{"id":55868,"date":"2026-01-16T20:05:21","date_gmt":"2026-01-17T02:05:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/racedaysa.com\/?p=55868"},"modified":"2026-01-19T20:08:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T02:08:10","slug":"double-funny-car-champion-austin-prock-and-crew-join-ford-ranks-with-tasca-racing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/16\/double-funny-car-champion-austin-prock-and-crew-join-ford-ranks-with-tasca-racing\/","title":{"rendered":"Double Funny Car champion Austin Prock and crew join Ford ranks with Tasca Racing"},"content":{"rendered":"

By John Sturbin, Raceday San Antonio<\/em><\/p>\n

The NHRA Funny Car rivalry between corporate atagonists John Force Racing and Bob Tasca Racing was amped-up Thursday, when two-time\/reigning world champion Austin Prock was introduced as driver of Tasca\u2019s Ford Mustang beginning with the 2026 Mission Foods Drag Racing Series season.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Austin Prock. NHRA photo<\/p><\/div>\n

Prock and the tuning pairing led by his father, Jimmy, and brother, Thomas, were introduced live on stage by Mark Rushbrook, Ford Racing\u2019s global director, during the 2026 Ford Racing Season Launch Event at Michigan Central Station in Detroit.<\/p>\n

Prock\u2019s PPG Nitro Mustang Dark Horse Funny Car will carry the No. 1 designation as reigning world champion heading into NHRA\u2019s landmark 75th<\/sup> season celebration in March. The Prock transition also will see longtime Ford loyalist and team-owner\/driver Bob Tasca III sit out the 2026 season in support of the new partnership.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m thrilled to welcome the Prock family under the Tasca Racing umbrella,\u201d Tasca said in a prepared statement. \u201cI\u2019ve\u00a0had a front-row seat throughout my career watching the success Jimmy Prock has achieved, and\u00a0he\u2019s\u00a0only continued to elevate his program with the addition of his sons.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople will naturally ask how this all came together and the answer is simple _ the long-term vision of the Prock family and the Tasca family aligned perfectly. With the combined resources of Tasca Racing,\u00a0Ford Racing and the Prock family, we know this partnership will be a force to be reckoned with for many years to come.\u201d<\/p>\n

Austin Prock, 21, his championship-winning family crew and Nate Hildahl, stunned big-time drag racing shortly after conclusion of the 2025 season in November when they announced their exit from John Force Racing\u2019s Cornwell Quality Tools Chevrolet Camaro SS program.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am honored to join Tasca Racing,\u201d Austin Prock said in prepared remarks. \u201cOur family shares the same passion and work ethic for success in motorsports. Like Tasca, our family\u2019s legacy in the racing industry\u00a0runs\u00a0for many decades. We are ready for the challenge of building a championship-level team under the Tasca Racing banner. The work has already begun; 2026 is going to be exciting.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prock\u2019s championships in 2024 and 2025 allowed him to join an elite list of NHRA Funny Car drivers to have posted back-to-back world titles. That list features NHRA royalty Don \u201cThe Snake\u201d Prudhomme, Raymond Beadle, Frank Hawley, Kenny Bernstein and John \u201cBrute\u201d Force. Austin Prock is the grandson of former NHRA Funny Car driver Tom Prock.<\/p>\n

A resident of Pittsboro, Ind., Prock won eight national events and placed second four times as a nitromethane-powered Funny Car rookie in 2024. Prock posted nine wins and three runner-up results last season over 19 events, building a large enough point advantage during the Countdown to the Championship playoffs to withstand November\u2019s weather-induced cancellation of the season-ending In-N-Out Burger NHRA Finals in Pomona, Calif. Prock finished 101 points ahead of four-time world champion Matt Hagan of Tony Stewart Racing.<\/p>\n

Ironically, Prock clinched his second title while signing autographs in the pits during the rain-plagued weekend.<\/p>\n

Prock won two-of-five Countdown events contested last season, including the 40th<\/sup> annual Texas NHRA FallNationals at International Drag Racing Hall of Famer Billy Meyer\u2019s Texas Motorplex in Ennis. That race capped The Plex\u2019s state-backed, 10-day \u201cStampede of Speed\u201d initiative.<\/p>\n

Prock moved to Funny Car after competing for JFR in Top Fuel, with a career-best point finish of third in 2022. Austin replaced three-time Funny Car world champion Robert Hight _ who exited the \u201cProck Rocket\u201d Camaro tuned by Jimmy Prock _ due to a medical issue.<\/p>\n

Prock has compiled 21 combined NHRA national event victories, including 17 in 24 finals and 22 No. 1 qualifiers over the past two seasons since moving from JFR\u2019s Top Fuel dragster to Funny Car. His career-best elapsed time over NHRA\u2019s 1,000-foot distance in Funny Car is 3.804-seconds at 341.68 mph. Among his accomplishments in a nitro \u201cflopper\u201d are two victories at the prestigious NHRA U.S. Nationals, NHRA\u2019s \u201cBig Go.\u201d Prock also emerged as \u201cKing of the 4-Wide events\u201d during 2025, sweeping all three of NHRA\u2019s point-paying races contested under that format.<\/p>\n

Prock\u2019s tenure with JFR included John Force\u2019s retirement announcement on Nov. 14 after compiling a record 16 Funny Car world championships. Force, 76, continues to recover from the career-ending injuries he suffered during a first-round crash 17 months ago during the NHRA Viriginia Nationals in Richmond.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am very grateful for the opportunities JFR and partners gave myself and our family,\u201d Prock said in a statement published in the December 2025 issue of National Dragster<\/em>. \u201cWe had a lot of great memories and success over the years. It was a difficult decision to leave, but we are excited to continue racing as a family for years to come.\u201d<\/p>\n

Prock\u2019s overall record is 168-88 in 109 races that include Top Fuel. Austin is the 20th\u00a0driver in NHRA history to win in both Top Fuel and Funny Car.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are very proud of our accomplishments with the Prock family,\u201d John Force said in the aftermath of the Prock family decision. \u201cI wish them well and I understand that their decision to move on is just part of the business we\u2019re in.<\/p>\n

\u201cJohn Force Racing has been doing what we do for more than 50 years and all the hard work preparing for the 2026 NHRA season continues as planned with four race teams and the Force American Made machine shop. We appreciate the strength and continued backing of all of the great sponsors that support us, so we\u2019re focused on the future that includes announcing additional partnerships.\u201d<\/p>\n

As noted, Force will continue to oversee JFR, the 23-time championship-winning organization based in Brownsburg, Ind.<\/p>\n

Tasca III, 51, finished 10th<\/sup> in the final standings last season, snapping a six-year streak of top-five results. Tasca exited the cockpit after compiling 18 victories in 34 final-round appearances over 338 starts. His career won\/loss round record is 327-314. Tasca owns 20 NHRA national event victories, including 18 during an 18-year career in nitro-powered Fords. He has finished in the top-10 in points the last seven seasons, including two third-place results.<\/p>\n

Tasca III serves as Vice President of Tasca Automotive Group in Cranston, R.I. He is the grandson of Ford loyalist Bob Tasca Sr., whose work with company icons Henry Ford II (aka The Deuce) and Carroll Shelby were central to the \u201cFord Total Performance\u201d initiative of the early 1960s and into the 1970s across various forms of racing world-wide.<\/p>\n

Among the Tasca family\u2019s contributions to American motorsport lore is the phrase \u201cWin on Sunday, Sell on Monday.\u201d The Tasca Ford dealership in Cranston emerged as the birthplace of historic Blue Oval Muscle Cars including the famed 427 CID Fairlane Thunderbolt, Ford Cobra Jet, Tasca Street Boss and Mystery race cars.<\/p>\n

NHRA\u2019s 2026 schedule will begin with the Gatornationals in Gainesville, Fla., March 5-8, officially jump-starting the California-based sanctioning body\u2019s 75th<\/sup>\u00a0anniversary season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By John Sturbin, Raceday San Antonio The NHRA Funny Car rivalry between corporate atagonists John Force Racing and Bob Tasca Racing was amped-up Thursday, when two-time\/reigning world champion Austin Prock was introduced as driver of Tasca\u2019s Ford Mustang beginning with the 2026 Mission Foods Drag Racing Series season. Prock and the tuning pairing led by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":678,"featured_media":54509,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4],"tags":[761,546,6,1145],"class_list":["post-55868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nhra","tag-austin-prock","tag-ford","tag-nhra","tag-tasca-racing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/racedaysa.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/2025-Reading-Nationals-50-768x512-1.webp?fit=768%2C512","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7hzTZ-ex6","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/678"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55868"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55868\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55870,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55868\/revisions\/55870"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/racedaysa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}