NHRA drag racing: from Pomona in 1953 to the Countdown.

Where the NHRA came from

Britannica says drag racing began in the 1930s in the Southern California desert, on quarter-mile strips, and spread quickly after World War II. The NHRA's own history page says Wally Parks, then editor of Hot Rod magazine, founded the association in 1951 and became its first president. Its first official race was held in April 1953 at the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds in Pomona, and the NHRA marks 2026 as its 75th anniversary season.

Wikipedia (secondary) adds that the founding was in May 1951, that the aim was to promote safety and sportsmanship and to separate organised hot rodding from reckless street racing, and that the NHRA has offices in San Dimas, California, and Brownsburg, Indiana. Those details were not stated on the NHRA pages checked. Wikipedia also says the first NHRA Nationals were held in 1955 at Great Bend, Kansas, and that the U.S. Nationals are now run at Lucas Oil Raceway in Brownsburg.

The sport spread well beyond the US. Britannica lists Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Britain, Germany, Italy, Japan and Sweden, and says the FIA recognised drag racing in 1965. In the US the NHRA is one of the six member clubs of ACCUS, the committee that links American sanctioning bodies to the FIA.

How a drag race is decided

The NHRA describes a drag race as a timed acceleration contest from a standing start, run as a tournament in which the loser of each pairing is eliminated. Two cars line up side by side. Each lane is timed separately: elapsed time runs from the moment the car leaves the staging beams to the finish line, and speed is measured in a 66-foot trap at the finish.

The start is controlled by the "Christmas Tree", a column of lights between the lanes. On a Pro Tree all three amber lights flash together and the green follows 0.4 seconds later; on a Sportsman, or full, Tree the ambers light one after another, 0.5 seconds apart. The NHRA lists the ways to lose a race outright: leaving early, crossing out of your lane, failing to stage, or failing inspection after the run. Our drag racing guide covers the discipline itself in more detail.

The professional series

The NHRA's top tier is the NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series. It has four professional classes, which are the four in which champions are crowned each year:

• Top Fuel (dragsters burning nitromethane)
• Funny Car (also nitromethane-fuelled)
• Pro Stock
• Pro Stock Motorcycle

Wikipedia (secondary) says the two nitro classes race over 1,000 feet rather than the full quarter mile, and that Top Fuel dragsters can finish in about 4.5 seconds or less at up to 530 km/h (329 mph). The NHRA pages checked for this article did not state the race distance.

The Countdown to the Championship

The NHRA season ends with a six-race playoff, the Countdown to the Championship. Wikipedia (secondary) says the 2025 Countdown ran from Reading (11 to 14 September) to the season finale at Pomona (13 to 16 November), where race points were worth 50% more.

Champions and results

2025

Weather intervened at the end of 2025. The NHRA cancelled the In-N-Out Burger NHRA Finals at Pomona, so three of the four titles were awarded on the points standings at that moment. Doug Kalitta had already clinched Top Fuel on the Saturday.

Wikipedia (secondary) lists the 2025 U.S. Nationals winners at Indianapolis as Justin Ashley (Top Fuel), Austin Prock (Funny Car), Erica Enders (Pro Stock) and Gaige Herrera (Pro Stock Motorcycle).

2026: in progress

The 2026 season was still running as of October 2026, so no champions have been crowned. Wikipedia (secondary) says the Countdown began after the U.S. Nationals (2 to 7 September 2026). NHRA.com reported the Countdown past its halfway point by mid-October, with Pomona the final stop; Wikipedia gives the finals as 12 to 15 November 2026, a date not confirmed on nhra.com. NHRA's unofficial standings around 18 October showed Shawn Langdon leading Top Fuel, Matt Hagan leading Funny Car and Richard Gadson leading Pro Stock Motorcycle. Those are leaders, not champions.

John Force

Wikipedia (secondary) records that John Force won 16 Funny Car championships and 157 races as a driver between 1978 and 2024. After a serious crash in June 2024 at Virginia Motorsports Park, he announced his retirement from driving on 13 November 2025.

Sportsman and bracket racing

Most NHRA racers are not professionals. Wikipedia (secondary) says the NHRA has more than 100 member tracks and that most participants are dues-paying Sportsman racers, in programmes such as the Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series and the NHRA Jr. Drag Racing League.

Bracket racing is one of the formats Sportsman racers use. Sonoma Raceway's NHRA "Drag Racing 101" brochure explains it: each driver predicts their own elapsed time, called the dial-in, and the car with the slower dial-in gets a head start equal to the difference. Top speed does not matter. Running quicker than your dial-in is a "breakout"; if both cars break out, the one closer to its dial-in wins, and leaving before the green, "redlighting", is a disqualification. The brochure says bracket races usually run over a quarter mile or an eighth mile. The NHRA adds that in classes using a dial-in or index, the first car across the line wins unless it ran quicker than that number.

For more on the American side of the sport's history, see American racing history, and for how the NHRA fits with other US bodies, see governing bodies.