Although he’s lost in the opening round every time he has qualified the Cornwell Tools Chevrolet SS Funny Car no. 1 this season, don’t expect Funny Car world champion Austin Prock to turn timid when he defends his title this week in the 15th Virginia NHRA Nationals at Virginia Motorsports Park.
“I’m really eager to get back to the track and hop back in my race car after a weekend off,” said the current Mission Foods point leader. “We had a great Cornwell Tools Chevrolet last year, and it was an emotional win (coming on the day on which teammate and mentor John Force was injured in a high-speed crash), so we’re looking to (successfully) defend our title.
“We’ve got a little bit of a chip on our shoulder after the last two weekends (both resulting in first round exits),” admitted the world’s fastest race car driver (at 341.68 miles per hour, the NHRA national record he set last fall at Pomona, Calif.), “but I believe we’re going to bounce back and prove why we’re the points leader. It would be huge for our team.”
Last year, in a season in which the 29-year-old broke Force’s single-season record by qualifying the Cornwell Chevy at the top of the order in 15 of 20 events, Richmond was one of two races he won from a starting position other than no. 1 (no. 3).
A fourth-generation racer whose great grandfather (Jim Prock) was a riding mechanic at the Indianapolis 500 and whose grandfather (Tom Prock) was a standout Funny Car driver in his own right, the youngest Prock drove quarter midgets, midgets, sprint cars and Top Fuel dragsters before landing his dream ride in a Funny Car tuned by his dad, Jimmy, with the assistance of brother Thomas and Nate Hildahl.
“All I ever wanted to do was drive a Funny Car,” said the man who earned Rookie-of-the-Year honors in 2019 at the wheel of a John Force Racing Top Fuel dragster. “Now I’m doing it at this level with this team and my family.”
Although he had extremely large shoes to fill as successor to three-time World Champion Robert Hight, Prock slid into the role as if it had been created for him, winning the first race in which he ever participated – the 2024 PRO Superstar Shootout at Bradenton, Fla., before dominating the NHRA tour on which he advanced to the final round 12 times on the way to eight wins as a Funny Car rookie.
In addition to Cornwell and HendrickCars.com, the 14-time tour winner will be racing this week in support of a new philanthropic initiative launched by the Graham and Courtney Rahal Foundation (GCRF) and Graham Rahal Performance (GRP).
The goal of the season-long outreach is to raise funds for the Optimal BrainHealth for Warfighters program at the University of Texas-Dallas, which, in partnership with Virginia High Performance, addresses specific brain health issues of members of the military.
This story was originally published on June 19, 2025. 
