The weather is significantly cooler for the second day of the JEGS Route 66 Nationals. Racing begins again today with the sportsman classes plowing through eliminations, followed by the JEGS Allstars, and then the pro classes will hit the track. Champions will be crowned today and fields will be set, so the racing action will be intense all day long!

Del Worsham and his family have been fixtures in the world of NHRA nitro racing for decades. Over the years Worsham and his father, Chuck, have raced together while amassing numerous wins. After leaving Kalitta Motorsports Worsham reunited with his father to run their own team on their own terms.

Recently Worsham had to park his own car due to funding issues, but was ready to jump in the field at the JEGS Route 66 Nationals — but he opted for a change of plans at the last second.

“When I get the funding back together for my car I will be running it on more of a full schedule. When I pulled into this place all the great memories started flooding back in and how great this track is … so well taken care of. I got sad and told my wife I was going to run, but then looked at the entry list and saw there were 19 good cars. It was just going to be a lot of work with the cars that are here and cost way too much money to do well. I’ll take a look at other events where it makes more sense for us to enter where it won’t be as tough to make the show on a limited budget,” Worsham says. 

Even if he’s not behind the wheel Worsham still plans on making as many events as he can with his team. Using his cars to make money in different ways helps to keep the doors open at his shop. When you spend your life as a racer sometimes you have to get creative on the business side of things and Worsham has mastered that art.

“I drag race for a living and things have to make financial sense for me. We have an agreement with Bill Liton and he’s been racing our Top Fuel car this year so that’s helped to keep some money coming in with how we qualify and race. We have a couple of Funny Cars we run; I have the one I raced in 2017, and that car we use and try to collect extra money. We’ve had several different drivers in it to help collect money and this weekend John Lawson, a local racer out of Joliet is driving it for us. It gives guys a chance to run, keep their licenses active, and us to make a few dollars in the process,” Worsham says. 

The Coughlin family has deep roots in the world of drag racing that began with Jeg Coughlin Sr. and has continued through his sons and grandchildren. With so much racing heritage within the family, it’s no surprise that Paige Coughlin, daughter of Troy Coughlin, has taken up residence in the cockpit of a dragster.

Just like her older brother, Troy Coughlin Jr., Paige began her racing career in the Jr. Dragster ranks and progressed from there. After gaining valuable experience at the Jr. Dragster level Paige has moved up to Super Comp for 2018 and has already run in a few national events and several divisional races.

“This is my first full year running Super Comp with some guidance from my brother Troy Jr. I’m really trying to follow in his footsteps and just learn as much as I can. He’s been showing me the ropes in Super Comp about how to work the car and drive the stripe better. It has always been a goal of mine to race in Super Comp and running in the juniors helped me get to where I am. When I got the opportunity to get my license at 16 for the faster cars I did and really haven’t looked back,” Paige says.

So far Paige is taking the new learning curve of the Super Comp car in stride and tries to make progress every time she heads to the track. The speed and challenge of the new class has really grabbed her interest and she looks at this style of racing as a growth opportunity for her skill set.

“The biggest change has been the 100 mph jump between the cars. It’s just so smooth and I love going to the quarter-mile in this car. Racing the stripe is a lot different because everything is so much faster, but it’s fun. The different movements between the cars is also pretty wild and I enjoy that as well when racing the Super Comp car,” Paige explains.

Scott Palmer has made some huge strides in his Top Fuel program this season. The team has been able to figure out a magical formula with the help of the Torrence Racing camp to start winning rounds and has even a final round appearance in 2018. Now Palmer is adding the help of Crew Chief Jason McCulloch, who has some NHRA Mello Yello championship experience to his team with the hopes of picking up their first event win.

Bringing McCulloch to the team is something that Palmer hopes will light a fire to assist them with making the leap to the next level in Top Fuel. McCulloch’s tuning credentials are stellar, but Palmer hopes he brings more than just a good tuning hand to the team.

“What he’ll bring is confidence and winning to our team. We’re just learning how to win rounds over here and he’s won races and titles with other teams. At some point, you need someone like him to raise the bar with the team to win even more. We’ve done this without a crew chief all this time and worked with the Torrence team, but that’s been hard since their crew chiefs need to be in their pits. Jason is going to be that bridge to help us get better by being here with our team,” Palmer says.

The collaboration between the Palmer and Torrence camps is what will help this new relationship work. With the world of Top Fuel racing being so difficult on the competition side of things Palmer hopes that McCulloch will be the final piece of the puzzle that helps the team capture their first Wally.

“If we wanted to run mid- to high-3.70s we could have stayed on the path we were on, but we’re trying to win a race and needed the boost. This is part of trying to run at the top and win races while helping Torrence win a title. We’ve been conservative because in the past we didn’t have someone to help make the last-second calls before a run. Now with Jason working with us on a consistent basis that will change and we can make those critical adjustments before a run,” Palmer explains.

The JEGS Route 66 Nationals plays host to the biggest display of NHRA sportsman racing talent you’ll find all year with the JEGS Allstar event. This race-within-a-race brings all the stars from the NHRA sportsman ranks to one place to see who is the best of the best. Racers fight for an entire year just to get an invite to this dance and when the racing begins it truly is epic.

Racers are broken up into teams based on their division for the team component of the event so the rivalries are extra intense. Every person in the JEGS Allstar event wants to not only win it all for their own personal glory, but they want to help their team reign supreme. For 2018 the team from Division 4 was able to pick up the overall victory with a narrow win over the defending champion Division 3 team.

The final round of Top Fuel qualifying at the JEGS Route 66 Nationals saw Steve Torrence remain on top going into Sunday. With the track conditions and weather changing yet again today between Q3 and Q4 it was a challenge to see how much power the Route 66 Raceway surface could handle. The Torrence camp was able to demonstrate why they’re the team to beat this weekend by remaining on top even after a wild final qualifying session.

“This makes me feel like I’m ten-foot tall and bulletproof. I’m not bragging at all but it’s pretty darn impressive when you go out and outrun the field by five-hundredths last night and three-hundredths today. This class is very close. There have been races where it’s been as close as Pro Stock. That’s not something that you see very often and it makes you feel good going into raceday. I’m pretty amped up,” Torrence says.

Matt Hagan was able to retain the top spot in Funny Car and is rolling into eliminations with a lot of confidence with his team’s performance this weekend.

“At the end of the day, I’m very confident going into tomorrow but then again, it’s a fuel Funny Car so you never know what’s going to happen. I’m blessed to have that No. 1 spot for now. For everyone thinking those Chevys are running up front, we’ve got those Mopars going again. Give Dickie Venables enough time and he’ll figure it out it’s just a matter of runs.”

The big story coming out of the final qualifying session in Funny Car was John Force crashing his Camaro. During the qualifying run Force’s car made a big and abrupt move to the right and made hard contact with the wall. The car then slammed into the wall several more times as it was on fire going down the track. Thankfully Force wasn’t hurt and the team has a long night ahead of them getting his backup car ready for eliminations.

In Pro Stock, Greg Anderson continued to dominate the field during the final qualifying session. Just like the previous three sessions, Anderson laid down low E.T. for the round and did it effortlessly at the end of the session.

“It’s not me. It’s the team doing this. There is nothing the driver can do to make it go low E.T. This is the fifth time I’ve done it this year but this is the first time it’s been a clean sweep. We’ve had low E.T. of every session. That’s a good feeling going into Sunday. We all know I’ve had a great qualifying car all year but haven’t quite been able to get the job done on Sunday. If I can’t get the job done tomorrow something it wrong. Something is seriously wrong. The horse is under me. It’s just up to me to ride it.”

Pro Stock Motorcycle saw Andrew Hines keep the top spot in a wild session of qualifying. To extract such a big performance in the final session Hines and his team went back to what they knew worked and that decision paid off.

“We threw everything at it. We just kind of went back to some older notes and some new transmission ratios that we brought this weekend. It rides really smooth and really fast. It’s nice to get down the track really fast. It’s nice to run late at night. It’s a different scenario. It’s fun and the track was as tight as we could ask for. You could tell it was really good. We’re happy with the way our Street Rod is performing. My bike is good but we’re working to fix Ed’s bike but at least we have our Harley’s at the front.”