09-03-2025
NHRA Season Gets Off to Rough Start at Gainesville
This weekend's NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series season started as a dumpster fire.
The NHRA completed just six first-round Top Fuel matches of Sunday's season-opening Amalie Oil Gatornationals at Gainesville Raceway before the Florida skies opened again in a rain shower like the one that shut down Saturday's racing altogether.
But the early action was filled with ugly drama that began with four straight pedalfests – tire-smoking passes that cause drivers to get on and off the throttle to try to regain some traction. Each successive pair of cars tore up more and more of the prepared racing surface.
Finally, Brian Corradi, Antron Brown's crew chief, spoke up.
Taking aim at the NHRA, which owns Gainesville Raceway and controls every national event regardless of who owns the facility, a perturbed Corradi said, 'This is my personal thought on this whole thing: This could have been avoided by starting on this thing and dragging it earlier and putting down some rubber, because they know how to do it. I don't know what you want to call it, but I have a name for it.'
The NHRA faced a dilemma. And it chose to move up the starting time an hour and half to avoid predicted early-afternoon storms. In doing so, it risked the inability to present the ideal racing surface.
Doug Kalitta and Ida Zetterström faced off in the fifth pair, and Zetterström spun the tires right after the launch, so the problem persisted.
And then in another such match, Dan Mercier pulled away from 2023 Gatornationals winner Tripp Tatum before Tatum crashed behind him.
Tatum's dragster hit the left wall, ruining his left rear tire, then shot across the track and smashed into the opposite wall nose-first. It spun laterally back across the lanes, flames leaping from the engine, before coming to rest with the motor finally shutting off. It was a costly blow to Tatum's part-time operation.
Ironically, Mercier had thought Friday evening that he likely would miss the race following an incident of his own that shredded his left rear tire and damaged the frame and body of his dragster without hitting the wall. His crew from Quebec worked through Saturday and Saturday night with the NHRA Technical Committee and volunteers from other teams to repair the car, and he was able to use his No. 15 qualifying position to upset No. 2 starter Tatum.
Mercier, like Tatum, runs a limited schedule but proved, especially last season, that he can topple the sport's elite.
It's unclear how much the racing surface condition contributed to Tatum's accident, but NHRA officials tried to improve the situation. While they were doing that, the rain blew in and interrupted the racing for nearly four hours.
Just when the track drying was nearly complete and drivers had returned to the staging lanes, the power went out throughout the facility as another storm cell moved closer. Photographers were stranded in the tower elevator. The crowd, unaware of the power outage and with the public-address system inoperable, began to scream and demand answers for why no activity was happening.
To top it all, the FOX TV drone crashed into the top of the tower, smashed to the ground three stories below, and shattered.
Friday qualifying wasn't always pretty, either. Besides Mercier's mess, reigning Funny Car champion Austin Prock got a rude welcome back to the dragstrip. The rear-end gear on the John Force Racing driver's Cornwell Tools Chevy Camaro broke and dumped fluid on the track, resulting in a long clean-up delay.
Also in the Funny Car class, Bobby Bode lost his brakes at the end of his run. And because Paul Lee's car and parachutes had moved into Bode's lane to make the turn-out off the track and because the NHRA flagger also was standing in Bode's lane, Bode drove to Lee's inside. The drivers worked out the small flap, but the incident sparked some controversy and excitement.
By Sunday, the Top Fuel class' Right Trailers All-Star Callout bonus race already had been rescheduled to run during the March 27-30 Winternationals at Pomona, Calif. The NHRA announced the Congruity NHRA Pro Mod Drag Racing Series eliminations have been moved to the national event May 15-18 at Joliet, Ill.
The NHRA brought in generators, and normalcy seemed to be restored finally. And Steve Torrence gave the sizeable and steadfast crowd a splendid performance with a winning 335.15-mph pass against Doug Foley. And Jasmine Salinas upset quicker-qualified Shawn Reed. So after a 9:30 a.m. start, the first round of Top Fuel eliminations only wrapped up just after 2 p.m.
