Less than 24 hours removed from a scary ordeal with John Force in the shutdown area at the Lucas Oil NHRA Winternationals that damaged his DHL Toyota Supra, Kalitta Motorsports Funny Car pilot J.R. Todd found himself yet again with a heavily damaged race car following a monstrous explosion in round one of eliminations.

Photo: NHRA/National Dragster

Todd, in a backup car that was raced throughout the 2022 season after the qualifying incident, was racing alongside Alex Laughlin in the first round at In-N-Out Pomona Dragstrip in Pomona, California and had the race seemingly in hand when his machine erupted into a fireball, shredding the Toyota body around the engine and cockpit. Adding insult to injury — or perhaps bringing a tumultuous weekend to a much-needed conclusion, depending on how you look at it — Todd’s explosion allowed the off-pace Laughlin just enough room to sneak around at the stripe, 4.06 at 317 mph to a 4.15 at just 234 mph.

“If you knew a weekend like this was coming, you’d rather stay home,” Todd said. “More than anything, I just hate all the work that’s been created for all my guys – especially right before an off weekend. With all the work the DHL team’s been doing up to this point, my guys needed that off week badly. Now they have a ton more work to get done before we go to Las Vegas.

“The DHL Toyota Supra was running okay early, and I didn’t see Alex next to me. The next thing I knew, after it got down the track quite a ways, it started spinning the tires. I learned in the Gainesville (Amalie Motor Oil NHRA Gatornationals in Gainesville, Fla.) final that when it starts spinning like that, you gotta’ get out of the throttle as soon as possible. Sure enough, it happened in the first round today, and we saw what can happen. Looking back on it, I wish I could go back and lift sooner; if you do that, you’ll lose the round, but we would have come back with a race car and body instead a lot of extra work for these guys.

“We’ll see where we are this week with cars and parts,” he continued. “If I need to go to the shop in Ypsilanti (Ypsilanti, Mich.) or Brownsburg (Brownsburg, Ind.) to deliver parts and pieces, I’ll do whatever the DHL team needs; I just want to do anything I can to contribute on my end to get us ready for Las Vegas.”