Chad Green Motorsports hasn’t had the smoothest start to the latter portion of the 2026 NHRA Mission Drag Racing Series season, but the team believes it has found the problem that was holding back its 12,000-horsepower Funny Car.
After struggling with traction issues at Indianapolis and Michigan, Chad Green and the CGM Bond-Coat Ford Mustang returned to form last weekend at Rockingham Dragway. The final result wasn’t what Green wanted, but the performance of the car was much closer to what the team displayed earlier in the season.
That’s an important development as Green heads to St. Louis for the NHRA Midwest Nationals at World Wide Technology Raceway. With the Funny Car championship fight moving deeper into the final stretch of the season, Green and his team need the performance they found at Rockingham to follow them to St. Louis.
Smoking the tires immediately off the starting line isn’t going to get the job done in Funny Car, especially when championship points are becoming increasingly valuable, that’s what had been plaguing Green’s Mustang.
The Joe Serena and Dean Marinis-led team went through the car looking for the source of its problems and discovered issues in the clutch that were contributing to its traction difficulties.
“We knew we had some issues with the car at Indy and Michigan,” said Green, a four-time NHRA Funny Car national event winner. “The team did a great job going through a variety of the parts and pieces and the clutch had some issues. They made the right decisions, and we were back running well at Rockingham. We want that performance to continue at St. Louis.”
The qualifying sheets told the story of Green’s turnaround. Green made three solid qualifying passes at The Rock, recording runs of 3.920, 3.962, and 3.965 seconds.
That consistency carried into Sunday’s eliminations. Green lined up against recent Michigan winner Jordan Vandergriff in the opening round and stepped up to a 3.912-second pass. Unfortunately for Green, Vandergriff had even more. Vandergriff ripped off a 3.869, the lowest elapsed time of the event, to eliminate Green and end his weekend in the first round.
It was a loss, but it was also a very different kind of first-round exit than the ones created by the team’s earlier traction problems.
“That was a tough one since we ran 3.91 and we would have advanced to the second round in most of the races,” Green admitted. “But Jordan’s car was really hooked up with low ET of the race. Not what we wanted for the first-round matchup, but I’m happy how the car ran. We are ready for St. Louis now.”
Gainesville and Chicago showed what Chad Green Motorsports can accomplish when its Funny Car is working properly. CGM believes it has identified its clutch issue, made the necessary adjustments, and put its Mustang back into the performance window it needs. Now, Green needs to make those improvements count at the NHRA Midwest Nationals.
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