Top Fuel’s Josh Hart Has Surprising Focus for 2026 NHRA Season

• Josh Hart is happy to join JFR, with a greater opportunity to “be a good influence in the sport.”

• The former team owner says he wants “to breathe inspiration and some sort of fire into the youth to make sure that they still love cars.”

• Hart says preserving the car culture that has driven drag racing for decades will ensure its survival—and that of his family business.

For NHRA Top Fuel racer Josh Hart, the very thought of it was as juicy as the Thanksgiving turkey on their plates, as sweet as the pumpkin pie for dessert.

He had broken free from team ownership, sold his entire operation to Richard Freeman. (Hart relished the idea that he “can now focus in 2026 and beyond about cutting a good light, driving the wheels off that car, making sure I’m doing my job at 150% without focusing on invoices and payroll and insurance and all this other stuff. There’s people for that that really like it. That’s not me. So very happy with the decision that we made.”)

Moreover, he joined John Force Racing, the sport’s most successful team with its 24 championships. Even better, he inherited the dragster in which two-time champion Brittany Force topped speed charts from Charlotte, North Carolina, to Seattle, from Epping, New Hampshire, to Sonoma, California. She drove it to eight of the class’ top-10 speeds—all of them at more than 340 mph and the national record at 343.51 mph. And starting with the 2026 season opener March 5-8 at Gainesville, Florida, Hart will be behind the wheel.

“I was actually just talking to my family about it at Thanksgiving dinner. I was like, ‘Do you realize that I'm actually going to get to drive the fastest car in the world?’” Hart said. “Not everybody can say that.

He said he hopes crew chiefs Dave Grubnic and John Collins and the crew “don’t back down at all. I hope we go for the jugular every time we get a chance. I will live up to the hype. I’m definitely ready for it. I’m going to focus on catching Justin Ashley when it comes to my reaction time, and I think we will be definitely a championship contender, no matter what.”

Make no mistake: Hart—whose fastest speed so far is the 336.07-mph pass he made at St. Louis in September—said he wants to “crest that 343 marker. The slow runs beat you to death. You’re vibrating and you’re shaking and it’s not very smooth. The faster that car goes, the smoother the ride. So I can only imagine what she’s used to, just ripping off those 340-mile-an-hour runs every time she got a chance. So I’m stoked. It’s going to be epic.”

The car, rebranded from Brittany Force’s “Monster Energy Dragster,” will be the Burnyzz Speed Shop Dragster. Hart and wife Brittanie own the sprawling Ocala, Fla.- based state-of-the-art auto-sales showroom and classic car restoration shop showcasing “American Classic Horsepower.”

Since he broke into the professional ranks with a victory in his first outing in 2021, Hart has carried the slogan “Anything’s Possible” on the rear wing of his dragster. And his vision goes beyond the gaudy performance numbers and a victory for the first time since the September 2021 race at Charlotte. He wants to grow with the 75-year-old sport and ensure its survival.

Hart’s goal, he said, is “hopefully [to] be a good influence in the sport, growing along with it.” He said he’ll be “trying to breathe inspiration and some sort of fire into the youth to make sure that they still love cars. Hey, my livelihood depends on these young guys starting to learn and love cars. So that’s one thing that I'm mostly excited about—the fan base around JFR is so much larger. Am I ready for it? Absolutely. I want to be a good influence to all these people. I’m just super-excited to still be in the seat, let alone that seat, and I want to make everybody proud. So I’ll do the best that I can.”

As for fitting in with a highly publicized team, in a car that rotated the drag-racing world, Hart said, “I think I’m ready for it. It is always going to be me, whether you like me or whether you hate me. I’m always even keel. It takes a lot to rock my boat. And you know what? We all put our pants on the same way, so hopefully people can appreciate that. I’m a very humble individual. I say exactly what I mean, so I’m not going to go out there and put on a big show with fake personalities. You’re going to get the real me all the time.”