NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

The recently completed Top 75 Drivers program, one of the first linchpin features of NHRA’s 75th Anniversary season, both made my heart soar and broke it at the same time. The chance to salute the 25 highest achievers of the last 25 years and add them to the original Top 50 Drivers list from 2001 was a perfect way to kick off what will be a year filled with acknowledgements of NHRA’s history and the people and events who got us there.

It was an all-consuming task that paid off with every congratulatory phone call I got to make, and agonizing when the final votes were tallied and I looked at the deserving people who fell just below the cut line.

Although it was not part of the panel's criteria, the bar for entry was high for the 25 new members on the list. Between them, the 25 drivers averaged four world championships and a mean of 60 national event wins.

With just 25 spots open and dozens and dozens of drivers eligible, the voting was extremely close, and the final rankings ultimately excluded NHRA stars such as Brittany Force, Matt Hines, Jack Beckman, Rickie Smith, Scott Kalitta, Rick Santos, Joey Severance, and Bill Reichert, all of whom had great careers but just missed making the list.

Sixty-four drivers received at least one vote from the panel, showing the diversity of the panel and the number of drivers that any one of them felt deserved to be on the list.

When I look at the list of people who just missed — several of whom were on my personal ballot — I wish that we had more than 25 spots because any of or all of them are probably deserving but, as Brian Lohnes reminded me when I was a guest of his NHRA Insider podcast a few weeks ago, this is what happens when you make a list: “There’s always too many butts and not enough seats.” And, again, the fact that 64 drivers got at least one vote probably watered down the overall pool of available votes to the top performers.

I don’t know how much more Beckman could have done. His 39 national event wins stacked up close to the respective 44 and 43 wins of fellow Funny Car drivers Cruz and Tony Pedregon — both of whom made the list — and while all three have two world championships, only one of Beckman’s was in Funny Car; the other was in Super Comp and, in some minds, winning a Sportsman world championship is just as hard (maybe harder) than winning a Pro title. Not that they were competing head-to-head for a spot, I think that Beckman’s chances may have been hurt by a near-four-year absence, and I think that the fact that both Pedregons went from hired drivers to world championship-winning owner/drivers may have weighed in their favor.

I got a chance to talk to Beckman this week for an interview in the next NHRA National Dragster, and, of course, the list came up, and Beckman, proving to be as great a human being as he is a Funny Car driver, said that although he was disappointed not to make the list, he couldn’t disagree with anyone’s inclusion on the list ahead of him and, frankly, might not have voted for himself above any of them. He’s a class act, and his ability to compare the past to the present in a very casual-sounding but analytical way is one of the many reasons I asked him to induct me into the International Drag Racing Hall of Fame last year.

Force was another I thought would be a sure bet to make the list, having also won two championships. I know a few of our panel used mathematical formulas to weigh success, and although she’s made great headlines with her 340-mph passes, becoming the first woman since Shirley Muldowney to win a Top Fuel championship, and 58 career No. 1 qualifiers, her total of just 19 wins was well below everyone else who made it.

Although he also fell a few votes shy of making the list, I was heartened by the support given to the late Scott Kalitta. We lost Scott in mid-2008, not long into the 2000-2025 voting period on which the panel was focused, and I wonder how many more races and championships he might have won had he not died. What’s interesting is that he also received some votes in the original Top 50 balloting in 2000, based on winning back-to-back Top Fuel championships in 1994 and 1995, but not enough to crack that list either. I have to believe this is mostly a timing issue: Too late for the original list, which focused very heavily on legends like Don Garlits and Don Prudhomme from the 1950s on, and lost too early in the voting cycle of this one. I would have loved to have seen Scott’s name on the Top 75 Drivers list alongside his father, Connie, a member of the original Top 50 roster, and his cousin Doug, who is part of the new Class of 75. For the record, Scott had 18 wins, only three of which came in the 2000s, which shows you the respect that the current judges still had for him.

Smith was a surprise almost-made-it for me, but only because no other Pro Mod driver was part of anyone’s ballot, but the panel clearly respected what “Trickie Rickie” has done: wins in Pro Mod (18), Pro Stock (2), and Comp (1) and three Pro Mod championships. Like Scott Kalitta, it would have been cool to see Rickie on the list that his son, Matt, made this year.

Speaking of Matts, I similarly would have been stoked to see Matt Hines join his brother, Andrew, on the list, but Hines’ three championships all came in the very late 1990s, as did 23 of his 30 wins, back when Andrew, shown above left with Matt and their father, Byron, was just a teenager. Like Kalitta, great totals but maybe also so late in the 1955-1999 voting cycle. On the opposite end of that timing issue, current dominators like Austin Prock and Gaige Herrera, both of whom have won multiple championships and more than 20 national event titles in just the last three years, also did not make the new list because their careers are so relatively young.

And finally, there’s a trio of brilliant Top Alcohol Dragster pilots in Rick Santos, Joey Severance, and Bill Reichert. Santos has 36 national event wins and five world championships on his résumé. As a body of work, it’s certainly Top 75 worthy, but 23 of the 29 wins and three of the five championships were won in the 1990s, which, again, split the voting windows. Severance collected 29 wins and five championships and Reichert also five Top Alcohol Dragster championships in the 2000s while racking up 28 wins, but somehow were all a bit overlooked and disappointingly also fell a few votes shy.

I’ll be the first to admit that there’s a bit of a Pro-racer bias in the choices, as just four Sportsman drivers — Dan Fletcher, Jeff Taylor, Peter Biondo, and Sean Bellemeur — made the list, and of those, Bellemeur’s impressive 48 wins and four championships were somehow the lowest of that group.

Believe me when I say that I beat myself (and sometimes the process) up over these near-misses, but the decision was made early on — following the precedent set by both NASCAR and the NBA on their 75th anniversary Top 75s — that instead of creating a from-scratch list of 75 drivers that we honor the original 50 by not removing any of them and add a new 25. The original 50 also was ranked, and there’s no practical way to rank drivers from the 1960s and 1970s against drivers from the 2000s, so we went with just adding the 25, which makes perfect mathematical sense — one third of the list being added for one third of the 75 years.

When I look back at the original Top 50 — the voting criteria was much wider, including technological advancements and other elements beyond sheer wins and championships — I see a lot of sentimentality in the voting and a desire to honor legacies and accomplishments that shaped those first 50 years, which goes a long way to explain how Fuel Altered pioneer Willie Borsch, Top Fuel Motorcycle icon Elmer Trett, and Black racing pioneer Malcom Durham made the list despite zero national event wins or championships between them. What they brought can’t be measured in hardware.

I mentioned early on the joy that I got from making the phone calls — I made 19 of the 25, my buddy Kevin McKenna helping out with the other six, letting him tell the racers on the list to whom he was closest — and it was a thrill. I got to talk to some people no longer active — catching up with Robert Hight, Jason Line, and Gary Scelzi was wonderful — and of the current group, many expressed amazement they had made the list, including some who I would have thought had to know they’d be included.

I’ve compiled their quotes here for you to enjoy, and several really stick out in my mind. It was great to be able to share the news with Del Worsham and Larry Dixon, who both grew up in the sport surrounded by their nitro-racing dads, and whose careers I witnessed from the onset, and many of them had the presence of mind, despite my cold call, to acknowledge those who helped them get there. Tracking some of them down — such as Hight — was sometimes a challenge, and Shawn Langdon had to call me from Qatar, where he was racing, as he does each winter.

Hearing Dixon talk about his anticipation and hope of making the list as the five-at-a-time reveals went on and he wasn't on them (until the last one), and how he compared it to the way he enjoyed the numerical countdown of the original ranked Top 50, was very cool. 

Matt Hagan told me that his father had consulted ChatGTP to see if his son would make it, which I thought was delightful, and Line said that while he himself was not hanging on every revelation, his son had been. I'm glad it means so much not just to the drivers themselves, but to their families, too.

As I got better at breaking the news and eliciting more comments from the list, it sometimes became emotional for them when I reminded them that now they were on the same list as their childhood heroes like Garlits, Prudhomme, Bob Glidden, and Muldowney. It was a very touching experience, especially because a lot of these drivers are very good about having an emotionally neutral “game face” at the track.

All in all, it’s been a great experience. Time to start working on that Top 100 list for 2051.

Meanwhile, the companion feature to the Top 75 Drivers program — the Top 75 Moments in NHRA history — continues its countdown to the top spot. The rankings are the result of a pure fan vote, of which 42,000 votes were received. It has been a real treat to relive those memories, digging back into the vault to find photos and sharing the cumulative list on one of my other passion projects, the NHRA 75th Anniversary website.

When I researched and compiled the 100 moments from which the fans could pick 75, I, of course, had my favorites, branded into my psyche from decades of fandom, and, like my Top 75 Drivers ballot, not all of my picks got the placement I thought they deserved. But, hey, that’s why it’s good to have a village help you with a list. We just released Nos. 26-35 yesterday, so now we’re down to the Top 25 and counting down to the No. 1 moment, which will be announced later this month.

Although they won’t be “tentpole” programs of the 75th anniversary season like Top 75 Drivers and Top 75 Moments, my cronies and I will continue to celebrate the legends of our sport in other ways. My longtime friend, former National Dragster colleague, and Sportsman-racing crusader, Kelly Wade, advocated for a separate list of NHRA’s greatest Sportsman racers, which we’re going to have a hand in creating with a great program that will call upon the expertise of many Sportsman greats to create. She, like I, was disappointed that several of today’s great Sportsman racers didn’t make the Top 75 list, so we’re out to salute them in this new way.

I’ll also be looking into creating all-time “greatest” lists for Top Fuel, Funny Car, Pro Stock, Pro Stock Motorcycle, and Top Alcohol, as well as nitro-racing crew chiefs, and any other ideas that creep into my brain. Your input, dear readers, is especially welcome at the email address below.

Finally, because many of you have asked about it, we expect the coffee-table 75th anniversary book — the result of more than two years of hard work by my small team — should finally be available for purchase next week. We’ve had our office copies for about a week now, and I’m still marveling at how well it turned out. You’ve got to get one. Niggling little things like shipping and receiving and the onboarding of products at e-commerce sites have left us a little late to the staging lanes. Similarly, the Top 75 Drivers book will also be available shortly.

Thanks again to the readers of this column, for your passion for this sport and its history, which helps drive me to continue to chronicle it all.

Phil Burgess can be reached at pburgess@nhra.com

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