Nitro Shots

While Air Force is still in NASCAR, the other military branches left the sport. The sponsorships were viewed as a poor use of taxpayer-backed advertising and recruitment dollars. Critics argued that the number of new recruits gained from the trackside activations couldn’t be proven, and thus they were not sound …

Which would you rather see: a team and driver hit on a good combination and put together a brilliant season, dominating the competition, or would you prefer to see a mixed field, with no one team really standing out while a number of different drivers score wins? If you prefer …

If you pay attention, you’ll notice that the name “Scott” is always on the side of the Kalitta Motorsports DHL Funny Car currently driven by J.R. Todd. It’s there because it was once the car driven by Scott Kalitta, son of team founder Connie Kalitta. It was 10 years ago …

Cruz Pedregon was the latest victim this past weekend, but body-shredding explosions have been a consistent problem in Funny Car this season. John Force started the season with three-consecutive blown up racecars, losing consciousness on at least one of those occasions. Why so many catastrophic failures this season? Are there …

This week the NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series returns to some new old territory, visiting Virginia Motorsports Park near Richmond for the first time since 2009 for a national event. That makes this trip an interesting one, as the more experienced drivers on the circuit have been to the …

You probably take some of what they do for granted — that is if you even know the extent of what they do. The NHRA Safety Safari is known as one of the best trackside safety teams in all of motorsports. You know about their rescue work, coming to the …

First things first, since the Menards NHRA Heartland Nationals from Topeka were interrupted by rain on Sunday, we did not get to give you the traditional recap in our Pace Laps column this week, so we’ll take care of that here. By the time the action wrapped up on Monday, …

Here we are, seven races down, 17 to go. That’s just over one-quarter of the way through the 2018 season. Teams hit on good combinations at any point in the year, and typically, because of the Countdown, the ones that do it in the final quarter end up with a …

On a weekend the NHRA decided to honor female competitors, it’s extremely fitting that female drivers swept the Nitro categories, with Leah Pritchett taking the Top Fuel win and Courtney Force tops in Funny Car. It served to drive home a point the NHRA was trying to make about not …

Courtney Force got her 2018 season off to a strong start, winning the second race out in Phoenix. It also marked her first win with sponsor Advance Auto Parts on board, an occasion the John Force Racing team marked by presenting some of Advance’s executives with the Wally trophies from …