PDRA Finals at Richmond, Va.

First Season Completed, Champions Crowned

Words by Ian Tocher
Photos courtesy PDRA

Rising Pro Nitrous star Jason Harris completed an almost perfect campaign Oct. 13, by going to his eighth final round in as many events this year and winning his sixth race to cap off a championship-winning run in the eighth-mile Professional Drag Racers Association’s inaugural season.

Also scoring pro class victories in the rain-delayed PDRA Championship Finals at Virginia Motorsports Park (VMP), were Brandon Snider in Pro Extreme, Anthony DiSomma in Pro Boost, Richard Penland in Extreme Pro Stock and Eric McKinney in Pro Extreme Motorcycle.

Sportsman class winners included John Lassiter in Top Sportsman, Alan O’Brien in Top Dragster, Isaac Evans in Pro Jr. Dragster and Caleb Russell in Top Jr. Dragster.

The Championship Finals, postponed by rain to Monday from a scheduled Saturday completion, was actually the second PDRA event to be settled at VMP over the weekend. Final eliminations for the PDRA’s Dragstock event at North Carolina’s Rockingham Dragway, also cut short by rain early in September, were wrapped up on Sunday, Oct. 12, within qualifying for the Virginia race.

Harris qualified his ’68 Firebird fifth and made it past Matt Suite, Stan Allen and Tommy Franklin to reach Chris Rini in the Switzer Dynamics Pro Nitrous final round. His win in the semis, however, stood out as payback for Harris after he lost the Rockingham final the night before when Franklin picked up his career-first Pro Nitrous race title with a new official PDRA record 3.737-second pass. That the semifinal win came courtesy of a holeshot that allowed Harris’s 3.770 at 191.81-mph pass to beat a quicker and faster 3.763 at 199.26 by Franklin made it that much sweeter for the Pittsboro, North Carolina-based racer.

“I definitely owed Tommy one, but I also knew I would have to be sharp because he’d been so fast here all weekend,” Harris said. “Sometimes I get to bail out the car, but the car has had to bail me out a lot more often this year, but yeah, it’s always nice to help out my team and win at the tree.”

In the final Harris again left first, then posted a 3.794 pass at 189.97 mph to outpace the 3.803 at 197.57 by Rini and his ’69 Camaro.