NHRA Drag Racer Bob Tasca III Slams Fox Sports As ‘Fake News’ On FS1 — Here’s Why
Bob Tasca III is one of the fastest men on four wheels and he wants you to know it.
After the 18-time NHRA Funny Car winner beat defending champion Austin Prock in the first elimination round of the season-opening Gatornationals on Sunday, he used his post-race interview on FS1 to send a message to the broadcaster, which carries both the NHRA and IndyCar series.
Fox has held the NHRA rights for several years, but picked up IndyCar for the first time this season and has been heavily promoting it with ads that call it “the fastest racing on Earth.”
The record qualifying speed at the Indy 500 was set by Scott McLaughlin last year at a four-lap average speed of 234.220 mph, while the all-time fastest lap record is the late Gil de Ferran’s 241.428 mph qualifying effort at California Speedway in 2000.
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Meanwhile, the record trap speed for an NHRA Funny Car was set last year by Austin Prock at 341.68 mph at Pomona Raceway during the championship weekend, which matched the speed Tasca hit at a non-NHRA-sanctioned event earlier the year in Bradenton, Florida.
“I should be talking about that run right now, but really, for me, I gotta call out Fox, Fox Sports,” Tasca told Fox Sports reporter Amanda Busick.
“You know, all winter long we heard about the ‘fastest motorsports on the planet’ and I was a little confused because I didn’t see that PPG Mustang [his car] when I saw that add and I didn’t see that Prock car over there and the truth is it’s an insult to our fans and to the drivers for Fox to go on TV and say “the fastest motorsports in the world” and it’s IndyCar? Come on, now, I didn’t think there was fake news network on Fox.”
The key difference is that while the NHRA trap speeds are peaks that last a fraction of a second, IndyCar’s high speeds are sustained for hours on the speedway ovals it competes on. IndyCar itself has used the “fastest motorsport” claim for years, but usually clarifies that it refers to closed circuit series, which does not apply to drag racing.
It should also be noted that Prock’s record NHRA run took 3.828 seconds, which was achieved from a standing start and averages out to 178.113 mph over the 1,000-foot distance.
While it wasn’t clear how serious Tasca was being during the interview, he made no doubt about it in a follow-up post on X where he wrote, “I said what I said.”
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Fox has not commented on Tasca’s outburst, but it was left in the edited event broadcast and was also posted to the official NHRA X account.
Tasca lost in the next round to Alexis DeJoria, who fell to Ron Capps in the semis, while Chad Green beat Capps in the final for his second career Gatornationals win.
Defending Top Fuel champion Antron Brown took the season opener with a win over Shawn Langdon and Dallas Green beat Greg Anderson in the Pro Stock category.
The NHRA heads next to Firebird Motorsports Park for the Arizona Nationals the weekend of March 21-23, which will be broadcast across FS1 and FS2.