DRAGZINE’s Picks: The 2012 NHRA Full Throttle Champions

In less than a week the curtain will open on the 2012 NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing series tour with the traditional Winternationals in Pomona, and for a few fleeting moments before the first qualifying bonus points are tallied, every competitor in the field will have an equal shot at championship immortality. Like a major league baseball team on opening day, every driver and every crew member has hope, believing this is their year. Pomona is only the beginning of their journey, for this is a marathon and not just a sprint. Be it repeating or redemption, every team has the very same mission.

With the dawn of a new season upon us, we offer our picks to win the Full Throttle and Get Screened America Pro Mod titles this season. There’s nothing scientific behind our choices, but simply an analysis of the prior season and the movers and shakers in the off season to formulate the racers we best feel have what it takes to get the job done in 2012.  If necessary come November, we like our crow cooked medium-well.

Top Fuel

Antron Brown

We know, we know. How in the world could we possibly pick against any car or team associated with Alan Johnson? The Al-Anabi team has won back-to-back Top Fuel titles with Larry Dixon and Del Worsham and this season they’ve brought on statistically the best leaver in the category in Shawn Langdon. The best reaction times coupled with the best car is a potentially dominating formula. Khalid Balooshi, also new to the team, represents a bit of a Wild Card, in that he’s an exceptional champion driver whose only shortcoming at this point is experience in an 8,000 horsepower dragster. But we feel pretty strongly that this is Antron Brown’s year.

In 2011, the former Pro Stock Motorcycle standout won six races and led the points as late as the Arizona Nationals in Phoenix in what was a spectacular season by any measure. Ultimately it was Worsham who pulled away to the Full Throttle crown, with Brown settling for third in the Countdown chase, a little over for rounds out. And that’s left perhaps no one more hungry than the soft spoken driver of the Matco Tools dragster.

Brown returned to form last season after a somewhat dismal 2010 season season when he claimed just one victory after a career year in 2009 that saw him earn six wins in 10 final round appearances, seep the “Western Swing,” and amass more round wins and a higher winning percentage than any other driver in the class on his way to a third place finish in the Countdown.

We’re well prepared to dine with a double order of the aforementioned crow when the sun sets at Pomona, but with a new package at Al-Anabi Racing to shake things up in that camp, we think the winning combination of Brown and crew chiefs Brian Corradi and Mark Oswald will finally break through with that first championship this year.

Funny Car

Mike Neff

You’ve got to feel for Mike Neff after he amassed more points than any other driver in Funny Car from start to finish last season and missed out on his first championship as a driver. Unfortunately, under the Countdown format, it’s not necessarily how you start, but how you finish, and in those six closing races to the season, Matt Hagan rose to the occasion in a way his foes could not. Frustrating for Neff no doubt, but that’s how the game is played.

Not only do we feel that the former tuner-turned-driver will bounce back to win the title this season, but we WANT to see him win it. While his counterparts are calmly being strapped into their race cars, Neff, donning his full firesuit and helmet, is making last-second adjustments to the tune-up on his own race car before frantically climbing in the seat and riding his own bomb to the finish stripe. In a time when crew chiefs have one job and drivers have another, Neff is a virtual throwback to the days when one man did it all, and we can’t help but respect that.

In just his third season as a driver and with only one win to his credit in those first two seasons, Neff came out swinging in 2011, winning Gainesville and taking the points lead following a runner-up finish in Houston – a lead he wouldn’t relinquish until the second Countdown race in Dallas in September. Along the way, he earned four more wins, including the U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis. But first round losses at three of the six Countdown races and quarterfinal finishes at Reading and Pomona spelled disaster for a season with such promise. Like Matt Hagan, who returned to claim the title following a crushing defeat the year prior, we think nothing is going to stop Mike Neff in 2012.

Pro Stock

Greg Anderson

With four-time champion Jeg Coughlin Jr. returning to the class, there’s little doubt that the entire face of Pro Stock is going to change this year. The 52-time Pro Stock winner joins a stout crop of racers chasing the title, including young Vincent Nobile, who claimed three impressive wins last season and fellow Mopar driver Allen Johnson who’s a championship waiting to happen, along with Erica Enders, Rodger Brogdon, Greg Stanfield, and others.

Last season, the Summit Racing teammates of Greg Anderson and Jason Line returned to their dominant early 2000’s form, and although Mike Edwards snuck in to close the year sandwiched between the two Summit Pontiac’s atop the points sheet, the Ken Black Racing teammates were the class of the field. Line, the 2006 Full Throttle Pro Stock champion, won a career high six races and led the points in all but four of the season’s 22 races. Despite reshuffling the points for the Countdown, he built up an insurmountable points lead by the fifth race in Las Vegas to seal the title.

Anderson, meanwhile, found himself on a late season charge that included another Indy trophy for his mantle, and it’s that momentum that we expect to see carried into 2012 as the four-time series championship seeks redemption for a pair of seasons out of the top spot.

Pro Stock Motorcycle

Andrew Hines

The Indiana-based rivals of Vance & Hines and Hector Arana Sr. and Jr. put on a heack of a show in 2011, and we can only hope for an encore performance in 2012. Arana Sr., a former champion in the class, put his son aboard a identical Lucas Oil Buell in a move that paid unparalleled dividends. The second-generation rider rode to three-wins in his rookie season as he and his father waged a tag team war against the Screamin’ Eagle Harley Davidson V-Rods of Andrew Hines and Eddie Krawiec. A war won by Krawiec.

Armed with unrivaled resources in the two-wheeled division, the Vance & Hines riders are the preeminent favorites year in and year out, and that’s not likely to change any time soon.

Hines, the second of team co-owner Byron Hines’ sons to win NHRA championships, hasn’t claimed a title since 2006, ending a run of three-straight championships. But during the years between then and now, the second-generation rider has never been far outside the championship chase, scoring multiple wins each season, including a career best five wins in 2010. In 2011, he finished third behind Krawiec and Arana Jr. For a rider with that much talent on a bike that good, it’s hard to believe five years has elapsed without a title, and for that reason, Andrew Hines is our pick to slap the #1 back on the wheelie bars of his Harley Davidson next winter.

Pro Modified

Danny Rowe

Considering the question marks that surround the category after a number of off season changes, Pro Modified is a real crapshoot.

If not for a rough start to the season that left them with too many points to make up, the turbocharged entries from Roger Burgess’ R2B2 camp could’ve completely changed the outcome of the championship. While they faltered, the nitrous entries of Khalid Balooshi, Mike Castellana, and Rickie Smith did what no one thought they could do and mopped the track with their forced induction brethren.

Reigning champ Balooshi has moved on to the Al-Anabi Top Fuel seat vacated by Del Worsham, and tuner Steve Petty, the virtual mastermind behind the crushing performance of the R2B2 cars in the latter half of the season, has moved to Troy Coughlin’s JEG’S operation. To add to that, following a number of recent developments, no one really knows for sure if R2B2 will even field any cars this year.

The one constant in all this change is California native Danny Rowe, who put together a spectacular season that was second only to the one delivered by Balooshi. Consistency was the name of the game, and at the season finale in Las Vegas, the driver of the Sterling Bridge Camaro was the only racer with a shot at Balooshi for the crown. All that separated the pair was a round a half, and if not for a pair of crushing DNQ’s at Atlanta and Indy, Rowe would’ve easily waltzed his way right to title town.