- Justin Ashley is leading the NHRA Top Fuel points championship after a runner-up finish at Norwalk, Ohio, by a whopping 97 points over runner-up and four-time champion Steve Torrence.
- He’s won nine times and has an incredible career winning percentage of .636 in elimination rounds, winning 96 of 151 rounds.
- This year, he’s won 20 of 25 elimination rounds.
It’s good to be Justin Ashley these days.
Ashley, a 28-year-old NHRA Camping World Drag Racing Top Fuel dragster driver from Plainview, N.Y., is leading the class with four wins in nine events. He’s leading the points championship after a runner-up finish at Norwalk, Ohio, by a whopping 97 points over runner-up and four-time champion Steve Torrence and by 106 points over Norwalk winner Leah Pruett.
“It’s not easy with the way the Top Fuel field is right now,” Ashley told Autoweek. “The quality and depth in the field is better than we’ve ever seen in NHRA history. So to be able to win four out of the first nine races is really special. And it’s a testament to the work that we put in during the offseason.”
What’s really special is Ashley’s run to the top of the Top Fuel charts so early in his NHRA career. He’s looking more and more like a driver ready to take up the mantle from a rather short list recent Top Fuel champions.
In the past six years, just two drivers have held the NHRA Top Fuel championship trophy—defending-champion Brittany Force (2022 and 2017) and Steve Torrence (four times, 2018-2021). Ashley is hoping the more experienced drivers in the field won’t mind a relatively new face stealing some of their thunder for hopefully the next several years.
“I think that youth is really important,” said Ashley, son of former NHRA racer Mike Ashley. “The bigger the youth movement, the better it’s going to be for the future of the NHRA. I feel like I’m certainly ready for whatever comes our way.
“But the key for me is that it’s not about me, and it never was. It’s always about the team that we have behind us because it takes a group. It really takes a team effort just to be able to be out here racing, let alone turn on a win light.”
Ashley this year drives the Phillips Connect/Vita C Shot Toytota dragster. The team’s crew chiefs are Mike Green and Tommy DeLago.
Ashley’s fast track started in Junior Dragsters when he was 11. From there, he went through Top Dragster and into the Top Alcohol class before moving up to the Top Fuel class for three events in 2019. He went on to win the NHRA Rookie of the Year in his first full year in 2020—a year that netted his first career win in the class at Indianapolis Raceway Park.
Since then, he’s turned in back-to-back seasons of making the NHRA Countdown to the Championship playoffs. He’s won nine times and has an incredible career winning percentage of .636 in elimination rounds, winning 96 of 151 rounds. This year, he’s won 20 of 25 elimination rounds.
“It’s fun for a little while when you’re under the radar,” Ashley said. “But I think the best place to be is where expectations are high. When expectations are high, it means you’re doing something right.
Justin Ashley has hoisted the Wally four times in 2023.
“And we genuinely expect to win each and every race that we go to and each and every round that we participate in. We also have a healthy understanding of how difficult that is to accomplish because the competition is so good. So it’s very humbling when I hear great things about myself or I hear great things about the team, but it’s too easy to get caught up in that stuff. Our focus is on racing and everything that happens on the track.”
When Ashley came to the NHRA, it was with a bit of an I-deserve-to-be-here swagger and confidence beyond his experience in the sport. This year, he’s justifying that swagger with his record on the track.
“It is a different feeling this year,” he said. “I think in the years previous, we did a really good job of establishing a foundation. But after establishing that foundation, now it’s really time to build on that. I know we have a championship-caliber team and championship-winning crew chiefs. We have championship-winning marketing partners with Phillips Connect, and they’ve given us resources that we need to come out and be successful.”
Ashley, while he’ll gladly take the torch from the likes of Brittany Force, Torrence and past champions Antron Brown, Tony Schumacher and Shawn Langdon racing in the Top Fuel field today, knows that no one is just going to give it to him.
“I’m a long way from even having that conversation,” Ashley said. “You think about guys like Antron Brown, Steve Torrence, Tony Schumacher. How about Joe Amato, Shirley Muldowney—people who have been doing it for such a long time, winning so many races, so many championships. We’re way, way off from even having that conversation.
“It’s an honor, a privilege, to even be considered as the next person to be able to take over. And it’s not just me. There’s Austin Prock, Josh Hart and other young drivers as well that are in the same position.”
Still, having people talking about you beats that alternative, right?
“It’s definitely humbling,” Ashley said. “And, of course, I think it’s great. It’s great for the sport. It’s great for our partners, but ultimately, we just have to focus on taking one day at a time.
“And focus on the task at hand.”
Mike Pryson covered auto racing for the Jackson (Mich.) Citizen Patriot and MLive Media Group from 1991 until joining Autoweek in 2011. He won several Michigan Associated Press and national Associated Press Sports Editors awards for auto racing coverage and was named the 2000 Michigan Auto Racing Fan Club’s Michigan Motorsports Writer of the Year. A Michigan native, Mike spent three years after college working in southwest Florida before realizing that the land of Disney and endless summer was no match for the challenge of freezing rain, potholes and long, cold winters in the Motor City.
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