Shawn Langdon, Chad Green, Aaron Stanfield and Matt Smith walked away with the Wally trophies at the Gerber Collision & Glass NHRA Route 66 Nationals, after a weekend at Joliet's Route 66 Raceway that delivered another reminder of how the 2026 NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series is shaping up — and how unforgiving the tree can still be in the closing rounds.
Langdon stretched his Top Fuel championship lead to 54 points over Doug Kalitta with a 3.775-second pass at 335.90 mph in the final, putting away a Antron Brown dragster that had dominated the starting line all weekend before going up in smoke midway down the track. It was Langdon's third win in six races for 2026, his second on the trot, and the 25th Wally of his career. The Kalitta Motorsports driver credited crew chief Brian Husen for picking the right tune-up in changeable Illinois weather.
"Brian's gotten really good lately, just off his gut feeling, making those last-second little changes," Langdon said. "And that's been the difference. We're not the fastest car every round, but we're the most consistent when it counts."
In Funny Car, Chad Green secured his second win of 2026 by edging Alexis DeJoria in one of the closest finals of the season. Green's 3.945 at 324.75 mph just held off DeJoria's 3.965 at a superior 328.86 mph trap speed, with the holeshot Green stole at the tree decisive. Drag Illustrated reported the margin of victory as 0.0267 seconds — roughly 13 feet at the stripe.
"This is 100 percent a team sport," Green said in victory lane. "What these guys do is just incredible. I'm just the one who gets to drive it." The result tightens an already congested Funny Car points chase, where Ron Capps and J.R. Todd are now tied at the top with Matt Hagan nine points adrift.
Aaron Stanfield's Pro Stock victory came courtesy of a Greg Anderson red light, with Anderson fouling at -0.096 seconds to gift the Cox Family team the win despite turning a quicker 6.573 at 208.59 mph. Stanfield's clean 6.595 at 208.46 mph delivered his 15th career Pro Stock Wally and moved his record against Anderson in final rounds to 4-1. Dallas Glenn retains the championship lead by 29 points over Anderson.
"Our team's definitely been waiting on this moment for a pretty good while," Stanfield said. "Greg's been so good this year, and to get him in a final, you know it's going to be tight. We just tried to keep it clean and let him make the mistake. That's what he did."
The Pro Stock Motorcycle class produced the headline family story of the weekend, with Matt Smith collecting his 44th career win after wife Angie Smith's bike broke at the starting line. With the holeshot effectively cancelled by Angie's mechanical issue, Matt cruised to a 6.835 at 185.41 mph for a hollow but valuable win. Series leader Richard Gadson, who lost earlier in eliminations, holds onto top spot in points.
Sportsman action saw Derek Menholt back up his No. 1 qualifying position with his third career JBS Pro Mod victory, running 5.692 at 250.23 mph to dispatch Jason Collins in the final. Jonathan Allegrucci added a Factory Stock Showdown win to round out the headline results from the four-day meeting, which ran May 14-17 at the Joliet quarter-mile.
The Mission Foods Drag Racing Series now heads into its summer phase with the championship picture in Top Fuel hardening around Langdon, but the Funny Car, Pro Stock and Pro Stock Motorcycle title fights all sitting on a knife edge. NHRA officials confirmed that the next national event drops the field at Bristol Dragway in Tennessee, where heat and humidity historically reshape qualifying orders and reward teams that can dial in a tune-up to the second-by-second conditions.
For Langdon, the message after Joliet was simple. "We've still got a lot of racing left," he said. "But it's a good lead. We'll take it and keep working."
