Greco admits he struggled in qualifying and ended up No. 8 out of the 14 Top Alcohol Dragsters on the grounds. Things turned around in eliminations, though. In the opening round, he used a 5.326-second pass to finish ahead of No. 9 qualifier Dan Dietrich and No. 1 qualifier Matt Cummings. Offseason upgrades showed up in a big way in the semifinals when Greco threw down a career-best 5.243 at 273.94 mph to win a quad that included rookie McKenna Bold, Dietrich, and John Ausherman. In the final round, he cut a .014 reaction time and recorded another career-best, 5.241, to defeat Kelly Kundratic, James Stevens, and Bold.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cEverything just clicked,\u201d says Greco. \u201cI did my job and the crew did theirs servicing the car in between rounds. We had a bunch of thrashing to do. We picked up a new sponsor for that race and he was actually there, so that was cool for them to actually see us win.\u201d<\/p>\n
The victory was rewarding in more ways than one for Greco, who works at the family auto repair shop during the week.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was definitely worth the wait,\u201d Greco says. \u201cYou miss a lot of family functions, friends\u2019 functions like weddings and birthdays, just to go racing. Between all the hours at your regular job and all the hours away racing, it adds up. After all those years, it was very rewarding.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not just the competition that makes it hard to succeed at this level. There are also supply chain and economic forces at work.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cGetting parts is a very hard thing,\u201d Greco says. \u201cCrankshafts are a year-and-a-half out. If you\u2019re not buying stuff for next year, you\u2019re kind of just screwing yourself. It\u2019s very hard even to get clutch discs. We\u2019re just always playing catchup compared to the bigger teams. It\u2019s hard as an underfunded team.\u201d<\/p>\n Greco drives one of the few remaining clutch-equipped, supercharged, methanol-burning dragsters left in the class. The nitro-injected A\/Fuel combination has become dominant, and torque converters have replaced clutches in a lot of the blown dragsters. Greco sees those trends continuing, but he\u2019s sticking with his chosen combination for as long as it makes sense.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s very challenging as a driver and maintenance-wise,\u201d Greco says of the blown\/clutch combo. \u201cI do like to swap feet still. In the next five to 10 years, I don\u2019t think there will be more than three or four blown dragsters. I think a lot of people will just quit or maybe switch over to A\/Fuel. But I\u2019m trying to keep it together. I\u2019m willing to help anybody that needs some help. I raced with [Mike] Kosky for many years and he taught me all the ins and outs, and now I work with Maddern Racing, so I\u2019m always learning over there too.\u201d<\/p>\n Greco admits he has an interest in getting into something with doors, like a Pro Mod or Pro 275 car, but with his first NHRA national event win out of the way, he\u2019s determined to keep turning on win lights in Top Alcohol Dragster.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAs people tell me, you get your first national event win, now it\u2019s all eyes on you and you\u2019ve got to keep up with those expectations,\u201d says Greco, who thanked his crew and supporters like SPEVCO and Lesleh Precision Machine. \u201cThat\u2019s very hard, but we\u2019re going to just keep chipping away at it.\u201d<\/p>\n The post Patience Rewarded: Brandon Greco Reflects on First NHRA Top Alcohol Dragster National Event Win<\/a> first appeared on Drag Illustrated<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Seventeen years ago, Brandon Greco made his NHRA Top Alcohol Dragster debut with dreams of one day hoisting a prestigious golden Wally. Since 2008, he\u2019s been chasing that goal through trials and tribulations, ups and downs, peaks and valleys \u2013 all of the clich\u00e9s used to describe the roller coaster that is drag racing. Greco\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-102417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102417"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102417\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/dragillustrated.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Greco-winners-circle.jpg\")