New Faces And New Races Lead The NHRA Into 2012

by Motor Sports Unplugged | January 2, 2012 at 07:19 am

183 views | 0 Recommendations | 0 comments

With a blink of an eye and a flick of the calendar, it’s 2012.

Most NHRA fans may wonder how anything can top its 60th anniversary season with three of the four top divisions being separated by mere points going into the last race.

So much was at stake in those last races. The mission was completed by Del Worsham, Matt Hagan, Jason Line and Eddie Krawiec, who tooks home their prospective NHRA Full Throttle Championships.

Now, in 2012, who will rise to the occasion? Will it be new names taking over the headlines or will familiar regulars be the norm this year?

Let’s review at the end of 2011. In Top Fuel, Shawn Langdon and Khalid alBalooshi were named to Al-Anabi Racing’s former rides of Worsham and Larry Dixon.

That’s a very formidable tandem and after recent testing in Bradenton, Fla., it appears it hasn’t missed a step.

The same goes for the Don Schumacher Racing Top Fuel armada of Spencer Massey, Antron Brown, and Tony Schumacher. You can expect them to be a threat every race.

I’m also looking forward to seeing how the Morgan Lucas Racing team comes out in the first race and hope they have a repeat Pomona performance. We should know who will be in the second MLR team car very soon.

Doug Herbert could be announcing a sponsor within weeks and could rejoin the tour as regular in 2012.

Now looking at Funny Car, the new names in the Fuel Coupe class belong to Alexis DeJoria and the soon to be announcement from Courtney Force and John Force Racing. These two should have a great year ahead of them.

DeJoria has the Kalitta Racing team with Tequila Patron backing with Worsham as her crew chief.

Courtney Force has the backing of John Force Racing and the surrounding cast of sponsors, Castrol, Ford, Auto Club, BrandSource and Mac Tools. They’ve been there for team drivers in Mike Neff, Robert Hight and of course, her 15-time champion dad, John. By the way, Force will start 2012 just four rounds shy (1,096) of a career record 1,100 round wins. His nearest competitor in that category is Pro Stock’s Warren Johnson with 869 round wins.

Hagan, Jack Beckman, Ron Capps, and Johnny Gray head up the Don Schumacher stable of horsepower. Just as potent as they were in 2011, just wait until this bunch unleashes their true potential and very few teams will be able to keep up.

Pedregon Racing will be strong in the Funny Car division and you just can’t keep it down. This year they have enlisted the talents of tuner Lee Beard and we should see some positive things coming out of that camp in the near future.

Pro Stock will be seeing the familiar yellow Jeg’s Mail Order logo around in 2012 with four-time champion of the class Jeg Coughlin coming back, this time in a Mopar with Allen Johnson in a collaboration of horsepower for the new team based in Mooresville, N.C.

His main competition in the Factory Hot Rod division will come from defending Full Throttle Pro Stock champions KB Racing and its drivers, Greg Anderson and Line. Second place finisher Mike Edwards was coming on strong at the end of the season and will again surmount another title effort in 2012 driving his Pontiac GXP.

The Dodge contingent will have Allen Johnson, Vincent Nobile along with Coughlin. The Johnson-produced power had a lone win at Englishtown, N.J. with runnerups at Denver, Phoenix and Las Vegas. Nobile had three wins in five final round appearances in his Nick Mitsos-owned Mountain View Tire Dodge Avenger.

The domination in the recent years of Pro Stock Motorcycle category shows Harley-Davidson looks like in 2012, things should remain the same. The Suzuki Team of Hector Arana and Hector Arana, Jr., really juggled the standings last year and it could happen again, but have to show more consistency. Arana, Jr. came on hard and strong in his Countdown charge, but the H-D team of Krawiec prevailed.

Looking at the upcoming NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing schedule, the season starts and ends at Pomona and Phoenix is back in its normal position as the second race of the year as the Arizona Nationals. The addition of St. Louis’ Gateway Motorsports Park Midwest Nationals replaces the Phoenix race in the Full Throttle Countdown, now making the schedule 23 events.

The Western Swing will continue its three-week nonstop drag racing schedule starting at Bandimere Raceway in Denver on July 22, going through Infineon Raceway’s Sonoma Valley on July 29 and ending with Northwest Nationals in Seattle on Aug. 5.

The first four races of the Countdown to One will be back-to-back starting again with Charlotte’s zMax Dragway on Sept. 16, followed by Dallas’ Texas Motorplex on Sept. 23. Gateway hosts the midway race of six on Sept. 30 and the fourth on the schedule is Reading, Pa. Uni-Select Auto Plus Nationals at Maple Grove Raceway on Oct. 7. Then the series takes a well-earned two-week break from the hectic schedule, and then finishes starting in Las Vegas on Oct. 28, and winds down at the Auto Club of Southern California NHRA Finals on Nov. 11.

http://motorsportsunplugged.com/NHRA/?p=2281