Jeg Coughlin Jr. picked up championship bonus points and a cash prize during Saturday qualifying at the NHRA Arizona Nationals at Firebird Motorsports Park when he won the Mission Foods #2Fast2Tasty Challenge.
Nicknamed “The Natural,” Jeg. Jr. won the first Mission Foods #2Fast2Tasty Challenge of the 2025 season with a pair of holeshot victories over rivals Greg Anderson and Dallas Glenn.
“Going into round one this morning, I had a couple of question marks in my mind because we made a lot of changes to the setup on this SCAG machine overnight. But I was confident it would go A to B, and it did. That was a huge boost for our entire team—making those changes and seeing them work,” Jeg Jr. said. “Pro Stock is so close you can win or lose by just a few thousandths of a second. Fortunately, I’ve been on the winning side of holeshots many times in my career, and hopefully, we can keep that trend going tomorrow.”
In a rematch of the semifinals at the NHRA Gatornationals, Jeg Jr. took on reigning world champion Anderson in the first round. Jeg Jr. had the race won on the starting line with a .011 reaction time coupled with his 6.574-second pass at 208.81 mph that was enough to take down Anderson’s .058 reaction time and 6.550 pass at 209.01.
In the finals, Jeg. Jr. raced against NHRA Gatornationals winner Dallas Glenn. Jeg Jr. handled the SCAG hot rod to a 6.583-second pass at 208.88 mph with a .026 second reaction time bettering Glenn’s 6.570 at 210.37 with a .051 reaction time to take home $5,000 and three bonus championship points.
Jeg Jr. is qualified 14th for the NHRA Arizona Nationals and will take on Cory Reed in the first round of eliminations on Sunday.
“It’s been a tough weekend. On Friday, we spun the tires hard in Q1. Then in Q2, we had a cylinder out just as I backed up from the burnout—you could hear it fluttering a little, but we decided to send it and thankfully, it still ran a 6.57, even though the car wasn’t real happy. The crew sat down, we evaluated everything and made a lot of changes across the board coming into today,” Jeg Jr. said. “We’ve been working hard, and fortunately, we’ve made some strides. We ran that 6.57 in the first round of the #2Fast2Tasty, and the quickest of the round was a 6.55, so we closed the gap quite a bit. We’ve got a car we can keep fine-tuning, make more efficient, and hopefully make it even faster for race day tomorrow.”
Eliminations kick off at 11 a.m. with Pro Stock first round hitting the track at noon. Television coverage continues on FOX Sports 1 (FS1) with a second qualifying show at 12:30 p.m. ET and Eliminations at 6:30 p.m. ET.
This story was originally published on March 23, 2025. 
