Matt Hagan's NHRA Lead Grows to 98 as Dodge's $235K Charger Drag Pak Wins Its First Race
A dropped cylinder cost Hagan the Texas final, but the semifinal win over Vandergriff widened the gap. Pawuk gave the 354-cubic-inch Charger Drag Pak its first Factory Stock win.
Matt Hagan left Texas Motorplex on Sunday without the trophy but with the biggest cushion he has had all Countdown. A runner-up finish at the Texas NHRA FallNationals pushed his Funny Car points lead over Jordan Vandergriff to 98, up from the 72-point margin he carried out of St. Louis two weeks ago, with two races left in the season.
The same weekend produced a quieter milestone for Dodge. Mark Pawuk drove the 2026 Charger Hustle Stuff Drag Pak to victory in Factory Stock Showdown, the first win for the next-generation Charger race car since its competition debut at Gainesville in March.
A 98-point lead without a win
Hagan qualified his Tony Stewart Racing Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat second and ran 3.918, 3.948, and 3.93 to beat Hunter Green, Paul Lee, and then Vandergriff in the semifinal, the round that did the real damage to his title rival. In the final he left first against J.R. Todd, but a dropped cylinder early in the run left him with a 4.050 while Todd's Toyota ran 3.931 at 331.76 mph. Hagan said the car hadn't lost a cylinder like that in about two years.
It was his eighth final at the Texas event, and it keeps a Countdown pattern going: a win at Rockingham, runner-up finishes in Michigan and Texas, and a semifinal in St. Louis. Todd's win moved him to third, 119 points back, according to NHRA. A fifth championship would take Hagan past Don Prudhomme and Kenny Bernstein, who share the Funny Car record at four.
Hagan sounded more cautious than the math suggests. The Pomona finale pays points and a half, he noted, which "throws a little wild card in there."
The $235,000 Charger finally wins
Pawuk, the two-time and reigning Factory Stock Showdown champion from Akron, Ohio, took out Rouven Dawson, Dave Davies II, and Doug Duell before an all-Dodge final against Lee Hartman's older Challenger Drag Pak. Pawuk's 7.522 was the quickest pass of the class all weekend and edged Hartman's 7.542.
The car itself is the closest thing to a HEMI-powered new Charger that Dodge sells. Announced last October, it pairs a 354-cubic-inch supercharged HEMI V-8 with a Whipple 3.0-liter twin-screw blower and a Coan three-speed automatic, uses carbon-fiber doors, hood, hatch, and front fascia to come in 100 pounds lighter than the Challenger Drag Pak, and is limited to 50 serialized cars at $234,995. It is track-only, and Dodge says a few are still available. The same announcement put a $26,000 contingency award on the first Factory Stock Showdown win by a 2026 model, a box Pawuk's Ray Barton-powered car now appears to have checked, though Dodge hasn't said whether the bonus has been paid.
Top Fuel: fast lights, early exits
Leah Pruett set low elapsed time of the first Top Fuel round with a 3.684 against Billy Torrence, then cut a .034 light on Antron Brown in the quarterfinals. It wasn't enough: Brown's 3.696 beat her 3.735 by about two thousandths of a second at the stripe, and he went on to win the event. Pruett, in her first season back after the birth of her son, sits fifth in points and called the deficit "not a true representation" of the team.
Tony Stewart set a track speed record of 343.70 mph in qualifying, started second, and beat Spencer Massey with a 3.696 before his car lost traction at half-track against Justin Ashley in round two. He is fourth in Top Fuel, one spot ahead of his wife, in a title fight Shawn Langdon leads by 139 points over Doug Kalitta.
The Mopar NHRA Las Vegas Nationals runs Oct. 30 to Nov. 1, where Hagan is the defending winner and the regular-season champion can lock up most of the work before Pomona.
