DeJoria Wins All-Toyota Funny Car Final At NHRA Bristol
BRISTOL, TN – Alexis DeJoria defeated J.R. Todd in an all-Toyota Camry Funny Car final round to win Sunday’s NHRA Thunder Valley 
Nationals at Bristol Dragway. It marked the first all-Toyota final round in Funny Car since Shawn Langdon defeated Todd at World Wide Technology Raceway in St. Louis in 2019.
The win is the sixth career Funny Car win for DeJoria and her first since coming out of a two-year retirement last season.
DeJoria opened her day with Paul Lee, where the two left side-by-side, but the Bandero Toyota drove off to an easy win as Lee clicked it off early. In round two, DeJoria would have a bye as the number one qualifier in the 14-car field and took care of business with a solid 3.931. That would set up a semi against Robert Hight where she ran the quickest pass of the day in Funny Car with a 3.904 to move on.
In the finals, DeJoria would register an amazing .002 light and then lay down a 3.921 to Todd’s 3.939, never trailing in the final in giving DC Motorsports its first win.
Todd’s run to the final was nearly as impressive. In round one, he matched up with Matt Hagan who came into the event with the series point lead. The DHL Toyota had the starting line advantage and Todd kept it hooked up in running the quickest pass of the round with a 3.924 for the win, beating Hagan by 0.049 seconds despite Hagan making the third-quickest pass of the round. Todd ran an even better pass in dispatching John Force in round two with a 3.916-second run – the quickest pass of round two. In the semis, Todd would once again defeat the point leader, this time Ron Capps, with a 3.921 to send him to the final round.
In Top Fuel, all three Toyota drivers were eliminated in the opening round of eliminations.
After registering an .056 light on the tree, Shawn Langdon made a strong pass with a 3.739, but fell just short against Justin Ashley. Neither Doug Kalitta nor Antron Brown was able to make a clean pass under difficult weather conditions and were eliminated with Kalitta falling to Billy Torrence and Brown to eventual race winner Mike Salinas.
The NHRA heads to The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway for the series penultimate round, Oct. 29-31.
