WOMEN OF POWER • 2025 AMBER DENTON

BY NATE VAN WAGNEN PHOTOGRAPHS BY RICK BELDEN, TARA BOWKER, MELLIE SNEDEKER, AND ABBY DILLARD

AMBER DENTON has never been one to back down from a challenge. After racking up two PDRA Pro 632 world championships in 2022 and 2024 and a PDRA Pro Jr. Dragster title in 2017, the young driver is taking the next big step in her racing career: moving up to the ultra-competitive Pro Nitrous division. Denton— the daughter of three-time Pro Nitrous world champion Tommy Franklin and his wife, Judy— made her Pro Mod debut during the inaugural Drag Illustrated Winter Series, turning heads with her smooth transition into the faster, more demanding class. Now, as just the second woman to compete in Pro Nitrous since the late Lizzy Musi, Denton is carving out her own legacy in one of doorslammer racing’ s most iconic divisions.

Denton, who married her longtime boyfriend, 2023 PDRA Super Street world champion Blake Denton last September, enjoyed a dominant final season in Pro 632 competition. Driving the Musi-powered“ OG Jungle Rat”’ 69 Camaro— the same car her father drove to Pro Nitrous world championships in 2016 and 2017, Denton qualified No. 1 at all but two of the eight races on the 2024 PDRA schedule. She won three races— the North vs. South Shootout at Maryland International Raceway, the inaugural Thunder Valley Throwdown at Bristol Dragway, and Drag Wars at GALOT Motorsports Park, the latter allowing Denton to secure the 2024 world championship before the season-ending Brian Olson Memorial World Finals. Denton also set a new class E. T. record at the World Finals, becoming the first person in the class to dip into the

4.00s with a 4.086-second pass. She closed the weekend— and her Pro 632 career— with a runner-up finish to longtime best friend Lexi Tanner.

With Denton having made a statement in Pro 632, onlookers expected her to soon make the move up to Pro Nitrous. The Franklin family had been quietly preparing for the transition since earlier in the season when they made some reconfigurations in the Pro 632 car to prepare her for the driving motions of the Pro Nitrous combination. Those close to the family knew what was going on, but Denton kept the move quiet through the World Finals weekend.

“ It was very hard to keep it a secret,” Denton says.“ At the last race we already had both motors sold out of the 632 program, so we tried to keep that under wraps. I was excited about it and my parents were excited about it, so keeping that a secret until we were confident that that’ s the direction we wanted to go was definitely difficult.”

About a month after the World Finals, Denton and the Tommy Franklin Motorsports team returned to their own Virginia Motorsports Park in mid-November so she could make her first passes with a Musi 974-cubic-inch mill between the frame rails. Unsurprisingly, Denton was ripping off numbers in the 3.60s in just a few passes.

“ It was wintertime in Virginia, so the air was quite good,” Denton offers.“ Having my dad and my husband, Blake, and then [ tuner ] Jeff Pierce and all of our crew guys, of course, having that support made the world of difference. They were extremely patient and just took it one step at a time, doing burnouts and everything. A lot of the procedure was close to the same as what I was used to in 632, but at the same time, it’ s quite a big difference when there’ s a lot more horsepower involved. Our VMP staff and Gavin Carter had the track set that weekend, so it made the adjustment very easy for us. We made good laps and got ready for the Winter Series, which we were excited about.”

Both Denton and Franklin sat out the first race of the inaugural Drag Illustrated Winter Series presented by J & A Service, the Snowbird Outlaw Nationals, to focus on preparations for the Performance Racing Industry Show the next weekend in Indianapolis, where the Franklin family-owned PDRA has a booth and hosts its annual championship awards banquet. But they set the next race, the U. S. Street Nationals in late January, as Denton’ s official Pro Modified debut.

Team TFM rolled into Bradenton Motorsports Park with just Amber’ s

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