Two-time Top Fuel world champion Brittany Force won for the first time in 39 races on Monday at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, defeating reigning world champion Doug Kalitta in the final round of the 24th annual Ford Performance NHRA Nationals.
Austin Prock (Funny Car), Aaron Stanfield (Pro Stock), and Gaige Herrera (Pro Stock Motorcycle) also won the 19th of 20 races during the 2024 NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series season and the fifth of six races in the Countdown to the Championship playoffs.
Force went 3.703 seconds at 332.54 mph in her 11,000-horsepower Chevrolet Accessories dragster to defeat Kalitta, who smoked the tires off the starting line. It is Force’s 17th career win and her first since the fall race in Las Vegas in 2022. The victory also comes on a weekend when her father, 16-time world champion John Force, returned to the track for the first time since his crash in June in Richmond.
After qualifying No. 1 and running three times in the 3.60s, Force continued to flash the form that led to a world title two years ago. She defeated Josh Hart, Shawn Reed, and Clay Millican to reach the finals and then powered the win in the final round, culminating in an emotional celebration on the top end and a John Force Racing double-up.
“We’ve been piecing this together since the Countdown began, and we were seeing this progress with No. 1 qualifiers and going rounds on race day. We knew it was coming,” Force said. “We knew we were closing in on it, and we were getting close, and I had a good feeling about Vegas. We’ve been successful here in the past, and it’s one of my favorite tracks on the circuit, and my whole family was here. My dad was here. I just had a good feeling about it, and to come here and win, our team needed that. We’ve always stayed positive, always stayed confident, but it does hurt when you go two seasons without winning.
“Having my dad here for the first time since his crash, it wasn’t pressure, it was more heart behind every single person on the team. We always want to come out here and win, but with him being here this weekend, after everything he’s been through, there was definitely more heart behind it. We wanted to get him in that winner’s circle.”
Kalitta advanced to the finals for the sixth time this year and 118th in his career after defeating Ida Zetterstrom, Antron Brown, and Shawn Langdon. Justin Ashley remains in the points lead, and he’ll take a 44- and 45-point advantage over Brown and Langdon, respectively, into the finale.
In Funny Car, the championship is a mere formality now for standout Austin Prock, who moved closer to his first career world title by defeating Paul Lee in the championship round with a run of 3.830 in his 11,000-horsepower Cornwell Tools Chevrolet Camaro SS. It gives Prock his eighth victory this season in the midst of his incredible and dominant 2024 campaign, and he’s on the cusp of a Funny Car world championship. Prock now leads teammate Jack Beckman by 188 points and will officially clinch the world title at the In-N-Out Burger NHRA Finals in Pomona when he makes his first qualifying run in two weeks.
Prock qualified No. 1, breaking Force’s single-season Funny Car record for No. 1 qualifiers, and lived in the 3.80s all weekend, rolling past Tim Gibbons, Cruz Pedregon, and Blake Alexander. That set up the matchup with Lee, who was seeking his first career Funny Car win, but Prock and his team made their best run of eliminations, handing Prock his 12th career win.
“It was a long weekend, an odd weekend, for sure, but a great weekend to have John back,” Prock said. “We heard he was coming this weekend, and all you want to do is put a smile on his face, make a good team effort, and we did exactly that. All three of our John Force Racing race cars were on fire this weekend. I won three races before I ever got in this car this year, and now I’ve got eight in one season. It’s pretty crazy.
“The job’s not finished until the [championship] trophy is in our hands, and when it gets to my hands, it’s going straight to my dad’s hands, but we’re getting really close, so I’m excited that we won today. We still haven’t won the championship, and that’s our main goal this year. When I got in the race car at the beginning of the year, my dad said he wanted to win a world championship, and this team has just been lights out this year, outstanding job by each and every one of them.”
