NHRA stars Austin Prock and J.R. Todd will attend the World of Outlaws Bike Week Jamboree at Volusia Speedway Park before NHRA’s Gatornationals
Drag racing champions Austin Prock and J.R. Todd spend their days going 330 mph in less than four seconds but watching 410 Sprint Cars bring them just as much of a thrill.
“I don’t know, man… that raw speed,” Todd said. “I kind of compare it to what we do in drag racing. It’s not some kind of high-tech form of motorsport like IndyCar or F1. Just basically raw horsepower, lightweight cars going as fast as they can. Then, you put something like that on dirt with that power-to-weight ratio… just they’re a handful to drive and a lot of fun to watch.”
“I always said when I started driving Funny Cars that it’s as close as you can get to a Sprint Car for drag racing,” Prock said. “It’s high horsepower. The engine is right in front of your feet. The thing is really short wheel based, so it wants to have the front-end in the air. It wants to do anything but go straight. I kind of say it is a 410 Sprint Car on steroids.”
The two National Hot Rod Association (NHRA) Funny Car stars have been lifelong dirt racing fans and will bring that fandom to Volusia Speedway Park during the World of Outlaws Bike Week Jamboree, Sunday-Monday, March 2-3. Todd will visit on Sunday, while Prock will attend Monday’s event before they both continue their 2025 season in Gainesville, FL for the Gatornationals the following weekend.
Prock’s open-wheel roots go back to the 1930s when his great-grandfather, Jim, raced Midgets and was an IndyCar mechanic. Then, drag racing found its way into the Prock family lineage in the 1970s when his grandfather, Tom, started racing Nitro Funny Cars. His father, Jimmy, then followed in the same footsteps, opening the door for Austin to take the same step with them. However, his path started like his great-grandfather’s.
He spent the early part of his career racing Midgets and Sprint Cars – evening running out of the Tony Stewart/Curb-Agajanian Racing shop for about five years.
While he had a budding career in the open-wheel world, one phone call changed his trajectory from turning left to going in a straight line.
“John Force (the legendary 16-time NHRA Funny Car champion) gave me that opportunity back in 2017 to come over to his team, learn to work on his cars,” Prock said. “If I showed potential, he’d throw me in a Nitro car. About a year later I was testing a Nitro Funny Car in 2018 and kind of fell in love with it. When I got the call from him, there was really no other answer but yes. When you get a call from a guy like that, you drop whatever you have going on and go give it a shot. It ended up all working out pretty well for us.”
Last year, Prock became the first NHRA Funny Car driver to run 340 mph and won his first NHRA Funny Car championship.
For Todd, his hometown helped instill a passion and curiosity for Sprint Cars. He grew up in Lawrenceburg, IN, home of the Lawrenceburg Speedway dirt track, which he passed every time he went drag racing in Cincinnati.
“I could always hear cars racing from my house as a kid,” he said. “Once I got into professional drag racing, I crossed paths with different drivers and started going to a lot of races and became friends with them.”
His racing career started in Jr. Dragsters in 1993 before he moved up to a Top Fuel car in 2000 and then Funny Cars in 2017. He won the NHRA Funny Car championship the following year with Kalitta Motorsports.
While he’s yet to pilot a Sprint Car – but wouldn’t turn down an offer to – Todd has made laps in a dirt Midget thanks to relationship with Toyota. Driving for the iconic manufacturer has led to connections with engineers that have worked on Toyota’s 410 Sprint Car engine and TRD development driver Michael “Buddy” Kofoid.
That connection also brought him to Volusia Speedway Park for the first time last year to see the World of Outlaws NOS Energy Drink Sprint Car Series at the “World’s Fastest Half Mile.”
“It’s definitely something you need to see in person,” Todd said about watching the World of Outlaws at Volusia. “I compare Sprint Car racing to drag racing. It’s something you have to see in person. Watching it on TV or video doesn’t do it much justice. Once you get there and see how fast they are going on a big half mile, it is definitely amazing that they can race like that and not beat and bang on each other. That’s what always gets me.”
Both drivers already have several connections in the World of Outlaws pit area. Prock grew up with Giovanni Scelzi and the Scelzi family – he’ll even be inducting Gio’s dad, Gary, into the International Drag Racing Hall of Fame. And in addition to Kofoid, Todd knows Chris Windom from when he lived with him for a year and is neighbors with David Gravel in Florida.
The World of Outlaws Bike Week Jamboree will be a chance for them all to reconnect and enjoy a different kind of high-horsepower thrill before they’re back going 330-plus mph in less than four seconds.
Fans can meet Prock on Monday, March 3, as he’ll be signing autographs with Scelzi at the KCP Racing merchandise trailer in the midway at Volusia Speedway Park from 5-5:30 p.m.
TICKETS TO THE BIKE WEEK JAMBOREE ARE AVAILABLE NOW
If you can’t make it to the track, you can watch every lap of the World of Outlaws Bike Week Jamboree live on DIRTVision.