Drag Illustrated Issue 153, February 2020 | Page 34

Special Section
No Warning
Labels Tour
NEW LOOKS, TRACKS AND CLASS BRINGING FRESHNESS TO 2020 PDRA SEASON
BY NATE VAN WAGNEN | PHOTOGRAPHS BY JAMES SISK
T
he PDRA’s seventh season will see the all-
eighth-mile series and its racers take on
a wide range of changes. On the series
level, there are two new tracks, a new class
and new class sponsors. On the racer level,
some drivers have switched classes, while others
plan to join the PDRA for the first time.
Tyler Crossnoe, the series race director, is expect-
ing growth across the board, even in the PDRA’s
two headlining classes. Two prominent racers in
Switzer Dynamics Pro Nitrous, two-time world
champion Jason Harris and John Camp, have
switched over to Pro Boost, which is now Penske
Racing Shocks/Precision Racing Suspension Pro
Boost presented by WS Construction.
“I really feel like Pro Boost will have a resurgence
in 2020,” Crossnoe says. “I think you’ll see a lot
of new faces. Not necessarily new faces to the
PDRA, but new to the class. I also feel like you’ll
see new faces in general move into Pro Nitrous
and Pro Boost as the season approaches and more
new cars are coming together. Racers who feel
like they’re at the top of their game want to race
the best, and they’re wanting
to race with us.”
A new class, Pro Street, will
join the PDRA as the series’
own small-tire class at three
stops on the tour. Pro Street,
which is modeled after
Limited Drag Radial, Outlaw
10.5 and Pro 275, will be con-
tested at the East Coast Na-
tionals presented by FuelTech
at GALOT, the North-South
Shootout presented by Line-X
at Maryland and the World Finals at Virginia.
Small-tire drivers like 2019 Outlaw 10.5 national
champion Mo Hall and Limited Drag Radial stars
Jim Howe and Andy Manson are expected to enter
the new Pro Street class.
“We sat down in the offseason and meshed a few
rulebooks together to incorporate classes that
will make a lot of cars competitive and take a
broad scale of three classes and combine them
into one with minor changes,” Cross-
noe says. “It will be a very neat cat-
egory. Cars will be very similar in ap-
pearance to their stock counterparts,
and that’s very relatable for a fan.”
The eight-race 2020 schedule, re-
leased in October, features traditional
PDRA tracks like GALOT Motorsports
Park, Virginia Motorsports Park,
34 PDRA660.com
Maryland International Raceway and Darlington
Dragway. But it also includes two new stops.
Summit Motorsports Park in Norwalk, Ohio, will
host the Decerbo Construction American
Doorslammer Challenge presented by Callies June
11-13, while Maple Grove Raceway near Reading,
Pennsylvania, will hold the Northern Nationals
Aug. 20-22.
“The PDRA is the premier place to race for over
10 categories of drag racing,” Crossnoe says.
“While we pride ourselves on having the best
racers, they have to have a platform to perform
on. Adding national event caliber facilities like
Summit Motorsports Park and Maple Grove
Raceway really put a staple on the PDRA calendar
with two more strong tracks to go along with our
other returning stops.”
For more information on the 2020 PDRA No
Warning Labels tour, visit www.PDRA660.com.