Matt Hagan did not win the Texas NHRA FallNationals on Sunday. He did not need to. A runner-up finish at Texas Motorplex stretched his Funny Car points lead to 98 markers over Jordan Vandergriff with two events remaining in the 20-race season, and the math increasingly favors the four-time champion heading into Las Vegas and Pomona.
Hagan qualified second in the 16-car field and worked methodically through eliminations, posting a 3.918, a 3.948 and a 3.931 in consecutive wins over Hunter Green, Paul Lee and Vandergriff before meeting former world champion J.R. Todd in the final. Todd edged him, 3.931 to 4.050, with Hagan reporting a cylinder out late in the run. A loss that tight, in a final round, still costs nothing in the championship picture when your closest rival is knocked out in the semis.
That consistency is the story of the 2026 season for Hagan, who clinched the regular-season title at Indianapolis and entered the six-race Countdown to the Championship as the top seed. Through four Countdown events, he has a win at Rockingham, two runner-up finishes (Michigan and Texas), and a semifinal result at St. Louis. No hole cards. The lead that stood at 72 points after St. Louis grew to 98 today, a product of steady accumulation rather than fireworks.
If Hagan wins a fifth Funny Car title, he would stand alone. Don Prudhomme and Kenny Bernstein are each tied with four. Hagan is in his 19th season driving a nitro-burning Funny Car for Dodge.
Todd’s win moved him to third in Funny Car points, now trailing Hagan by 119. Vandergriff, who made a significant comeback from a slow start earlier this season, sits second. The Las Vegas race on Oct. 30 through Nov. 1 is the next opportunity to settle it, with Hagan defending a 2025 victory there. The final two events carry points-and-a-half scoring at Pomona, which keeps the math live for Vandergriff but requires Hagan to implode rather than simply underperform.
In Factory Stock Showdown, two-time defending series champion Mark Pawuk of Akron, Ohio, scored the first national event win for the next-generation Dodge Charger Drag Pak. Pawuk drove his Ray Barton Racing Engines-powered 2026 Charger through wins over Rouven Dawson, Dave Davies II and Doug Duell before defeating Lee Hartman’s Dodge Challenger Drag Pak in an all-Dodge final, 7.522 to 7.542. The Charger Drag Pak pairs SRT race HEMI power with a drag-race-ready version of the new Charger body, and Pawuk has been developing the car across the full 2026 season. The Texas win is what that development has been building toward.
Leah Pruett had the quickest run of the opening Top Fuel round, a 3.684 over Billy Torrence. In her first full season back in a 12,000-horsepower dragster after the birth of her and Tony Stewart’s son, Pruett currently sits fifth in Top Fuel points. Her quarterfinal against four-time Top Fuel champion Antron Brown was close: Pruett left the line with a 0.034-second reaction time and led past the halfway point before Brown’s 3.696 edged her 3.735 at the finish. The margin of victory was under 0.002 seconds.
Stewart, TSR’s team owner and Pruett’s husband, qualified second after setting a track speed record of 343.70 mph. He knocked out Spencer Massey in round one with a 3.696 before losing traction at halftrack in the quarterfinal against Justin Ashley. Stewart sits fourth in Top Fuel points, one position ahead of Pruett, as the series heads to Las Vegas.
Two races remain. Hagan has the lead and the pattern to sustain it. The campaign that began with a seven-point edge after Brainerd has compounded steadily into something that now requires Vandergriff to win both remaining events and hope Hagan stumbles. That is not impossible. It is, at this point, the only path.
Source: Stellantis. Images courtesy of Stellantis.
