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The NHRA U.S. Nationals is always a magical event, and, for many old-timers like me, there’s no bigger Indy win than a Top Fuel Indy win, and this year was no different as Justin Ashley became just the 32nd Top Fuel driver to win in the 67 times Top Fuel has run there.

He was still kind of soaking in the surreal nature of winning the event in the media center when my turn came to ask a question that maybe reminded him even more of what an honor it was.

“Don Garlits,” I began. “Don Prudhomme. Shirley Muldowney. Joe Amato. Tony Schumacher. Justin Ashley. How does it feel to join a club that has them as members?”

He blinked a few times. “When you put it like that, it feels pretty darn good,” he said. “It's going to take a few days to process that. I have a very good relationship with Joe Amato, and I've seen videos of him winning Indy, and then to actually do what he did, what Prudhomme did, what Garlits did, I mean, it's beyond words. It really is special. It's an absolute dream come true.”

Top Fuel in Indy is a weird beast. Winning once can make a career, but Tony Schumacher did it 10 times, and 21 other winners — including Ashley — have only done it once. In the nine years between 1974 and 1982, seven Top Fuel drivers won Indy for the first time (and, for a few, the only time), yet Indy also went without a first-time Top Fuel winner 15 straight times from 1999 to 2014, and there are six drivers whose first career national event win ever came in Top Fuel in Indy.

On the flip side, there are some notable drivers without an Indy win, including two-time world champions Brittany Force and Scott Kalitta (Brittany has two runner-ups; Scott never made it to the final), plus world champs Dick LaHaie, Gary Ormsby, and Eddie Hill (LaHaie had two Indy runner-ups, Hill one, G.O. none), plus guys like Spencer Massey (18 total wins, runner-up in Indy in 2012) and Mike Dunn (12 Top Fuel wins, none in Indy, but he did win Funny Car in Indy in 1986). While he never won Indy as a driver, LaHaie tuned Larry Dixon to a pair of Indy wins. Like I said, Top Fuel in Indy is a weird beast.

Anyway, let’s take a look back at Top Fuel’s 32 winners, from most successful to one-time winners.

10-TIME WINNER

Tony Schumacher (2000-04, 2006-09, 2012, and 2016)

No one has won more Indy Top Fuel titles than Schumacher, who truly dominated the event for almost a decade. Schumacher made his Indy Top Fuel debut as a relative unknown in 1996, in a car owned by the Peek brothers, where they qualified on the bump spot with a 4.900. Their first-round opponent should have been Blaine Johnson, but the four-time Top Alcohol Dragster world champ had died from injuries in a crash while grabbing the No. 1 spot. In honor of Johnson, Schumacher idled down the track on his solo and incredibly went to the final in his debut. In a preview of the years ahead, he beat Larry Dixon and Mike Dunn before losing to Cory McClenathan.

Schumacher won Indy for the first time four years later in 2000, in the debut of what would become a long-running sponsorship with the U.S. Army, and again in 2002 with crew chief Dan Olson. Alan Johnson replaced Olson in 2003, and the duo won six of the next seven U.S. Nationals, interrupted only by Larry Dixon in 2005, and even then, Schumacher was the runner-up.

Johnson left after the 2008 campaign to form his own team, but new tuner Mike Green didn’t miss a beat, wrenching Schumacher to another win in 2009. Schumacher and Green scored again in 2012 and 2016, but Schumacher hasn’t been back to an Indy final since.

2000: Defeated Gary Clapshaw
2002: Defeated Larry Dixon
2003: Defeated Darrell Russell
2004: Defeated Doug Kalitta
2006: Defeated Brandon Bernstein
2007: Defeated Larry Dixon
2008: Defeated Doug Kalitta
2009: Defeated Larry Dixon
2012: Defeated Spencer Massey
2016: Defeated Steve Torrence

SEVEN-TIME WINNER

Don Garlits (1964, 1968, 1975, 1978, and 1984-86)

Whereas Schumacher was very workmanlike (or as he would say, machine-like), somehow, “Big Daddy’s” Indy wins were always spectacularly memorable.

His 1964 win was the first time Top Fuel had been run in Indy following the "Nitro Ban." His 1967 title made him the sport’s first two-time Indy winner and was capped by his iconic starting-line shave. His cagey 1968 victory over Steve Carbone presaged their dramatic 1971 burndown and made him Indy’s all-time Top Fuel winner, a record he would hold (and expand) for 40 years. His 1975 final-round win came over Shirley Muldowney. His 1978 victory over Rob Bruins came after a third-round holeshot over low e.t. runner Dave Uyehara, 5.91 to 5.88.

His three-year streak of dominance in the mid-1980s resurrected an almost dying Top Fuel class, beginning with his iconic 1984 win with his team of “dinosaurs” and ending two years and two championships later with back-to-back final-round wins over the hungry Florida kid he dubbed “the Wolf,” Darrell Gwynn.

1964: Defeated Jack Williams
1967: Defeated James Warren
1968: Defeated Steve Carbone
1975: Defeated Shirley Muldowney
1978: Defeated Rob Bruins
1984: Defeated Connie Kalitta
1985: Defeated Darrell Gwynn
1986: Defeated Darrell Gwynn

FOUR-TIME WINNER

Larry Dixon (1995, 2001, 2005, and 2010)

The second-generation driver won Indy in his spectacular rookie season in Don Prudhomme’s Wes Cerny-tuned Miller Genuine Draft car, returning “the Snake” to the Indy winner’s circle for the eighth time and his first since 1989 as a Funny Car driver.

Dixon would take “the Snake" back there again in 2001 and 2005 with Dick LaHaie twirling the iron, and if it weren’t for that Schumacher guy, Dixon could well have been a seven-time Indy Top Fuel winner like Garlits. Dixon’s final Indy win came in 2010, in the Al-Anabi car en route to his third world championship.

1995: Defeated Bob Vandergriff Jr.    
2001: Defeated Mike Dunn
2005: Defeated Tony Schumacher
2010: Defeated Cory McClenathan    

THREE-TIME WINNERS

Don Prudhomme (1965, 1969, and 1970)

Along with Garlits, “the Snake” was one of Indy’s earliest Top Fuel dominators. He and car owner Roland Leong headed east for the first time after winning the 1965 NHRA Winternationals and won Indy in the famed Hawaiian, sweeping half of the season’s four events. After striking out on his own in 1966, Prudhomme didn’t get back to the Indy winner’s circle until 1969, where, again with lifelong pal Leong’s help, they frantically changed a blown engine during a fortunate rainstorm and beat future Indy winner Kelly Brown and received the first "Wally" trophy. A year later, "Snake” struck again, winning one of the most memorable Top Fuel finals in Indy history when Jim Nicoll’s exploding clutch cut his car in half and Prudhomme, in tears, considered retirement. He didn’t quit, of course, and would go on to win Indy four times in Funny Car and twice as an owner with Larry Dixon.

1965: Defeated Tommy Ivo
1969: Defeated Kelly Brown
1970: Defeated Jim Nicoll

Gary Beck (1972, 1973, and 1983)

Although Gary Beck seemed to emerge out of nowhere to win Indy in 1972 — the first event officially dubbed as the “U.S. Nationals” (previously known as just “the Nationals”) — in his NHRA national event Top Fuel debut, the truth is, as Beck used to explain, “I was a 15-year overnight success.” Beck and partner R. Gaines Markley had campaigned gas-burning altereds and dragsters and won a couple of Division 6 Super Eliminator championships before he moved to Top Fuel with Ken McLean and Ray Peets in the early 1970s. They won it back-to-back in 1972-73, and then Beck won it for a third time a decade later in the all-conquering blue monster of Larry Minor.

1972: Defeated Jerry Ruth
1973: Defeated Carl Olson
1983: Defeated Joe Amato

Joe Amato (1987, 1988, and 1990)

After Garlits’ three-year, mid-1980s monopoly, Amato took over the role of Indy dominator, winning it three times in four years, missing out only in 1989 when he lost in the semifinals to Dick LaHaie. His 1988 title was a fortunate one as he was racing Gene Snow, who had made the quickest NHRA pass in history, a 5.00 in the semifinals. Amato and crew chief Tim Richards, who had run a best of just 5.07, hopped it up for the final and smoked the tires, but Snow broke the throttle linkage just off the line. Conversely, Amato was dominant in 1990 en route to the world championship and bested Darrell Gwynn’s replacement driver, Frank Hawley, in the final round.

1987: Defeated Dick LaHaie
1988: Defeated Gene Snow    
1990: Defeated Frank Hawley

Antron Brown (2011, 2022, and 2023)

Brown is not only a three-time Indy Top Fuel winner but also the only competitor in NHRA history to win the U.S. Nationals in Top Fuel and Pro Stock Motorcycle, as he did in 2002 and again in 2004, his final year in the class, and one of five to have won it in two Pro classes. Brown is also one of just 14 drivers to win Indy five or more times.

2011: Defeated Del Worsham
2022: Defeated Brittany Force
2023: Defeated Steve Torrence

TWO-TIME WINNERS

Cory McClenathan (1996 and 1999)

Cory Mac’s first Indy win came in the McDonald’s dragster on a sorrow-filled 1996 weekend after the deaths of points leader and probable world champ Blaine Johnson and Top Fuel Motorcycle icon Elmer Trett in qualifying. McClenathan, who had been inspired to race in Top Alcohol Dragster by his West Coast friends the Johnsons, used Blaine’s death as inspiration, and he and crew chief Lee Beard won the race, after which McClenathan handed the Wally to Alan Johnson. Cory Mac won it again three years later with crew chief Wes Cerny.

1996: Defeated Tony Schumacher
1999: Defeated Andrew Cowin

Steve Torrence (2017 and 2021)

The four-time Top Fuel world champ had already won the U.S. Nationals in Top Alcohol Dragster in 2005, but it took him another dozen years to do it with nitro in the tank. His 2017 win, capped by a win over the long-shot, feel-good story that was Kebin Kinsley, seemed destined to carry him to his first Top Fuel world championship, but that drive was derailed by a late-season accident in Dallas, and Brittany Force won the title instead. It’s ironic then that Torrence’s second Indy win stopped Force from becoming an Indy champ just as she had stopped him from his first championship. Torrence also has an amazing five Indy Top Fuel runner-ups.

2017: Defeated Kebin Kinsley
2021: Defeated Brittany Force

Shawn Langdon (2013 and 2020)

The versatile wheelman, whose first Indy win came in Super Gas in 2010, won in Top Fuel in the Al-Anabi entry with Alan Johnson again earning another title as a tuner. Seven years later, Langdon would proudly hand team owner Connie Kalitta another Indy win in the DHL dragster.

2013: Defeated Steve Torrence
2020: Defeated Leah Pruett

ONE-TIME WINNERS

Mike Snively (1966)

As implausible as it sounds, Roland Leong repeated his 1965 feat, winning the Winternationals and the Nationals again in 1966, this time with Mike Snively in the saddle of the Hawaiian instead of Don Prudhomme. Snively won Sunday’s AA/FD class title in Indy, then sat out all Monday to face one of Leong’s first drivers, fellow Hawaiian Danny Ongais, in the Nationals final. Ongais, at the wheel of the Honda of Wilmington “Mangler,” had beaten Prudhomme in the Monday final but couldn’t stop his old boss from winning Indy for the second straight year.

Steve Carbone (1971)

Three years after losing to Don Garlits in the 1968 final, Carbone got his revenge on “Big Daddy” in the unforgettable “burndown” final at the 1971 race. In 1968, Garlits had taken his time staging, and Carbone had gone up in smoke with cold tires. In 1971, Carbone vowed not to stage first, and both drivers staged with over-cooked engines and clutches, and it was Garlits this time who was up in smoke. Carbone was the last slingshot Top Fuel driver to win Indy.

Marvin Graham (1974)

Like Gary Beck, people think that Marvin Graham came out of nowhere to win the 1974 title — inspiring the still-lasting nickname of “Who?” — but the Oklahoman had been racing Top Fuel since 1967, just on a local basis. When he got serious in 1973 and 1974, Graham hired Chester Garris to tune his car and future Top Fuel racer Steve Hodkinson as his crewmember and bought a state-of-the-art 3/8-stroke mill from West Coast engine ace Mike Kuhl. Graham, who ran the family television repair business, Graham Radio and Television, a small one-man operation in small-town Britton, Okla., came down with the flu in Indy but nonetheless gutted it out and beat Gaines Markley in the final.

Richard Tharp (1976)

“King Richard” got his only Indy crown at the 1976 event behind the wheel of the vaunted Candies & Hughes dragster, which had already won the non-points inaugural NHRA Cajun Nationals in its team owners' backyard and also the NHRA Summernationals. Tharp, the No. 2 qualifier, did a masterful job of driving the shake-prone blue monster to victory, capping it with an easy final-round run when John Wiebe fouled.

Dennis Baca (1977)

The California carpet king won just two races in his NHRA Top Fuel career, both in 1977. Before winning the NHRA World Finals, Baca conquered Indy’s tough 32-car field with wins over Bob Struksnes, Clayton Harris, Frank Bradley, Rance McDaniel, and, in the final, defending event champ Richard Tharp. What’s especially memorable about Baca’s win was that his third-round win over Bradley clinched Shirley Muldowney’s first world championship. She had been upset in round one by Dick LaHaie when her car wouldn’t shift into high gear and was a starting-line spectator when Baca finished off Bradley, the only person with a chance to stop her championship run.

Kelly Brown (1979)

Just as he had done when he won the Top Fuel championship in 1978, “The Unsinkable Kelly Brown” scored four wins in 1979 with the Bill Schultz-tuned "Over the Hill Gang" entry, but this time didn’t win the championship, which went, oddly enough, to Rob Buins, who won exactly zero times in national event competition that year. But Brown’s Indy triumph, at the Silver Anniversary U.S. Nationals, was memorable enough as it sported the quickest field in history (6.014) with a record 27 five-second qualifiers, including 10 in the 5.80s. Brown and the team went through a number of motors (including one borrowed from Funny Car racer John Lombardo) and used up another bullet in the final to beat Johnny Abbott.

Terry Capp (1980)

Eight years after Seattle-born but Canadian-based Gary Beck was incorrectly honored as Indy’s first Canadian Top Fuel winner, Edmonton’s Terry Capp did it for real with tuner Bernie Fedderly in their unpainted "Wheeler Dealer" dragster, stopping Jeb Allen from what would have been his first Indy win in what was the quickest side-by-side Top Fuel final in NHRA history, 5.82 to 5.89. Capps’ win came over the last 32-car Top Fuel field in Indy history.

Johnny Abbott (1981)

Two years after his heartbreaking final-round loss to Kelly Brown, Johnny Abbott reached the Indy winner’s circle, capping his Monday with a victory by whipping David Pace in the Carroll Bros. “Texas Whips” entry. Even though the field was “only” 16 cars for the first time, 31 cars tried to qualify and the bump was a solid 5.78 by Mark Oswald in the Thomas-Kattelman-Oswald machine, a ride which he would vacate at season’s end to take over the wheel of the Candies & Hughes machine to begin his climb to stardom.

Shirley Muldowney (1982)

It seems incomprehensible that the three-time world champ only won the Big Go once in her decorated career, but it’s true, and it’s a moment that drag racing’s greatest trailblazer still memorializes in her email address. The fact that she beat her greatest nemesis, Connie Kalitta, in the final makes it even sweeter. She lost her only other Indy final-round appearance in 1975, when she finished second behind Don Garlits in what was just her second career Top Fuel final.

Darrell Gwynn (1989)

Gwynn had twice been Indy runner-up to his legendary Florida neighbor Don Garlits, losing the final rounds in 1985 and 1986 during “Big Daddy’s” two championship seasons. Gwynn covered the 1986 Indy field by tenth and a half in qualifying with a national-record 5.34, but he slowed a hundredth or two in each round of eliminations and lost the final to Garlits in the quickest race in history, 5.39 to 5.44. Gwynn, who had won Indy in Top Alcohol Dragster in 1983, got a matching Top Fuel Wally six years later when he bested Dick LaHaie, who broke the blower input shaft, in the final. Seven months later, Gwynn's skyrocketing career was over after a devastating Easter Sunday crash in England.

Kenny Bernstein (1991)

Eighteen long years after Don Prudhomme first accomplished the feat in 1973, the Budweiser King became the second to win Indy in both nitro classes. Bernstein had already been crowned Indy’s Funny Car champ twice (1983 and 1987) before returning to his Top Fuel roots in 1990. It only took him two tries — and a bit of luck — to add an Indy Top Fuel trophy to his mantel, winning the final round on a tire-smoking pass after Pat Austin’s mount had backfired the supercharger on its final-round burnout.

Ed McCulloch (1992)

“The Ace” became the third driver in NHRA history to win Indy in both Top Fuel and Funny Car when he drove Larry Minor's McDonald’s dragster past Doug Herbert in the 1992 final. McCulloch had already won the U.S. Nationals in Funny Car a then-record five times by 1990 (finally matched by John Force in 2019) before switching rides with Larry Minor stablemate Cruz Pedregon, who took over the McDonald’s Funny Car in 1992 and, in one of the greatest moments in the recently departed Minor’s career, both won Indy that year.

Pat Austin (1993)

Two years after the heartbreak of losing what would have been the most magnificent win in Indy Top Fuel history (yet still remains one of the sport's greatest rookie drives at Indy), Pat Austin returned to Indy and won Top Fuel, besting Doug Herbert in the final round, making Herbert a very disappointed back-to-back runner-up at the race he was never able to win. Austin also recorded five Indy Top Alcohol Funny Car wins.
 

Connie Kalitta (1994), Doug Kalitta (2019)

It’s also hard to believe that the Kalitta family has only conquered the U.S. Nationals Top Fuel field twice, 25 years apart. Patriarch Connie had been racing at the Nationals since the early 1960s and finally won the race in 1994, when, at the still-spry age of 56, he defeated 58-year-old Eddie Hill in a final-round battle of the class' oldest drivers. Connie had been runner-up, as mentioned previously, to Shirley Muldowney in 1982 and was also the final hurdle in Don Garlits’ remarkable 1984 comeback.

Doug had been competing at the U.S. Nationals since his 1998 rookie year and had finished runner-up three times (to Tony Schumacher in 2004 and 2008 and to Tery McMillen in 2018) before breaking through on his 22nd try in 2019, when he defeated Billy Torrence.

Jim Head (1997)

Fourteen years after his stunning upset of Kenny Bernstein in the 1984 Indy Funny Car final, Head became the fourth and most recent double-nitro Indy winner when he beat Cory McClenathan to win the 1997 title. It was a very emotional win for Head, coming a year after the death of Blaine Jonson in Indy. Johnson’s now-famous brother, Alan, had tried to blunt his grief by helping Head at the 1996 race, and even though A.J. was tuning Gary Scelzi in 1997, his influence was still very evident when Head won that year.

Gary Scelzi (1998)

Two years after the Johnson family lost Blaine in that terrible Indy qualifying crash, they were officially back in the U.S. Nationals winner’s circle with Blaine’s heir, Gary Scelzi, in the Winston-backed dragster en route to a second straight world championship after defeating Mike Dunn in Darrell Gwynn’s dragster in the final round. More than a decade earlier, Scelzi had been runner-up to the eloquently named Eldon P. Slick in the 1986 Top Alcohol Dragster final in Indy.

Richie Crampton (2014)

At the wheel of the Lucas family’s GEICO-sponsored dragster, Crampton became the first Australian to win a nitro title in Indy. Crampton and crew chief Aaron Brooks had already won the Englishtown race earlier that season, then went on to win the Big Go, handing Steve Torrence one of his handful of Indy Top Fuel runner-ups.

Morgan Lucas (2015)

A year after Richie Crampton’s win, his stablemate, Morgan Lucas, who had won Indy in Top Alcohol Dragster back in 2003, scored the 23rd and final win of his career (12 of which came in Top Fuel) when he defeated Pro Stock racer turned Top Fuel pilot Dave Connolly, who was driving the C&J Energy Services dragster of 1995 Indy Top Fuel runner-up Bob Vandergriff Jr.

Terry McMillen (2018)

T-Mac had always seemed to be one of those drivers for whom a national event title always seemed just out of reach until he won the fall Las Vegas event in 2017. Ten months later, he and crew chief Rod Wendland stunned the 2018 Indy field, handing Doug Kalitta his third Indy runner-up.

Clay Millican (2024)

The only win that might — might — mean more to Clay Millican than his super emotional first NHRA win on Father’s Day in Bristol in 2017 would be last year’s Indy triumph, where he defeated Steve Torrence in the final round, meaning that IHRA's most successful Top Fuel driver had finally won NHRA's biggest event.

So there you have it, a look back at Indy's many Top Fuel heroes. Who's next to reach the summit of Top Fuel's tallest mountain?

Phil Burgess can be reached at pburgess@nhra.com

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