NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

As part of NHRA’s 75th Anniversary celebration, an elite panel of Sportsman racing legends — Dan Fletcher, David Rampy, Peter Biondo, Luke Bogacki, Justin Lamb, Gary Stinnett, Jeff Taylor, and Austin Williams, who have combined for 411 NHRA national event victories and 35 world championships — has collaborated to select the Top 50 Sportsman Racers from NHRA’s first 75 years.

Each racer named to the Top 50 Sportsman Racers list will receive a large commemorative NHRA medallion recognizing their place among the most accomplished Sportsman competitors in NHRA history.

Here's the fifth and final group of 10, presented in alphabetical order.

Sherman Adcock Jr.

Sherman Adcock Jr. once famously said that NHRA Super-class racing was “like playing rock, paper, scissors, because no matter what you bring, it might be wrong.”  While that might be true, Adcock has made a history of making the right decisions at the right time in a long and successful career that has netted a pair of Super Gas world titles and a host of other accolades.

Racing alongside his brother and crew chief, Woody, and his wife, Michele, Adcock has claimed 15 national event titles, including three at the NHRA Gatornationals, and he won as recently as the 2026 NHRA Southern Nationals at his home event at South Georgia Motorsports Park.

Racing in Super Comp and Super Gas, Adcock does some of his best work on the divisional level, where he’s earned 11 Southeast Division titles between 1986 and 2023, including a double championship in 2012. He also has 32 divisional victories to his credit. 

Frank Aragona Jr.

At the time that he clinched his third Competition eliminator world championship in 2019, Frank Aragona Jr. was just the third driver to score a trio of titles in the class and also just the third driver to win back-to-back points-based championships in the class.

The second-generation driver from New Jersey had won his first more than a decade earlier, in 2007, and it took his family team years and many long nights of work to find engine combinations to combat their regular assault on the class indexes, alternating between dragsters and a Bantam roadster. Once they got back to the top in 2018, they weren’t about to relinquish their grip, winning the crown back-to-back.

The 2019 campaign was especially noteworthy as he won two of his 16 career national event wins, including the NHRA U.S. Nationals, won the JEGS Allstars for the second straight year, and collected his seventh Division 1 championship. He also owned 40 divisional wins. He passed away in February 2023 after a brave battle with cancer.

Jeffrey Barker

No form of E.T. bracket racing is easy, but when one considers the speed and performance associated with the Top Sportsman and Top Dragster classes, sustained success becomes even more difficult to achieve.

Racing wheel to wheel at more than 200 mph never seemed to bother Jeffrey Barker as he became one of the earliest stars of the NHRA Top Sportsman/Dragster movement, claiming the class’ inaugural championship in 2015 and then returning two years later for an encore.

The son of longtime racer and track operator Jerry Barker, Jeffrey won six national event finals, including four at his home track, Atlanta Dragway. On the divisional side, Barker did some of his best work with 21 victories between 2005 and 2017.

After his two titles, Barker went on to race in the Pro Mod category and also helped his wife, Lindsey, win a pair of national events in Top Dragster and Super Comp.

Craig Bourgeois

As one of just 10 drivers in the long history of Comp eliminator to win more than one world championship, Craig Bourgeois’ place in NHRA Sportsman racing history is secure.

The Metarie, La., king of the bayou collected NHRA Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series world championships in 2015 and 2020 in his front-engine nostalgia dragster, just the second Comp driver to ride that combination to dual championships (Dean Carter, 2003-04). He also collected six Division 4 championships and 23 divisional wins.

Bourgeois collected his first crown in 2015 thanks to a pair of national event wins — two of his career total of 11 — then just missed a second championship in 2019, falling just a few points behind fellow Top 50 Sportsman racer Frank Aragona Jr. The team rallied over the winter and found 50 hp by experimenting with manifolds and nuzzling and raced to his second title in 2020 after surviving a nasty bout with COVID-19 that hospitalized him, a year highlighted by a JEGS Allstars win and a NHRA U.S. Nationals runner-up on the same weekend.

Al Corda

When it comes to long and prosperous careers, there are few that can match the success or the staying power of Al Corda.

The winner of the 1971 NHRA U.S. Nationals, Corda has since earned 14 national event wins in the 1970s, 80s, 90s, and 2000s, and he has chipped in with eight NHRA Lucas Oil Series wins and world titles in 1986 and 1997.

Known primarily for his success in vintage Mopar race cars, Corda later made the move to a fuel-injected Pontiac Firebird for the latter half of a 50-plus-year career that continues to this day. Corda returned for a second Indy win in 1993 and also has wins in Pomona, Gainesville, Atlanta, Las Vegas, Phoenix, and Topeka.

Out of the driver’s seat, Corda spent many years as a successful track operator at Rock Falls Raceway in Wisconsin. 

Jeg Coughlin Jr.

The weight of bearing the name of a high-performance automotive parts company started by your father could have been a crushing pressure, but for Jeg Coughlin Jr., the famed yellow and black of JEGS High Performance found relevance in winner's circle after winner's circle.

He earned the nickname "the Natural" early, and it stuck as he powered to 89 national event wins across seven categories — the first of two in history to do so — with a deftness that rivaled the best.

The 1997 season showed previously unseen diversity as he became the first to win in four categories in a single season (Pro Stock, Comp, Super Stock, Super Gas). Known to leave ahead of his competitors with lightning-quick reflexes, Coughlin racked up 15 divisional wins and four NHRA North Central titles, including a double-up division championship in 1997. The six-time world champion earned his first in Super Gas in 1992 and five followed in Pro Stock.
 

Nick Folk

When it comes to the hallmarks of a winning racer, Nick Folk checks all the boxes as he’s competitive, versatile, focused, and talented. A second-generation racer, Folk won the 2016 world title in Super Comp and has 11 NHRA national event wins and 10 divisional titles on his résumé. That total includes a rare double-up at the 2017 Norwalk race, when he won in Super Stock and Super Comp just minutes apart.

Perhaps Folk’s biggest strength is his adaptability, as his 11 national event wins have come across six different categories: Super Stock, Stock, Super Comp, Super Gas, Super Street, and Top Dragster. Between door cars and dragsters, full Tree or Pro Tree, Folk always seems to have his bases covered.

His impressive NHRA credentials aside, Folk, along with his father, Ron; brother Brian; uncles Randy and Steve; and cousin Jason, are each among some of the most decorated and successful high-stakes E.T. bracket racers in the country. 

Edmond Richardson

Ask any Sportsman racer to name the best in history and, undoubtedly, Edmond Richardson will be toward the top. Every panel polled agrees: in 2001, he was named to NHRA's Top 50 Drivers, a list expanded this season to honor the Top 75.

From 1990 to 2014, Richardson won 48 national events and five world championships, with three series titles in Super Comp and two in Stock, and five times he has doubled at a national event. He and brother Scotty — also one of the Top 75 Drivers — were a double threat on the racetrack for years, terrorizing the competition in a variety of categories.

In 2021, after racing sporadically for nearly a decade, the elder Richardson showed little rust with back-to-back Super Gas victories at the Division 3 race in Bowling Green, Ky., (the 50th division win of his career) followed by his 49th national event win at the NHRA U.S. Nationals and second at the prestigious event.

Greg Stanfield

Nearly three decades after winning four Super Stock world championships in a five-year stretch, Greg Stanfield returned with a vengeance to lock down the 2021 title in the category, driving the same car with the same result.

Now a six-time champion with the 2024 Factory X title added to the pile, Stanfield has reemerged as a title contender in Pro Stock and is still actively involved in Sportsman racing, providing power for Stock, Super Stock, and Factory Stock competitors through Stanfield Racing Engines — a business he and son Aaron, a well-decorated racer in his own right — operate together.

Stanfield, whose father, Howard, and uncle Allen paved the way in drag racing, has claimed 22 national wins and reached 55 finals across Sportsman and Pro categories. He's one of a select few to have won in six categories at the national event level (Super Stock, Stock, and Comp, as well as Factory X, Pro Stock and Pro Stock Truck).

Jeff Strickland

Double trouble has been the name of the game for Alabama native Jeff Strickland. The respected racer is one of just 31 drivers to have doubled with national event wins, and he has done it twice.

The first was in Gainesville in 2016, and a little over a year later, he did it again in Norwalk. After the NHRA Gatornationals feat in 2016, Strickland continued to excel in both categories, ultimately winning world titles in each, an achievement that had not been recorded since Scotty Richardson in 1993 and has since been done by only three: Strickland, Richardson, and Justin Lamb (2017).

The 2018 JEGS Allstars Top Dragster winner has thus far earned 24 national event wins in four categories — Super Stock, Stock, Super Comp, and Top Dragster — and is a 33-time winner at the division level with 10 division championships to his credit, including the double-up Division 2 titles last season.

Top 50 Sportsman Racers

Group 1 bios

Group 2 bios

Group 3 bios

Group 4 bios

Group 5

COMPLETE TOP 50 LIST (ALPHABETIZED)
Sherman Adcock Jr.
Frank Aragona Jr.
Jeffrey Barker
Anthony Bertozzi
Peter Biondo
Sal Biondo
Dave Boertman
Luke Bogacki
Craig Bourgeois
Bo Butner
Brad Burton
Steve Cohen
Jeg Coughlin Jr.
Al Corda
Jimmy DeFrank
Jerry Emmons
Mark Faul
Mike Ferderer
Dan Fletcher
Nick Folk
Sheldon Gecker
Kevin Helms
Jeff Hefler
Jimmy Hidalgo Jr.
Jim Hughes
John Labbous Jr.
Justin Lamb
Jeff Lane
Jody Lang
Shawn Langdon
Jimmy Lewis
John Lingenfelter
Bill Maropulos
Bruno Massel Jr.
David Nickens
Tommy Phillips
Brad Plourd
David Rampy
Edmond Richardson
Ed Richardson
Scotty Richardson
Joe Santangelo II
Mike Saye
Kyle Seipel
Greg Stanfield
Gary Stinnett
Jeff Strickland
Jeff Taylor
Bobby Warren
Austin Williams