Published: 3/27/2023
Chevrolet Earns Historic Phoenix Wins
Author: THE BLOCK
Photos: AUTO IMAGERY, INC.
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In what may have been the final NHRA national event at Wild Horse Pass Motorsports Park in Chandler, Arizona, Team Chevy drivers wrote two of the track's closing chapters.
At this weekend's NHRA Arizona Nationals, three-time Funny Car champion Robert Hight added to his career win total, while Camrie Caruso made history as the second woman to win a national Pro Stock Wally.
In what may have been the final NHRA national event at Wild Horse Pass Motorsports Park in Chandler, Arizona, Team Chevy drivers wrote two of the track's closing chapters.
At this weekend's NHRA Arizona Nationals, three-time Funny Car champion Robert Hight added to his career win total, while Camrie Caruso made history as the second woman to win a national Pro Stock Wally.
Team Chevy driver Robert Hight won this weekend's NHRA Arizona Nationals for the third time.
Hight qualified in the No. 9 spot and drove his John Force Racing Camaro SS to his second straight victory at the track (and third at the Phoenix-area facility overall) with four consecutive passes in the 3.9-second range. In his 97th career final-round appearance he laid down a lap of 3.930 seconds at 328.62 mph to take his 62nd victory.
While longtime crew chief Jimmy Prock remains at the helm of the team, the win was the first for the newly configured crew which now features Jimmy's son Thomas Prock and Nate Hildahl as co-assistant crew chiefs.
Hight celebrates after scoring his 62nd career NHRA Funny Car win.
"This whole Funny Car field is stacked from top to bottom," Hight said. "To win one of these races, you're going to have to go through four hitters. We did that today. You just never give up. When you have Jimmy Prock as your crew chief, you just know you're one run away from fixing this thing and being back to where we need to be. He races aggressive. I don't need to tell you guys that. He wants a low e.t. every round, and we had that today. We had four rounds where we were all low e.t.
"That's Jimmy Prock's style of racing and it makes my job easy. I just got to go up there and stand on the gas, do my job, and keep it in the lanes."
The rest of the JFR team came away from Phoenix with mixed results. Hight defeated the Camaro SS of team owner John Force in the first round, while in Top Fuel, Brittany Force and Austin Prock each turned in quarterfinal results in their Chevrolet dragsters from JFR.
Camrie Caruso (near lane) defeated Bo Butner to earn her first Pro Stock win.
In Pro Stock, last year's rookie of the year Camrie Caruso joined fellow Team Chevy driver and five-time champion Erica Enders as the only two women to have won a national event in the category. In addition, Caruso's win was the first for the newly renamed KB Titan Racing.
Caruso qualified in the eighth spot in her Camaro SS and faced off against former champion Bo Butner in an all-Camaro final round. Caruso turned in a 6.592-second pass at 210.31 mph to better Butner, who laid down a lap of 6.593 at 209.23.
Caruso's win came in her second final-round appearance and just her 21st professional start.
Caruso is the second woman in history to win an NHRA Pro Stock Wally.
"It's unbelievable," said Caruso, who scored her first career round win at Phoenix last year. "I'm so thankful and blessed for all of my sponsors and all of my teammates. It's just been such a great start to the season and I'm so thankful. It was awesome. …. It was crazy how close we were but we said it yesterday, if we all do our job, we'll win the race."
In addition, in Saturday's Mission #2Fast2Tasty challenge, Troy Coughlin Jr. defeated Greg Anderson in an all-Camaro final to win the Pro Stock portion of the special event. Coughlin also won the season-opening Gatornationals two weeks ago at Gainesville Raceway.
The Chevrolet success carried over the Sportsman ranks in Phoenix as well, led by Puyallup, Washington's Jody Lang. Lang drove an L/SA 1981 Chevy Malibu wagon to the Stock Eliminator victory.
Chevrolet teams had an impressive weekend in Phoenix.
If this weekend's sold-out event was indeed the swan song for Wild Horse Pass Motorsports Park, the Bowtie made a lasting final impression.
Be sure to keep watching the BLOCK for more on Chevrolet Performance and all motorsports disciplines.