Jordan Vandergriff's Cornwell Tools Chevrolet reached its sixth final of 2026 at the NHRA Midwest Nationals. Photo: John Force Racing
Austin Prock won two Funny Car championships in the Cornwell Tools Chevrolet. On Sunday at World Wide Technology Raceway, he beat it.
Driving the Tasca Racing Ford Mustang he moved to over the winter, the two-time reigning champion won the NAPA Auto Parts NHRA Midwest Nationals with a 3.909-second pass at 332.84 mph. In the other lane was Jordan Vandergriff, now in the John Force Racing car Prock drove to the 2025 title, who ran 3.926 at 325.37. It was Prock’s second win of 2026 and the 23rd of his career. For Vandergriff it was a sixth final of the season and a missed shot at a fourth win, though he leaves Madison, Illinois, still second in points with three races left.
The scoreboard says Ford beat Chevrolet. The timing slip says something more specific, and more useful.
The final was decided before either car moved
Prock left on a .045 reaction time. Vandergriff answered with an .083. That .038-second gap at the Christmas tree accounts for most of Prock’s .0552-second margin at the finish line. Prock’s Mustang was also quicker from start to stripe, by .017, so this was not a pure holeshot, but a dead-even launch would have turned a comfortable loss into a photo finish.
Lane choice mattered too. Prock, the No. 4 qualifier, had the right lane against the No. 7-qualified Vandergriff. Vandergriff made three of his four Sunday passes in the left lane, which he said had been giving plenty of drivers trouble. Getting the Cornwell car down it three straight times, including a clean 3.939 in the semifinal, was solid work by that crew. It just wasn’t enough against a driver who was better on the tree all day.
That last part was a pattern, not a fluke. Prock’s reaction times in the first round, semifinal, and final read .057, .052, and .045, sharper each time the stakes went up. In Funny Car, where the best-prepared cars are often separated by a few thousandths, the starting line is the only part of the run a driver fully controls. Prock owned it.
Beckman ran quicker and still went home
The clearest example came one round earlier. Jack Beckman, the No. 1 qualifier, had the quickest car at the track. He set low ET of the meet at 3.864 seconds in the first round and backed it up with a 3.870 in round two. In the semifinal against Prock, Beckman’s PEAK Chevrolet ran 3.903 to Prock’s 3.906, and Beckman lost anyway, by .0215 second, because Prock’s .052 light beat his .076.
That is the textbook holeshot: the slower elapsed time wins because the driver got going first. Beckman owned it afterward, saying his team has the best car and crew and he “just need[s] to be the best driver in Dallas.” For a car that has been the class benchmark on raw ET, that is a frustrating way to lose ground in a points fight.
Prock’s first season away from Force
Sunday is worth reading against what Prock walked away from. In January, NHRA confirmed that Austin, his father Jimmy, and his brother Thomas, both tuning crew chiefs, were leaving John Force Racing for Tasca Racing and Ford, with team owner Bob Tasca III sitting out the 2026 season to make room. Prock arrived with 21 national event wins, 17 of them in the previous two seasons.
Two wins through 17 races is a slower clip than that, which is about what you would expect from a family tuning operation rebuilding its combination in a new shop with a new manufacturer. But look at who Prock beat at Madison: Ron Capps, J.R. Todd, and Beckman, all of whom started the day ahead of him in points. He moved to third, 106 behind the leader.
Meanwhile, the car he left keeps winning without him. Vandergriff has taken the Cornwell Tools Chevrolet to victories at Valdosta, Sonoma, and Martin this year, plus runner-up finishes at Epping, Brainerd, and now Madison. Losing a championship driver and both crew chiefs in one winter usually sets a team back for a season or two. That it did not here says a lot about the depth of data, parts, and people inside JFR’s Chevrolet program, and it means the Prock-versus-Force subplot could follow this class into the final race of the year.
Hagan’s bad blower call, and why he still leads
The other semifinal is the reason Vandergriff got to the final at all. Points leader Matt Hagan’s Tony Stewart Racing crew swapped superchargers between rounds, and NHRA’s race-day notes said the replacement had “too many beans,” racer shorthand for more power than the track could hold. Hagan’s Dodge lost traction immediately and coasted to a 6.158 at 148.51 mph while Vandergriff went by.
Blower changes between rounds are routine on a nitro car, since the supercharger takes a beating every run. The catch is that no two blowers move exactly the same amount of air, and on a track where several drivers were already struggling for grip, a small jump in boost shows up as tire smoke at the hit. It was an expensive misstep for the team behind the Purple Haze Dodge it unveiled ahead of the Countdown, and it still did not cost Hagan the lead.
Funny Car standings after 17 of 20 races:
- Matt Hagan, 2,402
- Jordan Vandergriff, 2,330 (-72)
- Austin Prock, 2,296 (-106)
- Jack Beckman, 2,279 (-123)
- J.R. Todd, 2,270 (-132)
- Ron Capps, 2,240 (-162)
- Alexis DeJoria, 2,215 (-187)
The cost of three Force cars in one playoff
JFR has three cars in that top seven, which is great for the team and occasionally awkward on race day. In round two, Alexis DeJoria, who had collected the most qualifying bonus points of the weekend in her Bandero Café Chevrolet, drew teammate Vandergriff and fouled with a -.036 red light. Somebody from Force’s camp was going home in that pairing regardless; the red light only decided who.
Beckman framed the semifinal the same way, as a chance to gain on Hagan once Vandergriff had removed him, before Prock got in the way. With three races left, every early-round meeting between JFR teammates is a round in which Hagan’s rivals are guaranteed to take points off one another.
Elsewhere at Madison
Shawn Langdon won Top Fuel over Will Smith with a 3.732 at 335.90 mph, his eighth win of 2026 and 30th of his career. He leaves with a 116-point lead over Doug Kalitta. Tony Stewart, who beat JFR’s Josh Hart in round one when both cars smoked the tires, sits third. Stewart’s own team is already reshaping its future; here is how Tony Stewart Racing is lining up its Top Fuel program for 2027.
What to watch in Texas
The series takes a week off before the Texas NHRA FallNationals at Texas Motorplex in Ennis, the 18th of 20 races. Three things to keep an eye on:
- Prock’s reaction times. If he keeps cutting .050-or-better lights, the cars with more ET in hand still have to beat him to the first beam.
- Hagan’s blower combination. With a 72-point cushion to protect, watch whether the TSR crew goes conservative after Sunday’s tire smoke.
- Vandergriff in the lane he chooses. He has made six finals and converted three. A fourth win would be the most direct way to close the gap.
Enjoy the current setup while it lasts. The Countdown moves to a new TV home next year, as covered in our breakdown of NHRA’s 2027 TV deal and The CW.
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