NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

Jordan Vandergriff’s Funny Car win at the NHRA Southern Nationals not only made him NHRA’s newest first-time Pro winner but also the 97th Funny Car driver to hoist a winner’s trophy at an NHRA national event.

There have also been 114 different Top Fuel winners, 73 unique Pro Stock victors, and 56 distinct Pro Stock Motorcycle masters, which, if my math is correct, makes Vandergriff the 340th Pro winner since 1963 (when we started counting “Pro” wins with the first Top Fuel event).

If I gave you enough time, I bet you could come up with maybe 50 of the 97 Funny Car winners. Go ahead. This page ain’t going nowhere. Write them down. I’ll wait. And I’ll definitely score you later.

(Jeopardy theme)

THE EASY ONES

You're back? Good. OK, I know you got all of the big guns — John Force, Ron Capps, Robert Hight, Matt Hagan, Tony and Cruz Pedregon, Jack Beckman, Don Prudhomme, Del Worsham, Kenny Bernstein — with more than 30 wins, and if you’re any kind of fan, you also have Tim Wilkerson, Tommy Johnson Jr., and Whit Bazemore on your bingo cards, with everyone above winning 20 or more Funny Car Wallys.

But that’s only 13 obvious ones out of 97 — not even enough to make a full field — but you should still have a perfect score.  

How’d you do?
Perfect 13: GOAT-worthy
10-12: Decent pass
Less than 10: A true flopper flop

So, let’s go deeper. What makes this list a bit tricky is that there are only 26 drivers on the list of Funny Car winners with double-digit victories, meaning there are 71 drivers with fewer than 10 wins and, of those 71, nearly half (31) earned just one win, which should show you how hard it can be to climb the mountain twice.

YOU SHOULD KNOW THESE, TOO

The next 13 — the last of the double-digit winners — should be familiar to you if you’re a history buff or a newer fan.

Mark Oswald, Bob Tasca III, and Ed "the Ace" McCulloch all have 18 wins. Maybe you know Oswald best as a Top Fuel driver (and later tuner), but he’s just one of 19 drivers to win in both nitro classes. You should have known that. McCulloch’s total here is the one that impresses me the most as he raced primarily in the era of considerably fewer events on the annual schedule. But you should have been able to get those three.

Right behind that solid trio is a surprise. I know he’s on your list — because how can anyone ignore Austin Prock? — but the surprise is that he has 17 wins — one fewer than his team owner, Bob Tasca, and just one less than the fabled “Ace” — and won them in just 39 races, compared to 338 for Tasca. Talk about a fast starter …

HARDER BUT STILL EASY

After the gruff but lovable Al Hofmann’s 15 wins come the famed "Blue Max," Raymond Beadle, current star J.R. Todd, and Mr. First in the Fours, Chuck Etchells, each with a baker’s dozen (that’s 13 for those unfamiliar with the term) wins. I hope you got them all.

Gary “Wild Thing” Scelzi, Courtney Force, and Billy Meyer all had a non-baker’s dozen (that’s 12), and, honestly, there’s no reason you could forget any of them. Sure, Scelzi might best be remembered as a three-time Top Fuel world champ, but he was a stalwart in a flopper for Don Schumacher Racing after that, and Courtney famously collected the 100th NHRA Pro win by a woman (2014 Topeka), and Meyer was the teenage Funny Car sensation who made good and won the performance-crazy 1982 NHRA U.S. Nationals.

The final double-digit winners, with 10 each, are a pair of Mikes, Mike Dunn and Mike Neff, and maybe I’ll forgive you for missing Neff, because he’s way better known as a tuner than a driver, but he was a really pleasant surprise as a driver (five wins alone in 2011) to notch that many wins in a relatively short run behind the wheel for John Force Racing.

If you didn’t get at least 20 of those first 26, I’m going to sentence you to two hours of homework going through the Dragster Insider archive. OK, so I’m a tough grader. Otherwise, keep the hammer down.

SINGLE-DIGIT DRAMA

OK, Funny Car fans, here’s where the sledding gets a little tougher. Start rechecking your lists.

Unless you’re a fan of just the last 20 years, there’s no reason you should have overlooked “240 Gordie” Bonin. Funny Car mainstay (and still at it) Gary Densham should be on your list if for no other reason than he has competed in the class for six decades, either as a driver or owner/tuner. You certainly wouldn’t be Teacher’s Pet if you forgot him.

Surely, two-time world champion Frank Hawley made your list after taking the famed match race-famous Chi-Town Hustler to back-to-back world championships in 1982-83; what's wild is that Hawley only won seven events in Funny Car.

Any Funny Car fan worth his fire bottles knows the name Bruce Larson as one of the East Coast’s great match race barnstormers, but I’ll semi-forgive you for not having him on your list because despite racing in the class since the 1960s, he did all of his winning (seven Wallys) over the course of two seasons (one in 1988, six in 1989, the year he won the world championship. Oh, you forgot that, too?).

Even though he was recently saluted in Pomona (Funny Car race No. 1,000) as the winner of NHRA’s 700th Funny Car race, you may have overlooked Johnny Gray on your list, but with seven Wallys on his shelf (and forays into Pro Stock, Top Alcohol dragster, Top Alcohol Funny Car, and Comp), that’s a pretty big Gray area to miss.

Even though his career was brief, it was a memorable one, so you’d better not have forgotten six-time winner Eric Medlen (no ice cream for you if you missed him). And even though he has been out of the cockpit for decades now, there’s no way you forgot Dale Pulde. He “only” won six NHRA races, but his beautiful War Eagle cars were certainly unforgettable.

Alexis DeJoria better be on your radar, too; of course, she’s one of only two female racers to win Funny Car in Indy (2014), and right now, with Neff tuning, she’s the best bet to become the class’ first female world champion; it’s the only Pro class where we’ve never had one.

What’s your score so far?
30-34: A real Force
25-29: A real contender
Less than 25: A real disappointment

A REAL HANDFUL

OK, down to racers with five or fewer Wallys on the shelf, and there’s a whopping 63 of them, so I’ll give you an A for the day if you got 40 of them.

There’s some real easy ones in the group: Tom Hoover, whose Showtime entries were always tough; “Action Al” Segrini, who famously won the NHRA Winternationals back-to-back in fiery explosions in the 1980s; Don Schumacher, whose winning legacy was handed down to dozens of those who later drove for him; “the Snowman,” Gene Snow, who only won four races but three of them came in 1970, the year he won the championship; the famed “Mongoose,” Tom McEwen, who won probably the most unforgettable U.S. Nationals Funny Car crown in 1978; Ashley Force Hood, the first of John’s daughters to join the family profession, the class’ first female winner, and the second half of the female Indy winner equation; and Jerry Toliver, who drove those memorable floppers with the WWF wrestler branding and won five races, too.

You should have gotten all of those, too. Come on. This is Funny Car 101.

Four wins

Jeff Arend (one with Paul Smith in 1996 and three emotional wins with Kalitta Motorsports in "Scott's car"); Jim White (all with Roland Leong in 1991); Jim Epler (“Mr. 300” won twice on his own in the 1990s and twice with a Kane-branded WWF car, including Indy in 2000); Phil Burkart Jr. (one for the NitroFish team and three as the second car for the Worsham family’s Checker-Schuck’s-Kragen team); and Frank Pedregon (two with Jim Dunn Racing and the Johnny Lightning livery and two as yet another member of the C-S-K squad).

Three wins

Jim Head (who could forget Indy 1984?); Mike Ashley (Justin’s dad won all three in 2007, including Indy); Leroy Goldstein (The “Israeli Rocket” won a pair with the Ramchargers and one with Candies & Hughes); and Chad Green (back-to-back NHRA Gatornats in 2025 and 2026 preceded by the 2023 NHRA Finals).

Two wins

Blake Alexander and Shawn Langdon (both members of the Top Fuel and Funny Car dual-winner’s club); Ron Colson (both with Roland Leong); Tim Grose (the original Skoal Bandit, predating Don Prudhomme by a couple of years); Bob Pickett (landed the U.S. Marines in the winner’s circle for Mickey Thompson); Leonard Hughes (drove before he tuned as half of the Candies & Hughes team, most famously winning the 1970 Gatornationals in the first all-team Funny Car final); Tripp Shumake (“240 Shorty” won for Johnny Loper and Billy Meyer); Randy Anderson (short but impressive nitro career after winning two Top Alcohol Funny Car championships); K.C. Spurlock (“Hollywood” won in 1990 Pomona debut and then again there four years later); Dale Emery (only Funny Car wins for Team JEGS); Danny Ongais (a pair of Mickey’s famous ’69 Mustangs, including Indy); John Lombardo (“Lil John” won in his own car at the 1983 Finals, handing John Force his fourth of nine straight runner-ups, and in the Blue Max in Indy 1985); Bruce Sarver (in the Alan Johnson-owned emoola.com Firebird); Gary Burgin (“the Orange Baron” shot down Prudhomme in the 1976 Indy finals, “Snake’s” only loss that year, and beat Beadle in Columbus in 1979); Dean Skuza (the irreverent, Word of the Day, rock and roller from Cleveland); and “Big Jim” Dunn, who followed his unicorn rear-engine Funny Car win in 1972 with a conventional victory at the 1981 Finals).

One win

The list is 31 names long, and you can see the full list below, but here are some of my favorites:

Shirl Greer: Famed for winning the 1974 championship after surviving a terrible fire at the Finals, but had won earlier in the year in Montreal.

Scott Kalitta: The eventual two-time Top Fuel world champ’s first win came in a Funny Car at the 1989 Houston event.

Sherm Gunn: Local favorite and chassis builder thrilled hometown crowd at the 1984 Finals.

Kenji Okazaki: First and only Japanese national to win, driving Jim Dunn’s Mooneyes at the 1997 Englishtown race.

Dave Condit: Unfortunately, this wasn’t in the crowd-pleasing L.A. Hooker but the Plueger & Gyger Mustang at the 1974 Finals.

Tony Bartone: A 38-time, world championship-winning driver in Top Alcohol Funny Car got his only nitro win with — who else? — Jim Dunn in Seattle in 2008.

Johnny White: The notorious “Houston Hustler” was no one’s pick to win the 1977 Cajun Nationals.

Frank Hall: His lone win in the Green Elephant at the 1973 World Finals in Amarillo, Texas, made world champions out of the future Division 6 Director and team owners Jim and Betty Green.

Pat Foster: Hard to believe that “Patty Faster" only won once (Gainesville 1973) in the bad-ass Barry Setzer Vega.

Butch Maas: Won the 1971 Winternationals for Roland Leong, the Hawaiian’s second straight win there after scoring with Larry Reyes in 1970.

Jim Liberman: Like Foster, hard to believe that “Jungle Jim" only won once (1975 Englishtown), but, then again, national events were never his “thang.”

OK, so how’d you do?

10 or fewer: You don't know what a Funny Car is, do you?
11-29: We might let you clean the oil pan
30-44: Made the field, but not by much
45-59: Top-half qualifier
60-79: You’re a true fiberglass aficionado
80-97: You want a job?

I hope you scored well. Thanks for playing along, and thanks, as always, for joining this journey. 

 Phil Burgess can be reached at pburgess@nhra.com

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