Spring is officially in the air, accompanied by the sweet smell of traction compound and burning rubber at racing facilities throughout the southern half of the United States. As the 2026 season begins to gather steam, let’s look at a few of the storylines that hold intrigue for NHRA Lucas Oil Sportsman competitors and fans in this 75th anniversary season.
There’s nothing sweeter than a repeater:
Winning a Lucas Oil Series National Championship is difficult. Winning back-to-back titles is almost unheard of. No sportsman racer (excluding the alcohol categories) has gone back-to-back since Christopher Dodd did it in Super Comp in the 2020 and 2021 seasons. In fact, three sportsman categories: Super Gas, Top Sportsman, and Top Dragster have NEVER seen a back-to-back champion.
While those stats don’t bode well for the 2025 titlists, they can take optimism from the fact that two defending champs came oh so close to repeating last season. 2024 Super Stock World Champion Jimmy Hidalgo, Jr. was primed to wear the crown again in 2025 until Justin Lamb pulled off one of the most epic performances in sportsman racing history, securing a “must-win” victory in his final event of the season to snatch the title. Val Torres, Sr. also drove to a second place national finish in Super Gas on the heels of his 2024 title run. If we set those two performances aside, no other 2024 national champion managed a top ten finish in 2025 (Joe Sorenson did finish 11th in Stock Eliminator).
If you’re looking for a back-to-back candidate, multi-time champions Jeff Taylor (last year’s Comp champ), Darian Boesch (Top Sportsman) and Lamb would top the list of candidates. While it would be difficult for Lamb to top his 2025 title in terms of drama, a second consecutive championship would have its share of appeal in terms of narrative. Lamb’s 2025 national title was his sixth. One more would match Peter Biondo’s total of seven – the most of any sportsman racer in the non-alcohol categories. Another Super Stock title would also be the 5th for Lamb in that category (he has two in Stock), which would also match the Super Stock domination of Biondo as well as Greg Stanfield and Jimmy DeFrank – each hold 5 national championship trophies in the category.
A repeat title for Lamb wouldn’t be unprecedented: the last Super Stock driver to go back-to-back? You guessed it, Justin Lamb (in 2017 and 2018). While predicting national champions in March is a fool’s errand, Lamb is certainly off to a good start. In his first two appearances of the young season, he has picked up right where he left off, with a win and a runner-up.
Hot Starts:
Did I mention that trying to predict champions, specifically sportsman champions, this early in the season is somewhere between difficult and impossible? Try this on for size… Not one 2025 Lucas Oil Series champion finished in the top ten of their class the year prior. In fact, only one (Lamb) finished in the top 20 (he was 19th). Bubba Linke (Stock), JJ Brock (Super Gas), and Casey Plazier (Top Dragster) didn’t rank in the top 50 in 2024 prior to their championship runs in 2025. In short, trying to predict a national champion in the sportsman categories is similar to trying to locate a needle in a haystack…
And yet, if you’re looking to wager on futures, we do have some data already here in 2026. As detailed above, Justin Lamb is off to a hot start in Super Stock. Similarly, Jeff Adkinson has a great early score in Stock Eliminator on the strength of back-to-back finals in Gainesville. Mike Griggs has put up a great early score in Super Gas, and Dale Thaxton raced to a pair of Top Sportsman final rounds to start his season. Through three Super Comp events, John Labbous, Jr. has compiled a 16-2 round record that includes a victory and a runner-up finish.
Labbous is already a two-time champ, having won the Super Comp title in 2023 and the Super Gas crown in 2017. The short list of racers who have won championships in multiple classes reads like a who’s who of sportsman racing: Richardson (both Scotty and Edmond), Biondo, Rampy, Fletcher, Hidalgo, Lamb, (Austin) Williams, Bertozzi, among others. Labbous not only seems motivated to add a third title to his mantle, he’s seasoned. While his 2023 championship highlights his 8.90 resume, it’s just one of five seasons in the last decade that Labbous has finished the year in the Super Comp top ten. That matches Austin Williams, Devin Isenhower, and Ray Miller III for the most in that span.
Another Super Comp racer with plenty of experience who is overflowing with motivation is Kris Whitfield. Whitfield raced to the top of the 2025 Super Comp standings back in April, and never relinquished the lead until the very last day of the season when Chad Webber won the NHRA Finals in dramatic fashion to catapult himself past Whitfield to the title. In a Super Comp field laden with parity and talent, it’s crazy to say that the title race boils down to two drivers; but I’d be shocked if Labbous and Whitfield didn’t both finish the season in the top ten – and they’re as likely as anyone to be battling for a championship at season’s end.
And there’s Cooter
While hand-picking a national champion this early in the season is nearly impossible, if forced to do so it would be hard not to pick Jimmy Hidalgo, Jr. The Louisiana runner already has two titles to his credit (Super Stock in ‘24 and Stock in ‘22), but that doesn’t tell the whole story. In both 2024 AND 2025, Hidalgo had the highest points total in all of sportsman racing to NOT win the season-long championship. Last season, his 689 point total would’ve earned the championship in any category except Super Stock. And the year prior, Hidalgo earned the dubious distinction of becoming the first (and to date only) sportsman driver to post 700+ points and not earn the title when his massive 711 point total fell a single point short of Joe Sorenson’s Stock Eliminator championship mark. For over a decade, Hidalgo has been a model of consistency in both categories. In the last five seasons alone, he’s accumulated NINE top-ten finishes, including his two championships. Betting on Cooter to be in the thick of the championship hunt in 2026 does not feel like a stretch!
Quick Hitters:
Some other fun and/or potential storylines for 2026:
- Can Fletch get national event winner number 109? Wait, that happened. Can Fletch get 110?!?
- The JEGS SportsNationals returns to its roots in Bowling Green, KY. This is one of three SportsNationals on the 2026 schedule, joining No Problem Raceway and Mission Raceway Park. All these events will be great… but the SportsNationals simply belong at Beech Bend!
- Chad Webber won the Super Comp title in 2025, a year removed from his brother Cody claiming the Top Dragster title in 2024. There’s one more member of the Webber racing family that is a prominent name in the sportsman ranks. Can family patriarch Bill Webber make it a three-peat? He’s capable, evidenced by a top ten run just two seasons ago!
- Another perennial championship family is the Lane family. A year after Cody scored the Competition Eliminator title in 2024, his father Jeff nearly duplicated the feat, finishing 2nd to Jeff Taylor a year ago. Jeff Lane leads a list of overdue national championship hopefuls that includes active racers like Brad Plourd, Tom Stalba, Monty Bogan, Phil Unruh, Whitfield and others who have seemingly won everything except an NHRA Lucas Oil National Championship. Will 2026 be the year?
- The return of The Terminator? Rumor has it that “Hatari” (the famed Firebird Super Stocker that carried Peter Biondo and car owner Phil Monteith to numerous championships) is back and 7-time champ Peter Biondo will see limited action in Super Stock in 2026. While it doesn’t sound like his schedule will allow for a title run, it’ll be great to see one of the sport’s best back behind the wheel in Lucas Oil Series competition.
- Super Gas = Super Parity. 2025 marked the fourth consecutive season that the Super Gas championship wasn’t decided until the last race of the season: The NHRA Finals in Pomona. In two of those four years, it wasn’t decided until the final round of the final race of the season! While we occasionally see one 9.90 driver pull away, it’s likely that the parity continues. In the class’s 45-year history, it’s seen 43 different national champions.
