April 14th 2025

Stewart earns first NHRA Top Fuel win in Las Vegas

Racing legend Tony Stewart picked up his first career NHRA Top Fuel win on Sunday at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, defeating a quad that included reigning world champion Antron Brown, Jasmine Salinas and Justin Ashley at the 25th annual NHRA 4-Wide Nationals.

Austin Prock (Funny Car) and Dallas Glenn (Pro Stock) also won the fourth of 20 races during the 2025 NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series season.

Stewart went 3.870s at 317.42mph in his Rayce Rudeen Foundation Dodge//SRT dragster to hold off Brown at the finish line, claiming his first career victory in the Top Fuel ranks and adding to the Hall of Famer’s long list of accolades. The former world champion in the NASCAR and IndyCar ranks won NHRA Rookie of the Year honors a year ago, and then went to the final round two weeks ago in Pomona before racing to the victory on Sunday in Las Vegas.

The team had performed well early in the season and then added to it in Las Vegas, qualifying fifth and then winning both of the first two quads on holeshots. He quickly tracked down Ashley and then Salinas, getting by Brown just before the finish line to claim a memorable win. He’s now won at every track on the property at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway and Stewart was certainly thrilled with Sunday’s result.

“It’s unreal. I haven’t been around the NHRA that long and I realize it takes a long time to win a race in this series, but everything in my career, I never had to wait over a year to win a race. I always figured it out in the first year, and multiple ones normally, so I’m just very appreciative of this win,” Stewart said.

“Last year was so stressful after Leah (Pruett, wife) almost won a world championship, and I get in the car last year, and the people in the stands think I’m the reason the car sucks. It wasn’t that we had bad people tuning on it, it was just it was a different combination. There were different variables that change my body weight is different, tubing changes from rules changes but it was still really frustrating we could not get on a path to where we could make gains last year.

“I think probably the one thing that may not sink in as much right now, but when Leah brought [son] Dom up on the stage there, that’s an emotion that you can’t even think about or dream of. When I saw her coming up those steps with him, my heart stopped. That was a feeling I’ve never had in my life before, and I have a feeling when we lay down and put my head on a pillow tonight, that’s going to be the one thing that I want to reflect on the most tonight.”

Brown finished as the runner-up, going 3.912s at 302.35mph in the final round. Stewart moved up to second points with the historic victory, while Shawn Langdon stayed as the leader in the category.

Defending Funny Car world champ Austin Prock returned to championship form on Sunday in Las Vegas, picking up his first win of the season with a run of 4.009s at 316.01mph in his Cornwell Tools Chevrolet SS to hold off a quad that featured runner-up Paul Lee, Matt Hagan and Dave Richards.

Prock dominated at Las Vegas in the fall to all but clinch his first world championship, but the team made major changes on the car in the off-season. It was a struggle to open the year, falling in the opening round in Gainesville, but the team has slowly gained momentum and it was capped off by a sterling performance in Vegas. He made the quickest run in eliminations, going 3.964s at 322.88mph in an impressive semifinal victory and then finished it off with another terrific run in the championship round.

“We haven’t had the success that we had last year, but we’re still the same team,” Prock said. “We always expect to show up and win. We want to go set low E.T. every round, and we want to win every race, so when we’re not doing that, it’s hard to keep your head up when things aren’t going right, especially when your expectations are so high. So, for all of us to come together is great.

“It feels really good, man. Opening up in Gainesville, it just wasn’t a great weekend and we just struggled in Pomona after a good weekend in Phoenix, but just couldn’t put it all together. You just want to hold one of these Wally [trophies] again because you don’t know how long it’s going to take before you win another one.”

Lee finished as the runner-up thanks to his run of 4.042s at 311.77mph. It his second final round of the year, as he jumped into the points lead as well. Prock moved to third in points after winning for the second time in Las Vegas.

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