Gary Pritchett’s Top Fuel dragster was literally on fire when he crossed the finish line last Saturday night at Darana Motorsports Park. He didn’t care. He thought the flames dancing off the body panels were his win light.
Turns out, it was both.
Pritchett, out of Elkton, Maryland, wheeled his United Garage Doors-backed Top Fuel dragster to a first-career Ironman trophy at the IHRA Outlaw Nitro Series season opener, March 19-21, taking out Jasmine Salinas in a final round that was equal parts dramatic and dominant. Pritchett left first with a .063 reaction time and hammered down a 3.080-second pass at 274.00 mph while Salinas – who had been the class of the field all weekend with the low ET (3.004) and top speed (286.86 mph) – broke on the hit and limped to a 9.471.
“This is my first one of my life,” Pritchett said during his top-end interview, fire retardant still coating the car like confetti. “There’s a lot of people watching this right now that made this happen. A lot of years of doing this as a crew guy.”
That backstory matters. Pritchett didn’t parachute into a Top Fuel seat. He earned it the old-fashioned way – years of wrenching on other people’s cars, learning the craft from the ground up before ever strapping in. When he talks about every crew guy “from top to bottom” being the reason a win light comes on, he’s not performing gratitude. He’s lived it.
Pritchett qualified second in the eight-car Top Fuel field and was consistent from the jump. He opened eliminations with a .071 light and a 3.069 at 283.61 to dispatch C. Loftin, then ran a 3.134 at 272.56 in the semifinals to take out L. Callaway, who went .105 on the tree and couldn’t recover despite a respectable 3.176.
The final was supposed to be the marquee matchup – Pritchett vs. Salinas, the No. 2 qualifier against the weekend’s quickest and fastest car. But drag racing doesn’t care about scripts. Salinas’s machine gave up the ghost almost immediately, and Pritchett powered through his own mechanical drama to seal it.
“I saw something going on by the walls,” Pritchett recalled. “I thought it was my win light, and apparently we were on fire. We got fire retardant all over the car – it looks kind of like champagne. I wish it was that.”
It might as well have been. In a sport defined by sudden death every round, Pritchett’s path to his first Ironman was clean and decisive: three round wins, three solid reaction times, and a car that held together just long enough to matter.
Pritchett made sure to thank the people behind the curtain – Doug Sr. and Shelagh Foley, United Garage Doors, Jim and Joe Clark, Coble Enterprises, Redline Oil, and Doug Foley Jr. among them. He gave a shoutout to his wife, Jessica. And he acknowledged a bet with his crew that he chose to keep private, grinning through it.
“I’m just the guy in it that gets to hit the gas,” Pritchett said. “It takes every crew guy from top to bottom to make a win light come on.”
They made three of them Saturday night. And the first one that really counted came wrapped in fire retardant and 20-plus years of paying dues.
The IHRA Outlaw Nitro Series continues its 2026 season April 9-11 at Virginia Motorsports Park. For Pritchett and his team, the mission is simple: prove the first one wasn’t a fluke – and that the crew-guy-turned-driver belongs in the seat.
This story was originally published on March 27, 2026.
The post Gary Pritchett Scores First Career Top Fuel Win in Dramatic IHRA Season Opener first appeared on Drag Illustrated.
