NHRA Top Dragster racing is a beautiful ballet of precision driving and savage levels of horsepower, and you need to have both if you want to dance with the best in the world. Danny Nelson is a long-time racer and chassis builder who happens to be one of the best Top Dragster racers in the nation. Nelson is currently chasing another Top Dragster championship…a difficult fish to reel in, but one he’s ready to land again.

Nelson was introduced to drag racing by his dad when he was just 10 years old. The father and son duo made a trip to a local dragstrip, where Nelson announced that he was going to race one day; his father agreed with the statement having no idea how far young Danny would go in the sport. In 1976, Nelson picked up a four-speed 1970 Chevelle that would become his first racecar. Nelson won plenty of trophies with that car and that sunk the hooks of drag racing in even deeper.

Flash forward to 1987, and Nelson built a shop behind his house so he could build a dragster for himself, but he ended up selling the car to a friend. Soon, Nelson would be busy selling dragsters to racers and that’s how his shop, Racecraft Chassis, started.

Nelson became an accomplished bracket racer hitting up multiple big-money events, but he was looking for something new, and the NHRA created a class that got his attention.

“When they started running NHRA Top Dragster as a national championship class in 2015 I thought it would be fun to try. I was tired of racing so many weeks a year following the big-dollar bracket races, so it made sense to change things up. I also thought it could turn out to be good for business, and it definitely has been good,” Nelson explains.

Nelson’s 2021 252-inch Racecraft dragster has been working well and has allowed him to stack up the divisional points this season. There are only three races left, and Nelson has a comfortable lead in the national points chase thanks to a pair of national event wins and good performances at regional events.

The name of the game in Top Dragster is consistency, and the Branon Performance engine that Nelson utilizes helps make that happen. Another important part of the horsepower puzzle is the power-adder, and for that, he relies on a V-30 supercharger from Vortech.

“When I started racing Top Dragster in 2015 we tried a roots-style supercharger and it just didn’t work out. I tried another centrifugal supercharger in 2016 and it didn’t really work out either. I met Lance and the guys with Vortech at the PRI Show in 2016, and the following season I made the switch to Vortech. Vortech has been great to work with — I’ve been number one qualifier multiple times even when the minimum dial was 6.00,” Nelson says.

The 2021 NHRA Top Dragster national championship chase is going to come down to the wire and Danny Nelson and Vortech are ready to fight until the end.