For the first time in NHRA history, all of the professional event winners were also the world champions at the Finals at Auto Club Raceway.

Tanner Gray clinched the Pro Stock championship on Saturday just by qualifying in the top half of the field. He becomes the youngest professional series champion in NHRA history at 19 years, six months. On Sunday, he went through the field, defeating Drew Skillman in the final round.  (Pam Conrad photo)

Last year Gray was the rookie of the year, this year the Pro Stock champ, and next year he leaves drag racing to go NASCAR truck racing.

J.R. Todd, driver of the DHL Toyota Camry for Kalitta Motorsports, captured his first career Funny Car world championship Sunday afternoon to become the first African-American Funny Car champion in NHRA history. This is only the second year in a Funny Car for Todd, who spent nine seasons in a Top Fuel dragster. (Pam Conrad photo)

Todd entered the final race of the 2018 NHRA season with a 74-point lead in the standings over the defending world champion, Robert Hight, and officially clinched the championship when Hight was defeated by Bob Tasca in the first round of eliminations in Pomona after smoking the tires.

Matt Smith had to wait until the final round to claim his third championship in Pro Stock Motorcycle. He set a national speed record in the process. (Pam Conrad photo)

“Man, we went through a lot today,” Smith said. “With the airline breaking in the first round and in the second round the transmission broke on us going through the lights. My guys did their job and we fixed all of the stuff that broke and ended up putting up three 200 mph runs today. We are having the time of our life right now though.”

Why is this man smiling? Although Tommy Johnson Jr. did not win the Funny Car championship, he did get a pretty good prize. The top performing Don Schumacher Racing driver at Pomona gets a Dodge Hellcat to drive for the coming year.

“I thank Dodge and Mopar for putting the Hellcat on the line for the highest finishing driver. That certainly was in the back of our mind and we’ll put it to good use this year.”

Johnson got a semifinal win over fellow Mopar driver Jack Beckman and finished runner-up at Pomona, giving him third place in the final points.  (Pam Conrad photo)    [11/12/18]

McCarthy also gives BIG PROPS to Brian “NHDRO” Welch, the leader of the No Hatin’ Drag Racing Organization, for his courage and innovation by embracing new technology that improves motorcycle drag racing by a bunch. In October of 2018 the NHDRO began using a “QR Code” (www.qrstuff.com/scan) system to ID all the drag bikes and their respective drivers.

Once clear of Tech, the drag bike and the driver information is generated onto a QR coded sticker that looks like an enlarged, pixilated B&W square code. Once this sticker is attached to the machine, an event crew staff member in lower or upper staging can scan the code and the tower instantly receives full information on the driver and the bike, and this information drives the whole system seamlessly, making the entire racing operation run quicker, more efficiently. Over time, this system has the potential to impact all of drag racing.

This sounds like a good candidate for our “New Product of the Day.”   [11/12/18]