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The latest update as of July 17, 2020
Another week has flown by and the drag racing world is still moving ahead with the resumption of events in North America. This weekend sees quite a few races on tap, with the NHRA Mello Yello series putting on a race for the second week in a row at Lucas Oil Raceway at Indianapolis. This time around it's the Lucas Oil NHRA Summernationals which will feature a different lineup from last week's show. There's the Top Fuel and Nitro Funny Car classes, but instead of Pro Stock (car and bike), it's Pro Mod and Top Fuel Harley for a change of pace.
STOP THE KEYBOARD - Clicking on the NHRA website to gather some info on this weekend's Lucas Oil NHRA Summernationals, the latest news out of Glendora is headlined "Denver, Brainerd events POSTPONED, 3rd Indianapolis event added". Oh, oh. Scrolling down the page there's news about changes and cancellations to Divisional and Regional events too.
Judging by the continuing surge in COVID-19 cases in many places in the United States, these latest changes are not at all surprising. Following the court ruling (an injunction against holding large events in Colorado) last week, the Denver "postponement" seemed inevitable, but the Brainerd announcement caught many off guard. Reading deeper into the announcements gives the impression that the likelihood of the Denver and Brainerd events going ahead this year are minimal. And it's almost a certainty that there will be other races falling by the wayside as time goes on. Even the announcers on last weekend's Fox Sports One broadcast (Brian Lohnes and Tony Pedregon) admitted as much when they stated "it remains to be seen if NHRA's very ambitious 16 races in 16 weeks schedule can actually be pulled off".
At this moment there are two NHRA Divisional/Regional events in progress: the big JEG's Speedweek Division Three race at Columbus and on the west coast, the Division Seven race at Sonoma. Both races also include Top Alcohol classes, starting tomorrow, and in Sonoma's case, it will be the first west coast Top Alky racing since Pomona. Down south, at Amarillo Dragway, the FUNNY CAR CHAOS crew is set up and ready to rock Tecas tonight, with two qualifying sessions on tap for the 22 pre-entered floppers. As always, we've got BIG Bob Snyder on hand to document the action, and we may have a few shots from our newest correspondent, Dale Fackler to complement Bob's work.
Here at Northern Thunder, we've been working in the background, and have put up a bunch of photos and a full story of the NHRA Central Region event held in late June at Bandimere Speedway. Check it out on the Feature Page, and in the very near future we'll have all the event coverage that causes this page to load so slowly moved to the feature section.