John Force Racing swept the Mission #2Fast2Tasty NHRA Challenge for the first time on Saturday at Virginia Motorsports Park, as Brittany Force won in Top Fuel and Austin Prock picked up the victory in Funny Car in the specialty race as part of this weekend\u2019s PlayNHRA Virginia Nationals.<\/p>\n
Greg Anderson (Pro Stock) and Matt Smith (Pro Stock Motorcycle) also won the specialty race at the ninth of 20 races during the 2024 NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series season.<\/p>\n
Force won the Top Fuel Mission #2Fast2Tasty Challenge for the first time in her standout career, going 3.966-seconds at 316.97 mph in her 11,000-horsepower HendrickCars.com Chevrolet dragster to defeat Tony Schumacher in the finals. It was a welcome turn of events for Force, who has struggled for the bulk of the 2024 season. She is the defending event winner in Richmond, breaking track records in 2022, and again found success at the facility on Saturday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is big for us, just because we\u2019ve been struggling for so long, and to be able to win this Mission Foods Challenge is huge for our team,\u201d Force said. \u201cWe need it just to keep us moving forward, keep us pumped up. We\u2019ve stayed motivated for all of it through last season and coming into this season. Every week, we come out here we you know, we push as hard as we can, and we still feel like we\u2019re going to win this thing. To be able to bring home this win for this team is huge. We all definitely needed it and we\u2019re excited about race day tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Funny Car, points leader Austin Prock stayed red-hot, winning the Mission #2Fast2Tasty Challenge for the third time this season and the second straight race, again defeating his boss, John Force, in the final round with a run of 4.037 at 315.93 in his 11,000-horsepower Cornwell Tools Chevrolet Camaro SS. It furthers Prock\u2019s incredible Funny Car rookie season, as he continues to showcase just how well his car, tuned by his father, Jimmy Prock, can run in any condition. Prock also doubled-up two weeks ago in Bristol and will try to do the same on Sunday.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe definitely struggled as an organization last year in this (Mission) deal, so this is nice to see, it kind of changes the tide to be racking up a lot of points,\u201d Prock said. \u201cI\u2019ve been having fun racing, my boss. He\u2019s got me one or two times, and I think I\u2019ve got him two times and it\u2019s always good when it\u2019s an all-JFR final round because you know you\u2019re going home with the tortilla chips.\u201d<\/p>\n
Greg Anderson won the Mission #2Fast2Tasty Challenge in Pro Stock for the first time in his career, knocking off longtime rival Erica Enders in the final round of the specialty event with a run of 6.626 at 206.80 in his HendrickCars.com Chevrolet Camaro. Anderson had a brilliant .004 reaction time and held off Enders\u2019 6.627 at the finish line to pick up the bonus points and bonus purse with the win. He knocked off Dallas Glenn to reach the finals against Enders. It was a thrilling moment for Anderson, who will now try to win a national event at Virginia Motorsports Park for the first time in his career.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not quite sure how I pulled off that reaction time but\u00a0I\u2019ll take it,\u201d Anderson said. \u201cObviously, it\u2019s fantastic. Racing\u00a0on Saturday is so exciting to us and it\u2019s like qualifying becomes kind of a second act for us, so it\u2019s making me very competitive, and that feels great. I love racing this (Mission #2Fast2Tasty Challenge) deal and I just wish I\u2019d done better in the past but doesn\u2019t matter now: I finally got a win.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pro Stock Motorcycle\u2019s Matt Smith earned his second straight in the Mission #2Fast2Tasty Challenge, defeating Richard Gadson in the final round with a solid run of 6.767 at 200.86 on his Denso Auto Parts\/Matt Smith Racing Buell. The six-time world champion disposed of both Vance & Hines bikes on Saturday, defeating points leader Gaige Herrera in the semifinals before getting past Gadson a round later. Smith, who is also the defending event winner at Virginia Motorsports Park, will look to carry that momentum into Sunday, where he\u2019s looking to win for the first time this season and end Herrera\u2019s NHRA record-tying streak of nine straight wins.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe knocked off Gaige (Herrera) in the first round and then we beat the other Vance & Hines bike with Richard (Gadson), so all in all great weekend so far,\u201d Smith said. \u201cI just keep rolling and trying to do the best I can to keep the momentum going, but we\u2019ve got a really good bike. This Denso bike is strong. and it\u2019s mean. We\u2019ve been working on bike but it\u2019s hard to control the tire when it gets hot but we\u2019re doing a pretty good job of it so far.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eliminations for the PlayNHRA Virginia Nationals begin at 12 p.m. on Sunday at Virginia Motorsports Park.<\/p>\n
This story was originally published on June 22, 2024. <\/p>\n
The post John Force Racing Sweeps Mission #2Fast2Tasty Challenge at Richmond; Anderson and M. Smith Also Get Wins<\/a> first appeared on Drag Illustrated<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" John Force Racing swept the Mission #2Fast2Tasty NHRA Challenge for the first time on Saturday at Virginia Motorsports Park, as Brittany Force won in Top Fuel and Austin Prock picked up the victory in Funny Car in the specialty race as part of this weekend\u2019s PlayNHRA Virginia Nationals. Greg Anderson (Pro Stock) and Matt Smith […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94237","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"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94237\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}