The latest update as of November 2, 2020

Here's a little teaser of just some of the photos we've got from Bob Snyder. There's more than 600 from Sunday's eliminations, so it's going to take a while to go through them and get the best shots posted. Stay tuned! These are the pics from the Funny Car and Top Fuel finals.

FUNNY CAR Final

On the left side, burning out in preparation for the final, is Ron Capps, while on the right side we've got Matt Hagan

(LEFT) Launching from the left side is Matt Hagan enroute to a winning 3.914 - 326.40 pass, putting a great exclamation mark on his championship season. On the right side, Ron Capps left hard, but ran into trouble before half track, slowing to a losing 4.463 - 173.70 in the losing effort.

(RIGHT) One final shot of Hagan with the flames up putting down some serious power.

TOP FUEL Final

(LEFT) (RIGHT)

(LEFT) (RIGHT)

Monday morning musings from Northern Thunder

It took a bit of digging, but I was finally able to find the NHRA announcement about the revised points earning procedures for the 2020 season. After operating for the past few weeks under the (mistaken, unfortunately) assumption that racers could claim points from all six of the national events that had Top Alcohol on their schedule, I found that I was "misinformed". By myself. I had to look back to a posting on NHRA's website from May 19. It reads as follows:

Top Alcohol Dragster and Funny Car

Alcohol National Championship: best 2 of 5 regional and best 5 of 7 national events
Alcohol Regional Championship: best 4 of 5 regional events. No home regional event minimum requirement

I remembered the two of five regional, but forgot about the 5 of 7 national rule, so while I assumed Shawn Cowie held an advantage over Megan Meyer going into the Dodge NHRA Finals, he needed to win the event, or at least reach the final round to have a chance to take the championship. When Cowie dropped a close and ultimnately heartbreaking decision to long time arch-rival Joey Severance in the semi-finals, his fate was sealed. The only way he could hope to win the big trophy was for Severance to take out Meyer in the final round.... and win the final regional event of the season at the very same Las Vegas track this coming weekend.

Cowie's Mundie's Towing team did all they could to help Severance get ready for the final as they loaned their engine to the J & A Services team and pitched in with a bunch of the other Top Alky racers to effect the swap and fully prep the car for the battle with Meyer. Joey did his job on the starting line, putting a major (.015 to .176) holeshot on Megan, but the car went silent before half track and coasted to the runner-up position.

At this point, the Cowie team must be absolutely sick of the sight of the # 2 on the side of the rear wing, but as they've battled on over the years, they can only look forward to another championship chase in 2021.

Here's the (not quite) final points standings for Top Alcohol Dragster and Funny Car. There's still one more regional event to run and a number of racers have not maxed out their regional points - remember - best two of five results - but the championships have been decided and there will be a very anti-ciimactic feeling to the last NHRA event of the 2020 season.