If you’re wondering how the reigning Pro Stock world champion spent the first free weekend after winning the U.S. Nationals, the biggest race of his life by any measure, I can tell you it wasn’t on a beach.
“I actually spent the whole weekend getting Sadie’s car ready, since we have three in a row coming up,” Dallas Glenn said on Monday’s NHRA Countdown to the Championship media call, referring to his wife’s Super Comp dragster. “I had to get her car ready so that way I didn’t have to worry about it for the Rockingham race. We’re going to have a short turnaround in between Martin, Michigan and Rockingham. So I’m sure we’re going to come back to the shop and take everything apart, and I don’t want to have to worry about also getting her car ready. So hers is ready to go.”
I grew up in a Pro Stock house, so I’m admittedly a sucker for these guys to begin with, but an Indy winner moonlighting as his wife’s crew chief the week before the playoffs start is about as drag racing as it gets.
It also tells you a little something about the frame of mind Glenn carried into Indy in the first place. He’d gone out early at Brainerd, the regular season championship looked like it was KB Titan Racing teammate Greg Anderson’s to lose, and the only way that was going to change was with some bad luck for a guy parked under the same awning. So Glenn quit thinking about it. “Essentially I was just like, let’s just go try to win Indy and just focus on Indy and not even think about points,” he said. “Because it was going to have to be, Greg was going to have to lose early, and I didn’t want to have to root against anybody on my team to lose early. So I just went out, set out to kind of do my job.” Then Anderson lost early on Monday, and the whole deal landed in his lap. “It definitely got a very big ball handed to me there second round,” Glenn said. “And it’s like, okay, well, now it’s time to do my job, since Greg lost early. Let’s see what we can do from here.”
What he did from there was win the race, which gave him his first U.S. Nationals title, his first regular season championship (and the $55,000 that comes with it) and the No. 1 seed for the Countdown. Ask him what the week since has been like and you get a pretty good read on the guy. “I feel like it’s kind of been like all the other weeks,” Glenn said. “We’ve kind of moved on and started preparing for the Countdown.”
Then he said something I can’t imagine hearing from the top seed in any other category. “I won’t be disappointed if I don’t qualify No. 1 at the first race,” Glenn said. “I’ll say that. Because historically, I don’t know what my average is, but I don’t feel like I’ve done the best job of driving being the No. 1 qualifier.” This came after Jordan Wick asked whether the parity in Pro Stock this year is real or just something the fans think they’re seeing, and Glenn’s answer was that it’s very real and it’s showing up in a strange place. “It almost seems like the No. 1 qualifier is not where you want to be, for whatever reason,” he said. “I really feel like the entire class is tightened up as a whole. The competition is extremely tough right now.” He guessed that the No. 1 qualifier had lost first round four or five times this season. The moderator had the number handy (it’s five), and Glenn laughed and owned up to being at least one of them.
His theory as to why is the kind of thing you only get from somebody who has lived on both sides of it, and in my opinion it’s the best explanation of the mental side of Pro Stock I’ve heard in a long time. “When you have a few hundredths advantage, three or four hundredths advantage, you can kind of go up there and just be more relaxed and kind of more calm, and not worried about being on the ragged edge and shaking,” Glenn explained. “It actually sometimes will help you cut better lights, because you’re very confident going in there that your car’s going to make up for any mistake that you might have. But when you’re going up there set up really tight and you’re really going for it, and you’re trying to be on the edge and get every last thing, then sometimes it can make you almost go early and hesitate, and then be late, and just kind of opens the door for mistakes. So it’s definitely way closer this year.” It’s the same reason a golfer with a four-shot lead on Sunday swings freer than the guy who’s tied. Take the cushion away and everybody gets tight, including the fastest car on the property.
Part of the reason Glenn seems so relaxed about a Countdown that opens at two tracks that are new to the schedule is that one of them isn’t new to him at all. KB Titan has been testing at Rockingham for years. “I’ve made probably a few hundred runs there over the last five years,” he said. “The only variable I think is going to be the NHRA track prep versus what the track normally does for us for testing.” His history with the place actually goes back to before he was in the driver’s seat, when he was turning wrenches for the two guys who’d eventually become his teammates. “Even all the way back when I first started with Jason Line and Greg Anderson, I remember going there where Jason and Greg were just clicking off low 6.40s all day long, when we’re testing either early in the year or late in the year,” Glenn said. “It should be pretty exciting.”
All those laps also came with a piece of intel that the rest of the field may want to write down. “I’m kind of interested to see what time the final round is going to be, because I know right around five, six o’clock, the sun likes to set directly down at the end of the track,” Glenn said. “And it’s always just blinding the driver the whole way down the track. So it’ll be pretty interesting to see whoever kind of makes it down to that point, how that’s going to affect.” (Pro Stock Motorcycle champ Richard Gadson, who has plenty of Rockingham laps of his own, backed him up on that a couple minutes later.) For what it’s worth, NHRA’s answer on the call was that eliminations at The Rock start at 11 a.m., which ought to help. “So there’s definitely a little bit of a home court advantage there,” Glenn allowed. “At least we kind of have an idea of where some of the bumps are and things like that.” Michigan is a different story altogether. “I’ve never set foot on that property before, so I’m kind of excited to add a new track to the list.”
The other thing Glenn has going for him won’t show up on a run sheet. He’s already been through about the most gut-wrenching version of a Countdown finish there is. In 2024 he rolled into the semifinals at Pomona as one of four drivers who could still win the championship, and he found himself standing in the staging lanes next to Erica Enders. “I remember asking Erica in the lanes before the semis, I’m like, I don’t know how you’ve done this six times already, because this is crazy,” Glenn said. “And she said, it doesn’t get any easier.” Anderson won the title that day, and Glenn got to watch the celebration from the outside. “It definitely makes you strive for wanting that a whole lot more,” he said. “I really felt like the year before had kind of, I don’t know, burned all of my stress sensors out or what, but it had definitely helped prepare me for the added mental load that comes from being right in the thick and being hunted in the Countdown.”
A year later he got his championship, just without the moment that’s supposed to come with it. Pomona rained out, and he found out he was the champ when NHRA officials walked into the trailer to tell him. “You never want there to be a question mark on it,” Glenn said. “You never want it to be like, oh, well, if Greg had just been able to get to the race that day, he could have won it. No matter how slim of a chance there is, you definitely want to make sure that thing is 100 percent sealed up, locked up, so that way there’s no doubt that you earned that.” What he’s after this time, by the sound of it, is the version where you win a round, know that round was the one that did it, and get to lose your mind at the top end with your guys.
Can he get there from the No. 1 seed, in a class where the top of the sheet has been a bad place to be all year? I think he can, and I think the fact that he’s willing to say all of this out loud is a big part of why. There are six races to go, and he’s made a few hundred runs at one of the tracks and never laid eyes on another. Sadie’s car, for the record, is ready to go. I get the feeling her husband’s is, too.
This story was originally published on September 17, 2026. 
