NHRA Drag Racers Ready for Season’s Lone Four-Wide Challenge

NHRA Ready for Season’s Lone Four-Wide Challenge zMAX Dragway Scrappers Racing’s Jasmine Salinas, returning to the Mission Foods Drag Racing Series this weekend at Charlotte after skipping the past two events, is going to get a double dose of what she has been missing. “NHRA drag racing is always so exciting and intense, but when you put four 12,000-horsepower machines on the line at the same time, it goes to a different level,” she said. Four-wide racing started with one event, at Las Vegas.

Then it became two, back to back. Then last year it grew to three, with both zMAX Dragway stops on the tour in the non-traditional format and the novelty tossed into the six-race Countdown to the Championship. This year, with Charlotte no longer part of the playoffs, this weekend’s NHRA Four-Wide Nationals is the lone such race.

But it’s just as wild and loud and spectacular—and sometimes chaotic—as it always has been. Gary Nastase “Four-wides are always kind of crazy,” Matt Hagan, who’s tied with Ron Capps for the Funny Car points lead, said. “I’ve done everything from red-light to not stage the car to win the race.

So you never know what you’re going to get at four-wide, but I think that’s why we do it, too. It’s something different. It’s just you pull that feather out of your hat there and you set it on the table and hopefully you can put it back in your hat at the end of the day.