LAS VEGAS – As the Countdown to 1, NHRA’s championship playoffs, comes to the season’s penultimate race in Las Vegas, each professional category in the NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing Series features its own dramatic storyline.

In Top Fuel, every championship contender is gunning to remove a category dominator from the throne he has held for the past five seasons.
In Funny Car, a female driver is trying to make history and become the first of her gender to win a world championship crown in the wildly unpredictable category which her father has dominated for most of two decades. In order to do it, she’ll need to stop five other men who are also in contention, including one multi-time champ, her former driving instructor, a teammate, last season’s series runner-up, and a driver who’s finished second in the championship standings three times.

By Reid Spencer
Sporting News NASCAR Wire Service
MARTINSVILLE, Va.—Denny Hamlin may have won the Virginia campaign with a victory Sunday at Martinsville Speedway, but Jimmie Johnson moved ever closer to a record fourth straight NASCAR Sprint Cup Series championship with a runner-up finish at the .526-mile short track.

Necedah's Johnny Sauter talks about his recent Truck Series success.

Jimmie Johnson has done it again. He won the NASCAR Banking 500 Saturday night, extending his lead over teammate Mark Martin to 90 points in the Chase for the NASCAR Sprint Cup championship.

Johnson drove away from the field after dicing with teammate Jeff Gordon in the closing laps of the 334-lap race.

It was Johnson's sixth win at Lowe's Motor Speedway and put him another step closer to a fourth consecutive championship, which would be a first in NASCAR history.

Trailing Johnson at the finish line were Matt Kenseth, with his best finish since winning at Auto Club Speedway in February, Kasey Kahne, Gordon, Joey Logano, Clint Bowyer, Casey Mears, Kyle Busch, Martin Truex and Kurt Busch.

Martin had his worst night of the Chase thus far after accidentally hitting the rear of Juan Pablo Montoya's car on a restart. The accident ended Montoya's streak of top-five finishes at four, and relegated Martin to a 17th-place finish. Montoya didn't fare so well. He wound up 35th.

FONTANA, Calif. (Oct. 10, 2009) -- Resurrecting his hopes after sustaining early damage to his No. 20 Toyota, polesitter Joey Logano won Saturday's Copart 300, an event he described as "the most fun race I've ever had in my life."

For others, particularly NASCAR Nationwide Series points leader Kyle Busch and his relief driver, Denny Hamlin, the race at two-mile Auto Club Speedway was anything but a barrel of laughs.

Taking over for Busch after 39 laps -- because Busch had a case of the flu that wouldn't let up -- Hamlin collided with Greg Biffle off Turn 4 while fighting for the lead on Lap 141 and exited the race with an irreparable car.

The accident put a substantial dent in Busch's points lead over third-place finisher Carl Edwards, who now trails Busch by 155 points with five races left in the season. Brad Keselowski, who rallied from a slow restart on a green-white-checkered-flag finish that took the race two laps beyond its scheduled distance, finished fifth and is third in points, 227 behind Busch.

Logano rallied from 25th position after Biffle forced him into the backstretch wall while Biffle was passing for the lead on Lap 50 of 152.

by Phil Burgess, National DRAGSTER Editor
On a record-setting final day of the Virginia NHRA Nationals. Brandon Bernstein, Del Worsham, and Mike Edwards enjoyed much-needed get-well moments at Virginia Motorsports Park, at the fourth event of the six-race NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing Series Countdown to 1 playoffs.

Both ends of the Pro Stock national record were reset and the points scenarios in the nitro classes got a shake up as there wasn’t a top-two car in the semifinals of either Top Fuel or Funny Car and Funny Car’s final four was staked out by drivers in positions five through 10. Top Fuel’s top two, Tony Schumacher and Larry Dixon, went to the trailer in back to back races in round two while Funny Car points leader Ashley Force Hood was a first-round casualty to red-hot Jeff Arend, who beat her for the third time in their last four meetings over the past events, and her teammate, second-place Robert Hight, fell in round two but nonetheless passed Force Hood for the points lead.

Brandon Bernstein

Joey Saldana drives his #9 Kasey Kahne Racing World of Outlaws Sprint Car during a test session on Sunday, Oct. 4, that included World of Outlaws and Pennsylvania-based teams. (World of Outlaws photo)CONCORD, N.C. — Oct. 5, 2009 — The World Racing Group announced today it has entered into a multiyear agreement with The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company to be the Official Tire supplier to the World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series.

Beginning with the 2010 Florida DIRTcar Nationals in February, World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series competitors will be required to race with Goodyears on the left rear and right rear wheel positions.

“Goodyear recognizes Sprint Car racing as one of the elite forms of motorsports,” said Justin Fantozzi, Goodyear’s Marketing Manager of Global Race Tires. “We have a strong history with the World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series. Our tires have carried drivers to 19 championships in the 30-year history of ‘The Greatest Show on Dirt.’ We look forward to building on that tradition in 2010.”

VINTON, Iowa (Oct. 2) – A division-best 28 feature wins and bonus points from three local track titles paved the way for Dylan Smith’s first national IMCA Modified championship.

The Osceola, Neb., driver edged Garner’s Jeremy Mills by five points for the title. Mills won 25 features and was the only driver in the division with four track crowns to his credit this season.

Smith’s banner season also included the championship in the ButlerBuilt Central Region and Boone County Raceway, I-80 Speedway and US 30 Speedway crowns.

Also capturing national titles were Dustin Smith of Lake City in the Sunoco Stock Cars, Neil Stevens of Bing ham Lake, Minn., in the KSE Racing Products Sprint Cars, Jesse Sobbing of Glenwood in the Karl Chevrolet Northern SportMods, Garrett Rech of Davey, Neb., in the Mach-1 Sport Compacts and John McNeil of Denton, Texas, in the GM Performance Crate Models.

Shannon Anderson of Atlantic and Keith White of Little River Academy, Texas, defended their titles in the Sunoco Hobby Stock and Southwest Racing Specialties Southern SportMod divisions, respectively.

By NHRA Media
Robert Hight, left, and teammate Mike Neff are joined in the Countdown to 1 playoffs by fellow John Force Racing drivers John Force and Ashley Force Hood.
In the sport of NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing, every racer knows that in less than the blink of an eye, a racer can go from being a hero to a zero and vice versa.

Nobody knows that better than Robert Hight.

Highly touted as a preseason favorite to win the Funny Car championship, many expected to see Hight visit every winner’s circle on the circuit. However, he and his Auto Club Ford Mustang team encountered one of the worst slumps in recent memory and had a horrible regular-season performance. They barely squeaked into the Countdown to 1 playoffs in dramatic fashion at the Mac Tools U.S. Nationals presented by Lucas Oil in Indianapolis.

At the time, he said he believed that if his team got in the Countdown, they could win it. Now he’s proving it.

After winning the first two playoff events, in Charlotte and Dallas, the team has regained its swagger and is focusing on finishing the deal. They have moved from ninth to first in the standings and hold a 13-point lead over second-place Ashley Force Hood.

Matt Kenseth