When the IHRA announced the cancellation of the remaining Outlaw Nitro Series races on July 9, Mountain Motor Pro Stock was sidelined for the umpteenth time in the category’s relatively short history. Now, participants like multi-series world champion Johnny Pluchino are working diligently to ensure the class has a future.
Pluchino has been around Mountain Motor Pro Stock his whole life. He grew up watching his uncle, John Nobile, compete in IHRA Pro Stock, where he won the 2004 world championship. Johnny’s dad, John Pluchino, started competing in the class in the late 2000s and went on to win the 2016 PDRA Extreme Pro Stock world championship. The elder Pluchino handed the keys to his son in 2019. Johnny took the opportunity and ran with it, winning PDRA Extreme Pro Stock world titles in 2020 and 2022 and an NHRA Mountain Motor Pro Stock championship in 2024.
“As a team, we definitely have a lot invested – a lot of time, effort, and resources,” Pluchino says. “So we definitely want to see this thing through. It’s an amazing class that has definitely had some adversity and good times and bad.”
Last season, Mountain Motor Pro Stock had three series in which to compete: PDRA Extreme Pro Stock, Johnson’s Horsepowered Garage NHRA Mountain Motor Pro Stock, and IHRA Mountain Motor Pro Stock. Pluchino was one of a handful of drivers who dabbled in all three, though his focus was on defending his NHRA title. He made it to the semifinals in the one IHRA event he entered, but when rain pushed the rest of the race into Sunday, Pluchino had to leave due to prior commitments.
This season, the Mountain Motor Pro Stock class decided as a group to focus on the opportunities presented by the latest iteration of the IHRA. Never-before-seen prize money, pro class billing, and hospitality were among the attractive aspects. Pluchino won the first two races and added semifinal finishes at the other two, putting himself in the position to join fellow Long Islander John Montecalvo as a season champion in three different series.
“We had a 12-2 round record. We had almost a five-round lead at this point for the championship,” Pluchino says. “We’ve got two wins out of the five events we’ve ever attended since the new IHRA has existed. Things were going well for us until the news broke.”
Pluchino didn’t have any warm and fuzzy feelings when IHRA announced the cancellation of three events in late June. He saw it as an understandable pulling back from an ambitious initial approach to the season. But when the rest of the season as a whole was cancelled a couple weeks later, Pluchino felt a lot of different emotions. Most notably, he was upset for his team and supporters.
“We put so much effort into this as a race team that it crushes you as a competitor to not be able to see it through,” Pluchino says. “We live and work for championships. We really felt like this year, we were going to make another one happen. The trophy is what we do it for. The prize money that came with it this year was something that would have been huge for a team like ours. That was the added bonus on top of that championship trophy.
“That was the first thing you think of – not for myself or my dad, who’s the team owner – but also for my sponsor, and for all my partners who have done so much to help us reach our goals this year,” Pluchino continues. “We came into this season knowing it would be the toughest year of Mountain Motor Pro Stock, maybe ever. And we really dug deep to be as competitive as we were. It wasn’t just because we had a couple good races. We worked at getting better and being as prepared as we could be to have those results. I was proud of where we were at.”
Pluchino’s mindset quickly moved to finding a solution. His Kaase-powered Ross Environmental Services Mustang was performing at perhaps an all-time best. The class itself was also at a high point, with more than 20 cars showing up at the last race. Drag Illustrated Senior Editor Craig Cook declared it “IHRA’s most exciting class” in this June 24 op-ed piece. Pluchino wanted to keep that momentum going.
“That’s really the most important part of it, right? It’s the future of this class,” Pluchino says. “I don’t want to race anything else. I don’t want to race a fuel car. I don’t necessarily want to race a Pro Mod car. I don’t want to bracket race. I live and breathe Mountain Motor Pro Stock. So now you think, “OK, we have all this invested into a Mountain Motor Pro Stock car. What’s next? Where do we go from here to make sure we’re making the right decisions for every team involved in the future of the sport and class?’”
What’s frustrating for Pluchino and other Mountain Motor Pro Stock stakeholders is the fact that the class repeatedly ends up in the position of having to repair and rebuild itself. As Pluchino points out, there’s not just one single factor leading to these predicaments.
“Some things were out of our control, just deals that fell apart due to various reasons, and there’s been some division in the class as well,” Pluchino says as he reflects on the class’s rocky history. “Between those two things, we’ve had some bum luck. We’ve had too many places to race at times to where the class wasn’t able to put on the show that we were able to do this year when we stick together and have one place to race. But unfortunately, right now, we had one place, and we just lost that place.
“So again, we need to now stick together and make the right decision for us, for the people who support us, and for the future of the class because there’s really no class who’s put on the show that we have this year, especially in the IHRA,” Pluchino asserts. “The level of competition that we displayed this year at the four events that we participated in was incredible. We had between 23 and 26 cars at every race. We had fields separated by a few hundredths. We had a large percentage of rounds being decided by thousandths. The racing was amazing.”
With that momentum in mind, Pluchino is optimistic that the future can be bright. The class has a lot going for it, but the group must act quickly and it must act together.
“The cars weren’t all sold. The teams are still intact. The same level of competition that we’ve displayed all year long, which was really second to none, is still there,” Pluchino says. “So as long as this group, who has had trouble sticking together in the past, is able to stick together, then we’ll be just fine. We’ll get it figured out. We’ll come up with a deal that works best for us and whichever organization we race with. But the most important piece of this is sticking together and bringing 20-25 cars to every race and putting on an event that people rush to the stands to see Mountain Motor Pro Stock.”
While the class is still working to find a season-long home with a national series, a one-off race has already been added to the schedule. The 49th annual Cornwell Quality Tools Night Under Fire at Summit Motorsports Park in Norwalk, Ohio, will host a Mountain Motor Pro Stock shootout as part of its incredible lineup on August 1. Mountain Motor Pro Stock will compete on the same stage as NHRA nitro stars like Doug Kalitta, Jordan Vandergriff, Ron Capps, Maddi Gordon, Spencer Hyde, and Cruz Pedregon, as well as a host of exhibition acts. For the first time in the event’s history, fans around the world can stream it live on FloRacing.
“Thanks to the amazing people at Summit Motorsports Park and Ross Environmental Services and the other people who are jumping on board, soon to be announced, we’re going to have an opportunity in front of a packed house at one of the nicest facilities in drag racing,” Pluchino says. “That’s going to be our first stop right now. We’re very excited about that. We are going to be racing for a great prize in front of a ton of fans on a historic facility.”
Night Under Fire will serve as a proof of concept: Mountain Motor Pro Stock can be not just another class to fill track time, but a true part of the show. Pluchino and numerous behind-the-scenes players are ringing phones, rounding up funding, and working to make sure Mountain Motor Pro Stock has opportunities to race. It’s up to the class as a whole to continue providing value, whether that’s as a booked-in show or as a touring class.
“So far, the teams have shown that we’re going to stick together, and I’m hopeful that that’s going to remain that way,” Pluchino says. “We are looking at all possibilities at this point for the remainder of this year. Then we’ll step into what 2027 looks like once we get that ironed out. If anybody would like to contact us about opportunities in 2026, we’re putting all those down on paper right now, trying to sort out what looks best for those organizations and tracks as well as for our class. But again, when Mountain Motor Pro Stock shows up at your event, we need to be there with 16-plus cars with an A+ show. And that’s our plan. As long as we can keep doing that, everything else will fall into place.”
This story was originally published on July 15, 2026. 
The post Johnny Pluchino Discusses Mountain Motor Pro Stock’s Path Forward Following IHRA Cancellation first appeared on Drag Illustrated.
