NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

Before the 2025 season even kicked off, Jeff Taylor had already had one of the great careers in NHRA Sportsman-racing history: four world championships, more than 50 national event wins, and a reputation for surgical driving and meticulous engine building. And, quite frankly, he and car owner/engine builder David Nickens didn’t even start the new season with championship aspirations.

Winning championships requires more than skill, especially in Comp. They require time, travel, index preservation, luck, and a willingness to suffer through the grind of points racing. And, for years, Taylor simply wasn’t interested.

“I hadn’t tried in a long time,” he said. “I’d win races here and there, but I never chased a championship. I didn’t see the reason to put myself through all the divisionals and all that time on the road away from my engine-building business.”

Taylor, who turned 65 in August, has been drag racing for more than 50 years, and Nickens, who is 76, has been racing for just as long. Taylor won his first championship in Stock in 1981, added Super Stock crowns in 1988 and 1991, then won the Comp world championship driving for the Butner family in 2005. Nickens, who won the Comp championship in 1987 and has built engines for champions in many classes, is still second in Comp national event wins behind only David Rampy.

Combined, the two former world champions have more experience and savvy than most of their competitors, but the “two old guys” just set their sights on having fun racing, primarily at national events and the two Texas Motorplex Division 4 events closest to Nickens’ Houston base and just a short plane flight from Taylor’s Sellersburg, Ind., shop. With backing from Jim and Annie Whiteley’s J&A Services company, they set off.

The season opened with a surprise victory at the NHRA Arizona Nationals in Phoenix. They still didn’t intend to chase the championship, but after a dead battery knocked them out in the water box in round one during the Las Vegas national event, instead of heading home, Nickens made the call to stay for the double divisional there. A runner-up and a semifinal later, it was clearly time to reevaluate their plan.

“And at that point, now you’re hooked,” Taylor said. “You don’t have any choice but to chase the championship.”

A month later, on an emotional weekend at the Division 4 doubleheader at Texas Motorplex following the death of Nickens’ brother and longtime sidekick Robert the previous week, the team added to its score with a win and runner-up, then flew to Houston the next morning for Robert’s funeral.

“Robert had been part of our team for a long time, so going there was tough, and especially tough for David,” said Taylor. “It was very special to win that for him and in his memory.”

The team took the summer off, but it wasn’t idle. They’d hit the B/Dragster Automatic index several times, so the team switched to a new A/Econo Dragster combination.

“We worked on the A/ED combination over the summer and tested; it was good, plenty good enough to win, but not as good as we knew it could be or would be,” said Taylor.

Their return to racing at the Cornwell Quality Tools NHRA U.S. Nationals was a disaster, dropping a valve in both of their engines during the event. They regrouped and concentrated on the championship battle that had largely brewed down to them, East Coast racer Joe Carnasciale, and Northwest terror Jeff Lane, whose son, Cody, had won the championship the year before.

The return to Texas Motorplex for another divisional should have been a victory, but the distributor belt snapped in the third round. The next week there at the Texas NHRA FallNationals, they won, besting Carnasciale in a crucial final round after Lane exited in the opening stanza. The final-round win was a wild one as both cars stumbled badly at the green, but Taylor persevered for the win.

“The air got so bad on Sunday, and our car stumbled, but his stumbled worse,” he remembered. “We had been chasing carburetor problems, but it wasn’t so bad you couldn’t race, but in the final, I let the button go, and it darn near shut off. His did the same thing, and it was just total a lucky situation. If he made a good run, he would have beaten me, but we made the better of the two bad runs.”

The team again went testing ahead of the return to Las Vegas for back-to-back weekends of national and divisional racing. As fate would have it, Taylor and Lane were paired in round one, in a race that showcased the best spirit of NHRA Sportsman racing. Taylor won easily, but Lane didn’t run him to the stripe, allowing Taylor to preserve his index.

“I knew I had a fast car, and I knew Jeff’s car wasn’t running that great, so it was perfect for us,” said Taylor. “As soon as I caught him, he shut off and let me get through clean. That’s first class right there. I went over, and I told him, ‘Hey, I’m not sure I would have done that for you.’ He just said, ‘Well, I just thought it was the right thing to do, and maybe one day you will repay the favor.’ ”

Although Taylor lost in the semifinals, he came back the following weekend and beat Lane again in the semi’s and won the divisional to push himself into the points lead, giving himself the advantage heading to the season-ending In-N-Out Burger NHRA Finals, but Lane needed only to reach the final round to pass Taylor for back-to-back family crowns.

The ladder had them lined up for a potential quarterfinal battle if they both got there with a semifinal bye to the winner. If Lane could win that battle, he’d get a free pass to the final and the championship.

Taylor took a big index hit in winning round one, but so did Lane. Taylor’s second-round race with Jason Grima was crucial. He couldn’t spare any more index to beat him, which would leave him totally depleted for a potential winner-take-all clash with Lane. A holeshot was his best bet. He put a couple of shims on the transbrake button in hopes of a good light he knew he’d need, but it worked too well, and he red-lighted with a -.001 reaction time. The only good news from that was that Grima didn’t use up any index ahead of a potential showdown with Lane with the title in the balance.

It never came to that, though, as one pair later, Lane fell to Northwest rival Ryan Warter, and the title belonged to Taylor, who was still getting out of his safety gear at the top end.

“It just all worked out,” he admitted. “We had a lot of good-luck rounds, and it all just went our way.”

The championship obviously came as a bit of a surprise from their season-starting plan. Taylor acknowledged the support of his wife, Patty, Jim and Annie Whiteley, David Nickens and Karenina Sidney, crewmember Fred North, Nickens Brothers Racing Engines, Mickey Thompson Tires, Weldon Pumps, JEGS, and Coan Engineering in his first championship season in 20 years.

“Honestly, I didn’t think I’d ever win a championship again; I was just happy winning races and having fun,” he said.

But in 2025, fun aligned with momentum. Momentum aligned with opportunity. Opportunity aligned with a team that refused to quit, even when engines blew, batteries died, valves broke, and the math looked impossible.