Vandergriff Drops the Hammer on Sonoma Funny Car Field

Jordan Vandergriff and the Cornwell Tools Chevrolet SS team made the quickest Funny Car pass of the 2026 NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series season to capture the provisional No.1 qualifying spot during Friday night qualifying for the NHRA Sonoma Nationals at Sonoma (Calif.) Raceway.

The John Force Racing driver ran 3.849 seconds at 332.43 mph in the first pair of Funny Cars down the track in the session. In doing so, the Funny Car rookie earned the $4,000 Deecell Power Systems “After Dark Low Qualifier” bonus, ironically an award he presented last season as a member of the NHRA on FOX announce team.

“To be the quickest Funny Car of the year so far is a huge accomplishment, especially with how competitive this class is,” said Vandergriff. “And I’m a rookie – I don’t even know what I’m doing yet. We fumbled a little in Q1, but I knew we had something figured out. The early numbers looked really good, so I believed we were going to run quick no matter when we went down the track.

“I knew the team wanted to push a little,” Vandergriff added. “We’ve run well this year, we’ve won a race, we’ve qualified No. 1 before, but we hadn’t really leaned on it. Tonight we did. I knew we were going to run well. I just didn’t know we were going to run that good.”

Jack Beckman and the PEAK Chevrolet SS Funny Car team moved up one spot, to second, in the night session with their run of 3.874 seconds at 333.16 mph which also was their second-quickest run of the season.

“Danny and Tim (crew chiefs Hood and Fabrisi) are calling the shots on this and they get an A plus,” said Beckman. “We were third quickest in the first session and that’s the session where, with 18 cars here, you don’t want to take a hero swing at it. You want to be sensible and that’s exactly what they did. We then turned the screws on it when the track got better for the second session and went out there and went to No. 2 trailing only our teammate in the Cornwell car. So, we got bonus points in both sessions and ran our second-quickest run of the entire year.”

Tire shake early in the night qualifying run forced Alexis DeJoria to shut off early and use her second-place performance in Q1, 3.917 seconds at 329.26 mph, to put the Bandero Café Chevrolet SS Funny Car in the seventh position at the end of the day.

Josh Hart and the Speedmaster Top Fuel team were sixth quickest in Q1 with their run of 3.763 seconds at 336.82 mph. Unfortunately, they were unable to make the Q2 pass due to a car ahead of them oiling down the track with not enough time to clean it up before Sonoma Raceway’s noise curfew. Those teams that did run were able to keep their times which moved Hart to seventh place.

Saturday’s two qualifying sessions are scheduled for 11:45 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. PT.

Television coverage includes qualifying action on Sunday, June 28, from 11-1 p.m. ET on FS1, leading into eliminations from 10 p.m.-1 a.m. ET on FS1.

This story was originally published on July 18, 2026.

The post Vandergriff Drops the Hammer on Sonoma Funny Car Field first appeared on Drag Illustrated.

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