Latest news with #Winternationals
Yahoo
30-03-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
This year's NHRA Winternationals could be ‘fastest ever'
Racers and fans alike are out in full force at the Pomona Dragstrip this weekend for the Lucas Oil NHRA Winternationals motorsports competition. The competition consists of ten categories, including top fuel dragster, pro stock and fuel funny car races. Advertisement Cooler weather in the area for Sunday's races may make this year's Winternationals the fastest in the competition's 65-year history, according to lead broadcaster Brian Lohnes. Winning $515 million Powerball ticket sold in Southern California 'You have to think of it kind of like a marathon…if you want to run a marathon, you don't want it to be 90-degree weather – you want it to be cloudy and cool,' Lohnes told KTLA 5's Erin Myers. 'That's exactly what we're going to have…the cooler it is, the faster the cars go, and for 65 years we've run the Winternationals here, this could be the fastest one we've ever had.' More information on the competition, including a full schedule of events for Sunday, can be found here. Advertisement Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. For the latest news, weather, sports, and streaming video, head to KTLA.
Yahoo
29-03-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Mudflaps or Canards: The NHRA Aero Experiment Everyone is Watching
When a drag racer talks about 'mudflaps,' don't envision the big, wide rubber strips with the slinky silhouettes behind the tires on semi haulers that keep mud, rocks, and debris from pocking car windshields on the Interstate highways. What they're referring to is the canards, or 'air deflectors,' in front of the giant rear Goodyear slicks on an NHRA Top Fuel dragster. They're the hottest tech topic on the NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series; these additions are designed not for the advertising billboards they have become but for decreasing downforce, and reducing rear-wheel loads, all without causing a significant impact on other areas of the race car. The NHRA is studying it all and has allowed crew chiefs to experiment with the panels for the next four races. The experiment started with last weekend's Arizona Nationals at Firebird Motorsports Park in the Phoenix suburb of Chandler. Until the end of April, 'mudflaps' on Top Fuel dragsters will be optional. After the Arizona Nationals, the flaps are allowed at this weekend's Winternationals at Pomona, Calif., and the two four-wide events, at Charlotte and Las Vegas – and the NHRA Technical Department will be evaluating their effectiveness. The Tech Department will reassess the mud flap after the trial period, working with Top Fuel teams to gather as much information as possible. If a team does not use mud flaps, the side of the Top Fuel body must be covered with a replacement body panel, with no bare chassis exposed. Brian Corradi, current champion Antron Brown's crew chief, said, 'We don't need to have any tires failing. And they think that maybe you could take some downforce off the car by taking the mudflaps off, because we have nowhere else to go on the wing unless we change the wing design. So that's the plan.' Brittany Force was one of the first to make a pass without the familiar flaps, at last week's Arizona Nationals, at Phoenix, and she clocked a 3.768-second, 329.10-mph performance. But that was right in her wheelhouse. Neither she nor Dave Grubnic, her crew chief, put their stock in either of the car's configurations. Grubnic said, 'One run doesn't prove anything. We've been given the opportunity to explore [whether to use the mudflaps]. We've got to look at driveshafts. We've got to look at a lot of things. The car pretty much ran its number. It doesn't suggest the mudflaps did anything. It's way too early. Let's see what happens.' Force's co-crew chief, John Collins, joined the debate about what to call them – mudflaps? Canards? – and his suggestion was to 'call them useless.' Force has made runs both with and without mudflaps, and she said, 'There is a lot of theories and speculation around it. We're going to take all these four races to see what we could do, if it affects me as a driver, what it does to our car performance-wise. I'm excited to see.' Public-address announcer Jason Galvin said Saturday, 'The one thing that we do know, just from talking to our friends at Goodyear last weekend, when these race teams took those air deflectors off the car, they were seeing significantly cooler temperatures on the tires on the top end compared to the cars that were still running them.' Conditions were hot at Phoenix and are cool at Pomona, providing a wide array of data. Drag-racing legend Don 'The Snake' Prudhomme ushered in the mudflaps in 1990, with technical expertise of General Motors/Pontiac engineers, in an effort actually to increase downforce on the dragsters – the opposite of what the purpose of them is today. 'One of the engineers put aluminum flaps out on the side of the car, and that changed everything,' he said. That gave us downforce and everything we needed. And that's how they got born. Now they're [made of] carbon fiber.'
Yahoo
26-03-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Justin Ashley, John Force Racing Funny Cars on Brink of Milestones at Pomona
Justin Ashley is trying to become only the second driver in the Pomona Winternationals' 65-year history to win in four straight years. Don 'The Snake' Prudhomme won three straight events in the traditional season-opener in the Funny Car class from 1975-78. Ashley and teammate Austin Prock are also vying for the title of who gets John Force Racing its 300th victory in Funny Cars. Justin Ashley, who was poised to capture his first Top Fuel crown but finished third in the standings on the final day of the 2024 season at In-N-Out Burger Pomona Dragstrip, returns this Friday to Pomona, Calif., not with regrets but an opportunity to make NHRA drag-racing history. The driver of the SCAG Power Equipment Dragster has a chance at the Lucas Oil Winternationals to become only the second driver in the event's 65-year history to win in four straight years. Ashley could match Don 'The Snake' Prudhomme, who dominated in the traditional season-opener in the Funny Car class from 1975-78. The Winternationals, settling into its new-normal Race No. 3 slot on the 20-event calendar, has seen Ashley advance to four final rounds in a row. Right now, he, Top Fuel rival Doug Kalitta, and Pro Stock's Greg Anderson have won the Winternationals three consecutive times. 'The NHRA Winternationals are always prestigious, but this one certainly has more juice to it, given the circumstances,' Ashley said. 'I am incredibly proud of our SCAG Racing team for earning the right to be in this position. They deserve it. We know what needs to be done. Now it's 'go' time.' Eight Top Fuel racers also will race Friday in the rain-postponed Right Trailers All-Star Callout from the season-starting Gatornationals earlier this month. He'll face home-area heroine Brittany Force in the first round of the bonus race. 'We have the opportunity to do something very special in Pomona,' Ashley said. The John Force Racing Funny Car duo of Jack Beckman and Austin Prock are competing against more than the rest of the Funny Car field. They're contending with each other about who will score the organization's 300th Funny Car victory. The bigger buzz in the Funny Car pits, though, is the comeback of three-time champion Ron Capps from a serious engine explosion that sent him into the opposite-lane wall in sideswiping fashion. 'We had a great race car, won the Mission #2Fast2Tasty Challenge [and $10,000 bonus prize] on Saturday, qualified well, and unfortunately, had an accident on Sunday during eliminations. That car that we had been running, which was a brand-new car that we started running toward the end of last year, is pretty much in the scrapyard now,' Capps said. The single-car team owner-driver's crew had to dash back from Phoenix to the Brownsburg, Ind., shop to prepare back-up cars before heading back across the country to California. 'One of the many great things about our team is that we're very well prepared. Had we won that round [at Phoenix] and had to get back up for second round with the quick turnaround for live TV, we had a backup car that was ready to go. They're now preparing a third car, so it's been busy with three West Coast races, including this back-to-back one after Phoenix,' Capps said. 'We're hoping to have a great ending to a busy and hectic week after destroying one car.'He said, 'What was really cool was the number of calls and notes and messages that we received from our partners and sponsors who were wanting to help beyond what they already do to support our team. An incident like this happens, and as a single-car team, it's not easy. But to get the amount of support we got during the week with people offering to help, you can't explain how cool that is. We've got a great team, a great back up car, and we're going to what I consider to be a home track.'
