Shootout at Bradenton, Fla., neither Steve Torrence nor father Billy Torrence is listed as an entrant. And that would be an excellent tune-up for the Mission Foods Drag Racing Series' March 7-9 opener.
Billy Torrence's crew chief, Jason McMcCulloch, already has moved over to Josh Hart's Top Fuel team to share tuning duties with Ron Douglas, signaling at least one or possibly both teams might not return. Just a couple of years ago, Steve Torrence and Tony Schumacher were mock-bragging about being the sheriff in town.
If both have ridden away, who's going to run Dodge City?The NHRA schedule already had back-to-back four-wide spectacles, one at Las Vegas, the other at Charlotte. And the consensus was that drivers were relieved to return to the traditional two-lane format. But the sanctioning body, apparently missing the clues, decided they all needed one more thrown into an already stressful six-race stretch that determines the champions.
So, a four-wide event in Charlotte in September is now part of the Countdown.
President Glen Cromwell said, 'Because drag racing is a straight-line sport, we challenge them with all-concrete tracks, others that are a mix of surfaces, different elevations, different weather, and now, in the Countdown, a different format in four-wide.'
But to Cromwell's credit, he said, 'Everything we do is to try to move the sport forward, and this is one of them. And if it doesn't work and we don't see a boost, then we'll look at changing things.'The Peach State Showcase of Speed, scheduled for Oct. 24-25 at Valdosta, Ga. – two weeks after the Dallas event and one week before the second Las Vegas race, in the Countdown – was another peculiar Countdown addition.
NHRA boss Glen Cromwell said this national-event-mimicking was a great tool for promoting the 2026 NHRA Gatornationals five months down the road. The facility is lovely, the management is strong, and the drag-racing crowds pack the place for other types of events. But it's distracting from the Countdown.
Maybe the sanctioning body should keep the Showcase of Speed and drop the Countdown. Or maybe the NHRA should trim its season and host a showcase day with postseason exhibitions nationwide at selected tracks to raise awareness of the sport, rather than hop back and forth from Texas east to Georgia back west to Las Vegas and Southern California to end the season.