Drag racing is and always has been a sport of numbers. And not the numbers in the round wins or races entered stat books, but the numbers on the scoreboards. Despite the harping from race fans that close racing is priority one, in the weeks, years, and decades later, it’s the crushing performances and the world records that everyone remembers.

With the recent race weekend in Topeka and the chatter about the barrier-busting marks reached there in 1993 by Chuck Etchells and Jim Epler, it got us to thinking how the 1000′ era nitro cars stack up to the performances recorded prior to the move to the shorter distance spawned by the sad and unfortunate loss of Scott Kalitta in 2008. While the decades-old quarter mile speed and elapsed time standards are no longer there for comparison, whether the Top Fuel Dragsters and Funny Cars have actually gotten quicker and faster is an interesting question.

At the 2004 running of the Route 66 Nationals in Joliet, Doug Kalitta used a quickest-ever 4.420 at 328.22 mph and a 3.758 1000′ clocking to down Brandon Bernstein for the event crown. Two years later, in a single pass that will forever live in drag racing infamy and has been appropriately named “the run,” Tony Schumacher and his U.S. Army dragster collected the 2006 Top Fuel championship on the final run of the season in Pomona with a national record-setting 4.428 at 327.98 mph. At the 1000′ marker, his Alan Johnson-tuned mount clocked a blazing 3.759 seconds.

The current 1000′ Top Fuel national record is 3.770 held by Larry Dixon recorded earlier this year in Pomona. However, Cory McClenathan holds the honor of the quickest 1000′ lap to date – even quicker than the performance laid down by Kalitta and Schumacher – at 3.752 set at last years’ NHRA Supernationals in Englishtown.

On the Funny Car side of the coin, the flopper contingent had a field day that may never be equaled at the 2007 Checker Schucks and Kragen Nationals in Phoenix, where Robert Hight recorded the quickest pass in history at 4.636 seconds at 327.74 mph, posting an incredible 3.955 at the 1000′ blocks.

Since moving to the 1000′ distance, the Funny Cars have yet to even tickle that mark by Hight or the other 3.9-second clockings set during and prior to 2008. At present, the NHRA Funny Car national record is a scant 4.011 held by Don Schumacher racing team driver Matt Hagan and set last fall in Reading. That run, however, is still short of the 4.005 set by Hight at the NHRA Virginia Nationals in Richmond that remains the quickest lap in the 1000′ era.