A fourth-generation racer, a hands-on student of the machine and a two-time NHRA Funny Car world champion, Austin Prock is bringing one family’s relentless approach to Ford’s American racing legacy.
Austin Prock’s earliest racing memory does not involve a grandstand, a trophy or even a steering wheel. It begins inside a tire.
“I was probably three or four years old, inside a rear Goodyear slick, running around like a hamster in it, or being pushed in it and somersaulting,” Prock recalled in the Tasca Racing trailer during the 2026 NHRA U.S. Nationals. There are photographs from even earlier: Austin, only weeks old, strapped to the back of his father, Jimmy, as the celebrated nitro tuner torqued a cylinder head.
“I was out at the racetrack when I was two weeks old,” Austin said. “This is all I’ve ever really known. I’m the fourth generation of racers who have done it professionally. My brain just ticks motorsport.”
That history explains why a Funny Car feels like home and why the intensity of professional drag racing feels like the family business – it is. But that alone won’t paint the full picture of the driver we see today.
Prock arrived at Ford Racing in 2026 as the winner of back-to-back NHRA Funny Car world championships. His 2024 season produced eight wins, a single-season record 15 No. 1 qualifiers and an NHRA Funny Car speed record of 341.68 mph, a speed record tied with his current team owner, Bob Tasca III. He followed it with nine victories and another title in 2025.
Those statistics suggest an uninterrupted rise, but the person behind them was also shaped by losing his opportunity, spending two years outside the cockpit and fighting to remain a racer.
When the Seat Disappeared
Prock began his professional NHRA driving career in Top Fuel in 2019. He won in Seattle, earned NHRA Rookie of the Year honors and appeared to be living the future he had always imagined. Then the pandemic disrupted the sport, funding changed and the ride disappeared.
“I went from absolutely living my dream in 2019, being on top of the world, to feeling the most degraded I’ve ever felt in my life,” he said. “I felt like my passion and love had been stripped away from me.”
Prock was also in the middle of buying his first house when he lost his job, only days before signing the paperwork. He worked construction through the pandemic to keep the house. For two years, he did not drive a race car - the longest stretch he had spent out of one since age 10.
“Those were some of the toughest times in my career,” he said. “But everything happens for a reason. I think it made me a better person. It made me stronger, and it made me want it just a little bit more.”
The time away did not take him out of racing entirely. In 2021, Austin worked with Jimmy and immersed himself in superchargers, testing his own ideas and taking new combinations to the dyno. A forced pause became an education.
“It made me a stronger person, a smarter person and made me appreciate the things in life that you do love,” he said. “Don’t ever take them for granted.”
The Driver Who Works on the Car
When Austin received his first race car at age 10, Jimmy laid down the terms: If he wanted to race it, he had to work on it, set it up, service it and load it into the trailer. Austin and his older brother, Thomas, would hook the trailer to the family’s Ford truck, their mother would drive them to the track, and the boys would unload and race what they had prepared.
“My dad always told me, ‘The more you know about the race car, the better race car driver you’re going to be,’” Austin said. “I said, ‘Dad, you’re out of your mind. They don’t go hand in hand.’ It took me until I was about 18 years old to realize he was right.”
That mechanical fluency now operates at more than 300 mph. Prock can hear the engine, feel the tires and understand when his input might help or upset the car. He says he can climb from the cockpit and discuss a single pass for half an hour.
“I’m the race car driver. I’m the face of the team, essentially,” he said. “But if I don’t put in the same amount of effort that they do, then we’re not all rowing in the same direction. When we go back to the shop, I work an 8-to-5 - or an 8-to-7 - job right along with them. Anything that needs to be done, even if I’ve never done it before, I’ll jump in and help push the boat in the right direction.”
He applies that standard just as deeply to his driving. Even after a clean run, Prock searches for the detail he could execute better. “Even on a perfect run, I will find something,” he said. “I think that’s what gives me an edge on the competition - being hard on myself and pushing myself to be the best.”
Old-School Instinct, Modern Engineering
The Ford Racing Nitro Mustang Funny Car is among motorsports’ most technologically extreme machines, but its team has a distinctly old-school structure: a father, two sons and a crew that functions like family.
Jimmy Prock is the self-taught engine specialist whose aggressive approach to nitro has defined championship programs. Thomas grew up racing beside Austin, then paired that hands-on background with a mechanical engineering degree. Together, their perspectives create a rare advantage.
“When you have the old-school talent and the new young blood, and they can coexist like that, it makes for a dominant package,” Austin said.
Austin remembers Jimmy arriving home late, walking directly to his office and returning to race data. Thomas inherited the same restless attention. The three Procks share an inability to stop thinking about the next run.
That made their move to Tasca Racing and Ford Racing for 2026 more than a driver announcement. It joined two families with deep roots in American performance and gave Ford a complete championship unit - driver, crew chiefs and crew - prepared to establish an entirely new combination.
The beginning tested them. After early races without a round win, the team broke through and began stacking semifinal and final-round appearances. By the U.S. Nationals, Prock had won the Funny Car Mission #2Fast2Tasty Championship, another sign of a program accelerating at the most important point of the season.
Behind the results was a larger build. In a matter of months, the team developed its first in-house Funny Car chassis and installed supercharger, clutch and fuel-system dynos. Prock calls the progress a “consistent drive forward,” enabled by the crew and support of Tasca and Ford Racing.
“What we’ve accomplished in nine months, working with Ford Racing and Tasca Racing, is something I don’t think any other team could have accomplished,” he said. And? “We’re not done yet.”
A Ford Connection Nearly a Century Old
Prock’s connection to Ford reaches back generations. His family still has a receipt from the late 1920s or 1930s, when his great-grandfather bought a Ford four-cylinder engine for a midget race car.
Now, a century later, Austin is adding the Prock name to a Ford drag racing lineage that includes icons such as Bob Glidden and Mickey Thompson, while working alongside a Tasca family whose own identity has long been intertwined with Ford.
“My family is racing history. The Tasca family is racing history,” Prock said. “Bringing those two essentially legendary families of motorsports together is so special. The Ford and Prock families, and the Tasca and Ford families, have been coexisting for a really long time. To be back with Ford Racing and carry on this legacy and tradition is really cool.”
Prock has already produced the numbers that establish a career. Now he wants a sustained record that defines an era - and to build it as part of America’s Race Team. The crew is central to that pursuit: They travel, work, eat and celebrate together. “Those boys out there are my family, and they would say the same about me,” he said. “To have everybody here and to be a part of America’s Race Team - it’s great for us, and I think it’s great for the brand as well.”
