Dubbin Motorsports will bypass the upcoming Chicago NHRA Route 66 Nationals after the team failed to find a competitive footing across all four qualifying sessions and the first round of competition in Top Alcohol Dragster at the Charlotte NHRA 4-Wide race, leaving the team roughly a tenth off the pace of the front-runners.
The team’s A/FD posted a best of 5.318 at 270.05 mph in Q4 – its quickest pass of the weekend – but Wolf remained parked at the 12th position on the ladder. Wholesale tune-up adjustments between sessions produced no measurable improvement, prompting the team to swap powerplants ahead of eliminations.
“Something was up with that motor,” said team owner Dean Dubbin. “It just would not respond to the changes we were making, and we were making big changes.”
The first-round quad against John Ausherman, five-time TAD National Champion Joey Severance, and Melanie Johnson driving a McPhillips team car did not deliver the desired results. The car struggled from the 1-second mark through the finish, placing fourth in the quad and ending the weekend for Kirk Wolf and the team.
“We made some wholesale changes in the new engine and even changed cam timing in hopes of really making this engine angry,” Dubbin said. “When you are way down the ladder from the top-running teams, you have to make some aggressive moves and really step it up to have a chance against these guys.”
Wolf framed the result plainly: “It was a very frustrating weekend to say the least. The car just isn’t responding like it should. Hopefully, we can go make some test laps to get this all figured out.”
Dubbin confirmed the schedule change and outlined the path forward.
“We have decided that this car is not leaving the shop until we figure out what’s going on with it. We are going to bypass the Chicago race and get this problem fixed. We will park it in the shop and go over every inch of this car and go through every engine. You can’t do that at the track effectively. Everyone is working way too hard on this car for it to be running like it is – it should be running much better. It’s disappointing and frustrating. We will find the problem and maybe go do some testing before we return to the track for competition.”
This story was originally published on April 30, 2026. 
