Tony Stewart Racing could almost taste the wins in Pomona!
Tony Stewart in the Finals, Matt Hagan in the Semi’s…both dropping to the teams who would win their respective class of the 2025 Lucas Oil Winternationals at the In-N-Out Burger Pomona Dradstrip. Solid performances all around, but just wasn’t their day!
TONY STEWART:
Tony Stewart is no stranger to winning…and he’s raced pretty much every kind of race car on pretty much every kind of track! He’s hung up the need for finessing the brakes and turns to gain position, in lieu of accelerating as fast as possible, sitting in front of a 15,000 hp power plant, keeping the front wheels pointed in a straight line!
Rinnai is the title sponsor for Tony, and what a great start to the 2025 season! The team put up solid numbers all weekend and ultimately dropping to Clay Millican due to the rear tires breaking free after a great launch off the line. Once the tires began to smoke, he had to back off to keep control. Normally this would be the end of the race, but Clay’s Top Fuel Dragster had an engine blow shortly after Smoke “smoked” his tires and both racers coasted down the track to the finish line!
This was Tony’s third career Final and this was his first final round appearance at the In-N-Out Burger Pomona Dragstrip. The next event on the NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series schedule is the NHRA Four-Wide Nationals April 11-13 at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Tony made it to the finals last year, so he’s hoping for a win this week!
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“The day I get upset with losing is the day I retire from racing. But the team is upset because they want to win. These TSR crew guys have done an awesome job and have been very consistent. Especially this weekend, having three runs on Friday and four today, these guys busted their butts. There were no mistakes. For 20 minutes we are going to be frustrated, but, after 20 minutes, we have to pick our heads up. Same goes for me, my wife (Leah) is going to get on my case after 20 minutes too. The last two races the race car is making solid, competitive runs and this weekend was better. My lights were better, and the car’s performance was better. We just didn’t get the last little bit. We took down three big guys in a row, all former Top Fuel champions (Antron Brown, Doug Kalitta and Shawn Langdon). To be the best, you have to beat the best. We just have to stay the course. I’m very proud of the whole team and it just wasn’t our time yet. Everyone comes here to win, and one driver leaves as the winner, and we raced that guy in the final. We are improving and things are going the right direction. It is taking a little longer than I had hoped. We didn’t have lane choice all day and we were consistent in the right lane. So, there was no reason to change, and we had good data from that lane. Track didn’t bite us in the end. We just got a little too aggressive in the final. We have good data heading to Las Vegas now too.” ~ Tony Stewart
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MATT HAGAN
Matt Hagan is an accomplished NHRA driver, with 49 wins and four championships: 2011, 2014, 2020, and the 2023 NHRA Funny Car World Champion
In 2022, Tony Stewart tapped him for the team Funny Car driver, and is currently sitting 3rd in the point standings.
In round 2 of eliminations, Matt beat out Blake Alexander by 4/1000ths of a second! What a race…3.940ET vs 3.944, putting him square in the semifinals and matched up against Jack Beckman, the current Funny Car points leader. Ultimately he wasn’t able to pull out the win, as Jack Beckman advanced and won the Final.
“Our TSR crew did a great job this weekend with some of the guys swapping positions. Thomas (Brown) lost his mother yesterday and he’s right back at it today. I’m sure it is an emotional battle for him right now and we are thinking about him and family in this tough time. We are making great progress with this TSR Dodge//SRT Hellcat team. We are steadily making good runs at each event. We wanted to put Johnson’s Horsepowered Garage back in victory lane like we did last year in Dallas. All in all, we are making rounds.” ~Matt Hagan
“That was a big ‘boomer’ at the top end against Jack (Beckman). It looks like it broke a rod there. I told the NHRA safety guy Joey that it was a matter of time before we had an engine go and it was my turn this time. I’m glad there wasn’t a big fire, and I could see things in front of me. I had no warning about the ‘boomer’ and it was big enough that it stung my hands pretty good. It is tough here at Pomona with the shorter runoff. I am happy the parachutes came out well and I was on the brakes hard. You’ll have those things in big-time drag racing. No warning of the ‘boomer’ made it pretty wild at the top end. We’ll put it back together. Tony Stewart Racing gives us plenty of parts and pieces. We’ll go to the Four-Wide in Las Vegas looking to win that one again.” ~Matt Hagan
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