Tony Stewart Racing Brings Momentum And New Look To NHRA St. Louis

Momentum can be a powerful thing during the NHRA Countdown to the Championship, and Tony Stewart Racing has plenty of it heading into St. Louis.

Four-time Funny Car world champion Matt Hagan enters the NAPA Auto Parts NHRA Midwest Nationals at World Wide Technology Raceway fresh off a dominant victory at Rockingham Dragway and holding the Funny Car points lead. Hagan will also arrive as the defending event winner at a track where he’s enjoyed plenty of success.

On the Top Fuel side of the TSR pits, Leah Pruett will give an important technical partner some extra attention when she debuts the Pellera primary scheme on her dragster.

The Midwest Nationals is the third race of the six-event Countdown, putting the championship fight at its halfway point. For Hagan, it’s another opportunity to strengthen his position in pursuit of a fifth world championship. For Pruett, St. Louis offers a chance to score her second win of the season at a facility where she’s already experienced success.

Pellera’s involvement with Tony Stewart Racing goes much deeper than putting its name on the side of Pruett’s Top Fuel dragster. The company plays a role in TSR’s analytical and data-driven approach to racing, including predictive modeling, dashboards, and algorithms designed to help the team maximize traction and horsepower.

This weekend, Pellera will take center stage with its first primary paint scheme on Pruett’s dragster.

“I am very excited to have Pellera on the side of our Top Fuel dragster in St. Louis,” Pruett said. “They are such an important part of our TSR Nitro program: helping us make competitive decisions, running predictive modeling, building dashboards and algorithms that help us create maximum traction and maximum horsepower on the track. We’ve seen the improvement year over year.

“Personally, I’ve grown as a student of the sport through this partnership, so it’s going to be an awesome weekend celebrating what they’ve helped us build,” Pruett continued. “What better way to say thank you to a partner than land ourselves in the winner’s circle on Sunday using the solutions they’ve helped us create.”

In a sport where thousandths of a second separate winning and losing, finding better ways to analyze information can be just as important as finding more horsepower. TSR’s relationship with Pellera is aimed at turning the enormous amount of data generated by a Top Fuel operation into information the team can use to make competitive decisions.

Pruett will be looking for her second Top Fuel victory of the season and her first in the category at World Wide Technology Raceway. The last time she competed at the Midwest Nationals in 2023, Pruett made an impressive charge through eliminations.

Starting from the No. 8 qualifying position, she defeated Shawn Langdon, Doug Kalitta, and Steve Torrence to reach the final. Pruett then came up just .017-second short against Clay Millican in the championship round. She does have a victory at the facility, just not in Top Fuel. Pruett won there while competing in Factory Stock Showdown in 2018. A Top Fuel victory this weekend would give her another St. Louis trophy while providing the perfect way to showcase TSR’s partnership with Pellera.

Hagan couldn’t ask for much more momentum heading into the Midwest Nationals. The American Rebel Light Beer Dodge Funny Car driver won last weekend’s inaugural NHRA Nationals at The Rock, collecting his fourth victory of the season and the 59th of his career.

The win also put Hagan into a tie with Pro Stock legend Greg Anderson for the most victories during the Countdown to the Championship. Both have 19 Countdown race wins.

Hagan’s Rockingham victory also made his team the first NHRA nitro Funny Car winner at The Rock.

“We had a great weekend in Rockingham, great for our team, but also great for the sport: selling out the place in a new market, and we’re in the history books, first NHRA Nitro Funny Car team to capture victory at ‘The Rock’” Hagan reflected. “Big picture, that win, that race day, beating Ron Capps on the way to the finals to give us some breathing room in points, that was important. We did a really good job as a team putting four runs together on Sunday and executing on what we needed to do. (Crew Chief) Mike Knudsen is only a year and a half in and we’ve won so many races already together and here we are battling it out for my fifth championship, it’s super special. So, I’m excited to get to St. Louis where we’ve had success in the past.”

World Wide Technology Raceway has developed into one of Hagan’s better stops on the NHRA schedule. Over his last 14 appearances at the facility, Hagan has reached the final round seven times. He’s converted three of those appearances into victories, winning in 2021, 2023, and 2025. Hagan has also qualified No. 1 at the track three times, doing so in 2013, 2015, and 2021.

Hagan’s Rockingham victory strengthened his position in the Funny Car championship battle, but he’s not treating the points lead like a comfortable cushion.

With the Countdown reaching its halfway point, there is still plenty of racing ahead. And Hagan knows how quickly a championship picture can change in Funny Car.

“Everybody looks at points; that’s what we’re all out here doing. We’re doing our job on our end, and our boss, Tony Stewart expects us to rise to the occasion,” Hagan said. “The level of competition in Funny Car—in the 20 years that I’ve been doing this, I’m not sure that I’ve seen this type of level of competition. Humility goes a long way. Be humble, be grateful, dig, work hard, and show up every day. Every time I sit in that car every Sunday morning, I have an opportunity to win, and that’s huge. The chemistry with this team is there, and as successful as I’ve been in the past, I’ve never had what I have right now with this TSR group.”

The NAPA Auto Parts NHRA Midwest Nationals presents two very different opportunities for Tony Stewart Racing. Pruett will debut a new Pellera scheme while trying to earn her second Top Fuel victory of the season and first in the category at World Wide Technology Raceway. Hagan arrives as the defending winner, Funny Car points leader, and one of the hottest drivers in the category. With the Countdown reaching its halfway point, Tony Stewart Racing has an opportunity to turn its recent momentum into something even more valuable: another major step toward an NHRA championship.