The latest update as of November 14, 2022

Only 115 Days until the 2023 NHRA season opener.... in Gainesville

The smoke has cleared from the final event of the 2022 NHRA Camping World Drag Racing Series event at Pomona's historic Auto Club Raceway, soon to be known as the In-N-Out Burger Pomona Raceway. But that's for next year, and this season finished with some great racing at the Auto Club NHRA Finals, and one championship that went down to the semifinal round: Funny Car, where Ron Capps took his second consecutive World Championship by defeating Bob Tasca III in the third round of eliminations.

He wasn't declared the champion until the completion of the final round, as he went into that race against event winner Cruz Pedregon with a three point lead over Robert Hight and could have lost the points lead with a boundary infraction, ie. crossing the centerline in the final. There was always a possibility that he would have simply staged and idled down the track to be sure of grabbing the championship trophy, but he raced all-out against Pedregon, leaving first by .001 second, and putting down his quickest e.t. of the day, 3.850 - 333.16 to just fall short of Pedregon's winning 3.839 - 335.65 effort.

The Top Fuel battle ended very quickly as the only challengers with a chance of taking the points lead from the newly crowned (for the second time) world champion, Brittany Force, all fell in the opening round of eliminations. After Force easily dispatched Steve Chrisman, first to fall by the wayside was Mike Salinas, who smoked the tires, then Steve Torrence who smoke the tires, pedalled and lost to Ron August Jr. Last to drop out of the chase was Justin Ashley, who just got outrun by eventual event winner Antron Brown. And that was it for the drama in the Top Fuel ranks.

Much more coming on the event tomorrow, hopefully with some photos to go with all the verbiage. As always.... stay tuned!