Next Week’s PRO Superstar Shootout Will Have the Largest Purse in Drag Race History

The 2023 National Hot Rod Association season was a good one for Pro Stock racer Matt Hartford—he won three events, including the prestigious U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis—and he’s looking forward to the 2024 NHRA season, which starts March 7-10 with the Gatornationals at Gainesville Raceway in Florida.

But first, there’s money to be won.

Hartford is one of dozens of drag racers who will be competing at the first-ever Skag Power Equipment PRO Superstar Shootout at Bradenton Motorsports Park, south of Tampa. It’s a big-money invitational sanctioned not by the NHRA, but by PRO, the Professional Racers Organization, which represents most of the professional racers and teams in big-league drag racing.

The PRO Shootout will be the richest event in drag racing history, one reason it’s attracting racers like Hartford. “Obviously, we are looking forward to a race where the payout is almost as much as winning an NHRA season championship,” he said. The Pro Stock winner will pocket $125,000, and the winners of the Top Fuel and Funny Car competition will get $250,000 each. Total payout is a sobering $1.3 million.

Money aside, “Everybody wants to win the first one no matter what the series is, but it would be something you look back on in 20 years and say, ‘That was pretty cool,’” said Hartford.

The event will begin with one qualifying session on Thursday night, February 8, followed by three sessions on Friday. Then, the eight qualified drivers in Top Fuel and Funny Car and the 16 qualified drivers in Pro Stock will draw chips to set the pairings for Saturday eliminations.

With Super Bowl LVIII airing on Sunday, February 11, race organizers Wes Buck, founder and editorial director of Drag Illustrated, and Alan Johnson, president of PRO and crew chief for Top Fuel champion Doug Kalitta, wanted to make sure the PRO Shootout didn’t go up against the biggest sporting event in America.

When Buck and Johnson announced the PRO Shootout six months ago, they said the purse would be $1.3 million, but no major sponsors had been signed. Fortunately for them, that’s changed, but you have to give them credit for guts.

“This is an inaugural event so there are bound to be some hiccups, but we felt we had to lead with conviction and put our money where our mouth is,” Buck said. “We knew we had to call our shot on day one, and here we are, $1.3 million later.”

Compared to some other pro motorsports, prize money in drag racing often hasn’t kept pace, Buck said. “We’re talking about changing the economy in drag racing. Our sport has the expense associated with running these cars, specifically Top Fuel and Funny Car, and the math has never made sense, but it’s trending in the wrong direction.

“A lot of these racers don’t expect their race operations to make tons of money, but it needs to be self-sustaining. And in the environment that exists currently, there really isn’t a pathway for drag racers to win enough money and even break even. So it causes a lot of these race teams to be 100 percent beholden to sponsors, with no security—it’s a tough environment to operate in.”

If this sounds as though Buck is criticizing the NHRA, he really isn’t. In fact, he says he’s done all he can not to represent the PRO Shootout as a shot across the bow of the NHRA. “There’s a lot of us versus them, NHRA versus PRO, and that’s never been our agenda. We certainly understand that people are competitive, and it’s easy to get your feathers ruffled, but we really feel that this is complementary to a great time in the sport of drag racing, and I think it’s going to send everybody off into the season with excitement and momentum and enthusiasm for our sport and what we do.

“We’re running well in advance of the NHRA season opener because we didn’t want any decisions to have to be made by fans or vendors—I think we’ve done as good of a job as we can to work with the NHRA and have this event be something inclusive.”

Besides Top Fuel, Funny Car and Pro Stock, the PRO Shootout will also run three Sportsman classes—Stock Eliminator, Super Stock Eliminator and Top Sportsman Eliminator. Pay-per-view streaming will be provided by FloRacing.com.

“We’re about to have ourselves a hell of a drag race,” Buck said.

For more information, log onto Superstarshootout.com.

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