We say it each and every year, but the 2015 season will truly go down as the one of the most memorable campaigns in recent memory. Barriers were broken, records were crushed, and elapsed times and speeds that no one could have conceived 12 months ago became reality. Years after the fact, few remember who hoisted the winner’s trophy, but the performances truly stand the test of time, and this year, those who are driven by the continual march forward in the performance department did not disappoint.

In what has now become an annual tradition, we’ve spent the year tracking all the biggest, the baddest, the most mind-numbing runs from around the sport, compiled them all, poured over the numbers, and ranked them from one to 10.

10. Shawn Langdon Isn’t The First, But He Is The Quickest

The 3.6-second barrier in Top Fuel seemed to be the impenetrable wall that just wouldn’t come down. Antron Brown had set the national standard at 3.701 way back in the fall of 2012. Morgan Lucas had come close, with a pair of 3.70s at the 2014 Auto Club Finals in Pomona, and the number appeared to have finally fallen (unofficially, mind you) in pre-season testing when Brittany Force lit up the scoreboards with a 3.698, only to have it later discarded in the court of public opinion with a clearly bogus incremental time.

Then, at the Winternationals Langdon and his Alan Johnson-led team put the class right on the brink with a so-close 3.700, but it would be another seven months before someone would finally do the deed, when Brown punched into the sixties with a 3.680 in the first round of eliminations at the NHRA Lucas Oil Nationals in Brainerd, Minnesota. Brown’s lore was short-lived, however, as the 2014 Top Fuel champion reminded the class what an Alan Johnson car can do, going 3.662 at just 321.12 mph, the quickest 1,000-foot pass in history.

Most notably, other than the numbers on the scoreboard, Langdon went an eye-popping, seemingly unbelievable 299.33 mph to the 1/8-mile clocks.

9. Roger Holder Goes Where No Man (On Radials) Has Gone Before

When Roger Holder schooled the Pro Radial field at the Street Car Super Nationals one year ago with a steady string of all-time-quick performances, culminating in a 6.12-second, 244 mph record-setting blast, it set off a flurry of legitimate discussions about a five-second run by a radial car. Although that barrier hasn’t been directly challenged in the year since, Holder proved he was merely warming up in 2014 when he returned to the Street Car Super Nationals this November and blew away his own 1/4-mile record.

During qualifying, Holder hooked the 315 radials up to the Las Vegas 1/4-mile and stormed to a 6.075 at 226.09 mph — the first 6.0-second run ever on radials — after going 4.03 at 197 mph to half-track. Holder likely isn’t finished there, and the only question that remains (other than whether he can go quicker) is if anyone will rise up to challenge him.



Video credit: FreeLife Films

8. Clay Arnett Puts The COPO On Top In Stock Eliminator

With each generation of factory-built race car from Ford and Chevrolet delivering more horsepower than the one before it, the outright Stock Eliminator has taken a hefty beating over the last several years. For years, the Ford Mustang Cobra Jet owned the record books in the class, but when Chevrolet launched the COPO Camaro in 2012, the Blue Oval brigade finally got some competition.

The record has taken a particularly tough beating over the last handful of seasons, since Don Fezell drove his Mustang to the first-ever eight-second run in class history in April of 2012. In just two years time, Fezell broke another half a second off the record, going 8.50 at the Fall Classic at Maple Grove last fall. However, Clay Arnett, an Indiana transmission shop operator, went even quicker just a week later with a spectacular 8.46 at 160 mph in his AAA/SA COPO Camaro, packing a 350 cubic-inch small-block with a 2.9-liter blower under the hood.

In 2015, Chris Holbrook got in on the fun with an 8.45 in Florida, and then traded jabs with Arnett at the NHRA Summernationals in Englishtown, New Jersey, where Arnett rolled to an 8.389, only to have it surpassed by Holbrook at 8.383. But like he did in 2014, Arnett closed out the year as the man to beat and made Chevrolet fans everywhere proud, when he ran back-breaking 8.323 at 165.80 mph in FS/A trim, the quickest Stocker run ever, at the NHRA Fall Classic at Lucas Oil Raceway in Indianapolis.

7. David Pearson Shocks The 275 Radial World…Again

North Carolina native David Pearson makes our Top 10 list at number seven for the second year in a row, after once again pushing his “Little Evil” Outlaw 275 Mustang to numbers previously thought inconceivable on a 275 radial tire. Last October, Pearson and his small-block, ProCharger-equipped Mustang carded a then-otherworldly 4.16 at the Mooresville Dragway to set the official class standard, then returned in March of this year to the same track and fired off a warning shot in testing, going 4.11 with a 1.01 60-foot time. But it took nearly seven months for Pearson and company to show their full hand in competition, as at the Carolina Fall Brawl at the Shadyside Dragway, he rolled to a new world record pass of 4.14 at nearly 176 mph.

But as the radial community has come to expect, Pearson wasn’t done yet. Just a couple of weeks removed from the record-setting run at Shadyside, Little Evil powered its way to the very brink of the 4.0-second zone on a 275 tire, going an unreal 4.10 at 174.42 mph at the Radial Fest in Huntsville, Alabama. With that, Pearson not only has the Outlaw 275 class by the jugular, but now the attention of his 315 radial cohorts, as well.

6. “Sir, Do You Know How Fast You Were Going Back There?”

If the PDRA Pro Extreme contingent and the drag racing world at large didn’t already know who Carl Stevens Jr. was prior to the World Finals in Virginia in late October, they certainly did afterward. The New Jersey native, a chassis and racing engine shop purveyor by trade, had posted some wild early numbers in testing in September and early October behind the wheel of his Camaro, sporting an Xtreme Racing Engines-built 489-inch Hemi with twin 98m turbos.

At the World Finals, Stevens drove his self-tuned machine to the fastest 1/8-mile pass ever by a doorslammer at 229.00 mph (exceeding the already stupid-fast 227.84 mph record set by Jose Gonzalez), and then followed it up with the first run ever in excess of 230 mph, with a 230.10 mph shot (on a killer 3.566-second run).



Video credit: Eric Almberg

5. Jonnie Lindberg Blows Away The 5.3-Second TA/FC Barrier

When Jonnie Lindberg arrived in the United States to take on the world’s best Top Alcohol Funny Car racers, few doubted that he and the Lindberg Brothers team had what it took to run at the top of the heap. On his way to winning back-to-back Top Methanol Funny Car championships in 2013 and 2014, Lindberg had laid down numbers on par with his American counterparts, including a near-world record 5.425, with a combination he says was NHRA-legal.

After coming stateside from Sweden to race with the NHRA in 2014, where he finished the year 16th in the national standings, he and his family-owned operation came out with guns blazing in 2015. Just fives races into the year, he shattered the stubborn 5.3-second barrier with authority at the NHRA Four-Wide Nationals in Charlotte, North Carolina, with a lap of 5.361 at the fastest speed of all-time, 272.10 mph. For good measure, he added a 5.381 a round later to officially back the number up for a national record. Not only had Lindberg broken into the 5.30s, but he obliterated the barrier, jumping right into the mid-5.30s.

Prior to that point, the world record had stood at a 5.410, set by Australian Craig Glassby in February. That run was only .001-seconds quicker than Frank Manzo’s 5.411, which had stood, uncontested, for four solid years.

4. Jared Johnston Wins The War In X275

One of the most popular and hotly-contested categories in drag racing over the last five years has been X275, the once pseudo entry-level radial class conceived by a handful of men and guarded over John Sears. Despite Sears’ best efforts to police the performance in the category, the frontrunners have continued to push the bar to unbelievable heights, with seemingly no leveling-out of the performances in sight.

Rich Bruder, arguably the baddest man in the class, opened the season with the world record at a 4.46 that he’d set at the Radial Fest in Huntsville, Alabama in the fall of 2014. But Jared Johnston and his “White Riot” Mustang, another perennial heavy hitter in the class, went 4.44 at an event in Denton, Texas in March to retake the record. Then, in October, the Bruders busted off a 4.389 — the first run ever in the 4.30s — to reset the mark by a whole bunch at the Ford Fever Classic in Maryland.

But Johnston was still nipping right at Bruder’s heels, having laid down a 4.39 in testing at Holly Springs, Mississippi (where Bruder went another .38).

Then, at the Radial Fest in Huntsville in late October, the two tangled in an all-out battle for the world record during qualifying, with Johnston leapfrogging Bruder in his KBX-prepped Mustang with a small-block Ford with an 85 mm turbo on gas, going 4.372 at 168.29 mph. He later made it official with a 4.40 in the first round of eliminations to back up the number.

3. The First Import Into The Fives

With a whole slew of 6.0-second runs already to the credit, there was little question as to whether Gary White and EKanoo Racing team could go 5.99, or if they were the frontrunner to do it (hint: they were). Rather, it was a matter of when.

With the veteran White at the controls and Shane Tecklenberg, Josh Ledford, Eric Luzinksi, and Haider Mohd at the computer, the EKanoo team had made countless runs down the Bahrain International Circuit 1/4-mile and had very inch of the surface figured out.

In March, the team got oh-so-close to the magic number with a world record run of 6.003-seconds, and with that feather in the cap, turned back around two days later, on March 5, and powered into the history books with the first-ever five-second run by an import-powered vehicle, going 5.972 at 240 mph. That run, once thought virtually impossible with an import combination, came 14 years after the first six-second run was record. Making the barrier-shattering run all the more impressive was the combination they used to do it: a 3/4 chassis car on 33×10.5W slicks, powered by an inline six-cylinder Toyota 2JZ mill.

Only one other import racer, Isaias Rojas, made it into the five-second zone in 2015, doing so with a larger tire and a full tube chassis.

2. Matt Hagan Steals Jack Beckman And Jimmy Prock’s Thunder

The number two spot on our list this year could easily be awarded to the entire NHRA Funny Car field, which collectively advanced its performance standard in a way that hasn’t been seen in a long, long time.

When the 2015 season opened, the quickest Funny Car run ever recorded in the 1,000-foot era had been Cruz Pedregon’s 3.959-second blast in Englishtown, in June 2014. Based on the incremental jumps in performance that the class was accustomed to, that number seemed in imminent danger on a ‘Hail Mary’ run in stellar conditions, but hardly repeatable on race day. But, oh how that assumption was wrong.

The class remained relatively on-par with 2014 performances during the early part of the season, with high-3.90s popping up on the boards during qualifying, and four-oh’s still a ticket to victory lane on Sunday. But by the Western Swing, that all changed, as Funny Car became an absolute free-for-all where no number, no national record, seemed safe.

At Sonoma, Jack Beckman came out of nowhere and ripped off the quickest pass in history at 3.921-seconds during qualifying and added a few more ‘threes’ for good measure on his way to the winners circle. A week later in Seattle, he did the unthinkable, the seemingly impossible, by bettering it with a 3.912. By that point, the numbers were no longer considered a fluke, and with rarified air greeting the racers in Brainerd, all eyes were on the Funny Car contingent.

There, Beckman kicked off the record-setting festivities with an all-time-quick 3.901, but with all eyes on he and crew chief Jimmy Prock in one of the single most impressive rounds of eliminations ever, it was teammate Matt Hagan — not Beckman, who rattled the tires and slowed — that laid down the quickest and fastest pass in history at an unreal 3.879-seconds at 329.58 mph.

Although Hagan never held the national record in the season’s final eight races – that honor was traded back and forth between Beckman (four times), Del Worsham, and Ron Capps — he and crew chief Dick Venables got the upper hand on their teammate again in St. Louis with the second-quickest run ever at 3.883. Hagan also ended the season with the fastest speed ever, at 331.45 mph, just for good measure.

1. Jason Michalak’s Drag Radial Moonshot

Arguably, no class in all of drag racing has seen a greater advancement in performance over a given period of time than Radial vs The World, also referred to as Pro Drag Radial and Radial Wars at some venues. From 2010 to present, the world record has catapulted more than six-tenths of a second, and the progression isn’t slowing down any time soon.

One year ago, Brad Edwards claimed the top spot on our list of the Top 10 Runs of 2014 with his barrier-breaking 3.99 run at the Radial Fest in Huntsville, and although it remained the quickest run in official competition through the winter, it was not the outright quickest, as Edwards himself later tripped the clocks in 3.94-seconds.



Video credit: North Star Dragway

At the Outlaw Street Reunion in Memphis in March, Texas native Jason Michalak staked his claimed to the record book with his monstrous screw-blown Bad9er Corvette, when he stunned everyone with a 3.979 in the snow. Little did Michalak or anyone else know, at the time, that he’d close the year a whole tenth of a second quicker.

Although challenged, Michalak’s mark stood until late September, when a barrage of three-second runs rained down at Donald Long’s No Mercy VI race in South Georgia, leaving the previous 3.97 record a mere ‘also-ran’ kind of number. There, seven different drivers ran in the threes. highlighted by Jeff Sitton’s out-of-this-world 3.909 — a run that few believed would be topped by year’s end. But with Billy Stocklin and Frankie Taylor turning the knobs, Michalak —punched his way into the low 3.90s at the Radial Tire Racing Association season finale at the North Star Dragway in Texas, and then shocked the radial world with a 3.877 at 194.72 mph — the first-ever run in the 80.

Honorable Mentions: The Oh-So Close List

Beginning in the ADRL era and carrying over to the PDRA era, the Pro Nitrous contingent spent the better part of three years chasing the mythical 3.60 barrier, with more runs in the low 3.70s than you could shake a stick at, both in the United States and abroad. But the class never could quite nudge its way over the mark.

That was, until the PDRA Summer Drags in Michigan in late June (in conditions far removed from ‘mineshaft’) when Montana native Pat Stoken, a racer with the equipment to do it but not one of the definitive favorites, made history with a 3.694 at 201.07 mph during qualifying.

Chuck Ulsch’s Outlaw 10.5 Record

After the long-awaited three-second barrier finally fell at the hands of Richard Sexton last November, the flood gates opened up in 2015. With a number of three-second runs posted by a handful of racers, the class that once carried the torch in small-tire racing began to creep up on their radial tire counterparts. When all was said and done, it was longtime 10.5 hitter Chuck Ulsch that owned the standard with a 3.94-second blast, recorded at the Capitol Raceway in Maryland, in his screw-blown C7 Corvette.

Joel Greathouse’s 4.78 In MX235

The Kentucky racer put a set of 235 radials on his small-block Ford-powered machine out of the KBX camp, packing an 80 mm turbocharger and blew away the MX235 record without any prior testing, going 4.78 at the Holly Springs Fall Brawl. Both he and Ray Parsons (who went 4.79 that weekend) both bettered the previous record of 4.92 by nearly a tenth.

P.B. Candies’ Resets Super Stock Mark

Twelve years after John Gallina made the first seven-second run in Super Stock, the record hasn’t budged a whole lot. In April of 2014, Louisiana’s P.B. Candies drove his SS/AAA Cobra Jet Mustang to a 7.880 and then went 7.859 at the NHRA U.S. Nationals. This March, he bettered his own mark once again, going 7.809 at the NHRA Cajun SPORTS Nationals in Belle Rose, Louisiana with the Mustang sporting power from a 5.4-liter engine with a 4.0-liter supercharger.