Hagan leads Funny Car, Vandergriff and Todd have already shown how to catch him
Jordan Vandergriff just wanted a chance to race. Now the rookie is 39 points back as Hagan goes for his fifth title and NHRA closes its 75th anniversary season at Pomona.
by Crystal Clay
Matt Hagan lost a final to Jordan Vandergriff earlier this season. The younger driver, Hagan recalled, didn’t even want to celebrate in front of him.
“Hey, bud, you did good,” Hagan remembered telling him. “You can hoop and holler a little bit.”
Hagan told that story in Las Vegas with two races left. Now NHRA’s 75th anniversary season ends at Pomona, and the rookie Hagan encouraged to celebrate is 39 points behind him. A fifth Funny Car title would put Hagan second all time, behind John Force. Vandergriff is chasing his first title in the car that won the past two for Force. J.R. Todd, already a champion with Kalitta Motorsports, can still win a second title.
“All I wanted was a chance,” Vandergriff said after his Las Vegas win. He had spent years working his way back into a race car. Now he was going home to race for a championship.
Hagan has a fifth title in sight
In April, Hagan beat Ron Capps at Pomona to win the 1,000th Funny Car race in NHRA history. It was his eighth victory at the track, where he has won a career-best 59 rounds, according to Tony Stewart Racing.
Hagan ran the first three-second pass in NHRA Funny Car history, a 3.995 in 2011. Fifteen years later, Las Vegas produced the first all-three-second Funny Car field. Every one of the 16 qualifiers ran under four seconds. Jason Rupert’s 3.998 made him the 16th driver to break the barrier that weekend. He was later bumped from the field.
He came into Las Vegas with a 98-point lead over Vandergriff after three finals and a semifinal in the first four Countdown races. A fifth championship would move Hagan ahead of Kenny Bernstein and Don Prudhomme and give him second place on the Funny Car title list behind Force, who won 16.
There’s a more personal reason Hagan wants this one. Hagan went to team owner Tony Stewart and asked him to promote Mike Knudsen to crew chief, taking over for Dickie Venables. Stewart’s response was "classic" Tony Stewart. If it didn’t work, Hagan recalled, Stewart would fire them both.
“We’re trying to get him his first championship as a crew chief,” Hagan said in a Tony Stewart Racing release before Las Vegas.
Hagan spoke in Las Vegas about preparing for pressure. A driver could sit there thinking about everything he might get wrong, he said, or remind himself, “This is what I work for.” He credited Vandergriff with handling that pressure well in his first Funny Car season.
The people in the next lane
The names behind the three drivers at the Oct. 29 news conference spanned generations of racing. Todd drives for Connie Kalitta, Vandergriff for John Force and Hagan for Tony Stewart.
“I have much respect for both of these guys sitting here,” Hagan said. “And to be friends on top of it, you know, we battle it out.”
Todd was watching March Madness in Indianapolis in 2014 when Connie Kalitta called and asked him to come to Las Vegas. Todd was driving Top Fuel part time for Jordan’s uncle, Bob Vandergriff Jr., and his car was off that weekend. Todd recalled checking with Bob about driving for Kalitta. Bob told him to go ahead.
Todd flew out the next morning. He didn’t know whether the assignment would last beyond the weekend. With sponsorship in place at Kalitta, he said, he could focus on driving. Four years later, he won the Funny Car championship for the team.
Vandergriff came through his uncle’s driver development program in an A/Fuel dragster. He and Austin Prock were Top Fuel rookies in 2019, when Vandergriff made 11 starts and finished runner-up in Dallas. His primary sponsor pulled out at the end of the season. Nearly six years passed before his next Top Fuel start.
He went on “The Bachelorette” during the layoff. In 2024, he made his first nitro Funny Car test runs in Las Vegas in one of Force’s cars. The following season, he worked as an NHRA pit reporter for Fox, interviewing Prock while still looking for a ride of his own. He made two Top Fuel starts that year in relief of Shawn Reed.
Then John Force Racing put Vandergriff in the Cornwell Quality Tools Funny Car for 2026. The seat Prock won back-to-back championships in. Chris Cunningham and Jason Bunker took over as crew chiefs.
Vandergriff knew the team would be expected to contend for a third title. “I wanted those expectations to stay that way,” he said after winning in Vegas. His first job was to prove to himself he could drive a Funny Car well. He trusted his crew to give him a chance to win.
“I didn’t feel the pressure,” he said.
Vandergriff said that his first Funny Car win, at the Southern Nationals in Georgia, made a championship feel possible. He arrived in Las Vegas with three wins. Asked where his focus was now, he said it was on “beating the crap out of Matt Hagan.”
Todd got to Hagan first. He knocked the points leader out in the second round, two weeks after beating him in the Texas FallNationals final. Vandergriff beat Todd in the semifinals. In the final, he ran 3.873 seconds at 331.36 mph to beat Capps, a driver he used to ask for autographs. His fourth win of the season put him within 39 points of Hagan.
When Racing Refresh brought up the remark after the win, Vandergriff was quick to clarify that he meant it figuratively. Against the broad-shouldered Hagan, he liked his chances a lot better in a Funny Car.
“I can’t be buddy-buddy with them all the time,” Vandergriff said. “I want to be.”
A championship within reach
Pomona was the track Vandergriff visited most growing up in nearby Brea, California. He has a chance to win his first title there and give the Cornwell entry its third straight. He figured he might be a little tighter in Pomona than he was in Las Vegas.
“The pressure’s on,” he said. “Let’s go for it.”
Each round of advancement at the finale is worth 30 points. A Vandergriff win and a Hagan semifinal loss would swing 60 points before qualifying is counted. If Vandergriff trims the deficit to fewer than 30 points in qualifying, one extra round would put him ahead of Hagan. If Hagan takes a lead of more than 30 into eliminations and reaches the final, the championship is his.
Todd trails Hagan by 104 points and Vandergriff by 65. On the incoming numbers, he needs to win, with Hagan losing in the first round and Vandergriff going out in one of the first two. Qualifying can change that math. In Las Vegas, Todd showed how much a driver in third can do to change a title race himself.
He said he liked his chances with the lead. He also allowed for the possibility that Vandergriff might win it. “But I know he’s fighting for his first one, and I’m fighting for my fifth,” Hagan said.I
At Pomona, Hagan could look into the next lane and see Todd, who ended his day in Las Vegas, or Vandergriff, the driver he once had to talk into celebrating.
The driver Vandergriff replaced has a long shot at a third straight title. Austin Prock enters Pomona 141 points behind Hagan in his first season with Tasca Racing. If Hagan makes the field, Prock needs to gain at least 22 points on him in qualifying, then win Sunday with Hagan out in the first round. He'd also need Vandergriff and Todd to finish far enough back for him to pass them.
NHRA’s 75th anniversary season ends at the track where Hagan won Funny Car’s 1,000th race. A fifth championship would put him alone behind John Force in the record book. The win light can still come on in either lane. If Pomona’s history has taught us something, it’s that anything is possible.
The first-round upset Prock needs is one his team owner has pulled off before. Hagan took a 38-point lead over John Force into eliminations at Pomona in 2010 and figured he needed to go just two rounds to win his first championship. Bob Tasca III beat him in the opening round. Force clinched his 15th title a round later.
“He goes up there and wins the race,” Hagan recalled of Force in his Oct. 29 interview with Racing Refresh in Las Vegas. Hagan remembered being “devastated” as he watched.
If Hagan goes out early again, Vandergriff could have company.
“You can leave on time, keep it in the groove, but you just have to hope to see that win light come on,” Hagan said.
How to watch:
The In-N-Out Burger NHRA Finals run Nov. 12-15 at In-N-Out Burger Pomona Dragstrip. Pro qualifying is Friday and Saturday. Sunday’s eliminations begin at 11 a.m. Pacific time. FS1’s eliminations coverage starts at 2 p.m. Pacific time, 5 p.m. Eastern time
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