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The latest update as of November 7, 2023


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Top Alcohol Talk

With the entry deadline for the final event of the 2023 season closing yesterday, the lists of competitors have been finalized, and there's full fields in almost all of the fast categories, with the sole exception of Top Alcohol Funny Car. In contrast to the 12 entries in that class, the Top Alcohol Dragster field is overflowing, with 24 drivers on the list. Of that number, seven are running blown on alcohol, while the remaining 17 are utilizing an injected nitro combination. The field is packed with top notch competitors, including eight of the current Top Ten runners, and 16 of the top 24 in the points standings.

The weather forecast for this coming weekend in Pomona is good, with mainly sunny skies, and air temps ranging from 75 to 80 (F) throughout the event. With that forecast and the armada of strong running cars, we can realistically expect to see the quickest field in the history of the class. The current quickest bump spot in NHRA history is 5.337, first set at the finals in Pomona in 2017, and equalled at Las Vegas in 2022 and this year. Taking it one step further, the quickest non-qualified car ever ran a 5.339 at the 2017 finals. It will be very interesting, to see how it plays out, starting with the first qualifying session on Thursday afternoon.

While the Top Alcohol Funny Car field is short on numbers, with only a dozen racers, five of them are currently in the Top Ten, and the remainder of the field is sprinkled with some seriously fast runners. After the first round of eliminations, the competition to reach the final round will be intense, with the class leaders, Doug Gordon and Sean Bellemeur the favourites to meet in the last round of the season.

Looking at the bigger picture, the alcohol Funny Car class is in trouble, with participation falling to an average of 11 entries at the 14 national events this season. Only once, at the U.S. Nationals, has there been a full field with a total of 18 cars trying to qualify. At the other end of the spectrum, there were only seven entries at three consecutive races; Seattle, Topeka, and Brainerd. Despite opening the class to A/Fuel cars this season, it hasn't made a measurable difference, with just one of the three cars known to exist being competitive. That car belongs to long-time injected nitro racer, Mick Steele, and he posted a best of 5.459 at Reading, one of the three events he ran this season. At the same event, Tommy Johnson Jr. posted a decent, 5.733 to qualify in the debut performance of the Nunzio Valerie car.

There is one other A/Fuel Funny Car, driven by Julie Nataas and owned by Randy Meyer, but after two years of sporadic testing and a few appearances at Funny Car Chaos and Nitro Chaos events, but it has yet to appear at an NHRA event. Other than the three cars mentioned here, we're not aware of any others running or even in the building stage. While NHRA may have hoped that the A/Fuel combination would have increased participation numbers, to date it hasn't made an appreciable difference to the class. We can only hope that 2024 sees a resurgence in the Top Alcohol Funny Car class.