From left: Thomas Prock, Austin Prock, Austin’ s fiancée Katlynn Leer, Jimmy
Prock, and Bob Tasca III celebrate together in the winner’ s circle. confident in his driving ability. The scoreboard told the rest: Prock left first(. 063 to. 076) and ran a 3.956 at 324.20 mph to outrun Beckman’ s 3.971 at 323.50. It was Prock’ s 22nd career victory and his first of 2026. It was also an especially meaningful one, as it was his first event win since leaving John Force Racing after back-to-back world championships, and featured a JFR car in the other lane.
“ That was probably number one on my win list,” says Prock.“ The hard work that we put into that, the struggles that we went through as a team, and then to finally put it all together … and the racing gods lining us up against a Force car and turning on the first win light in the Tasca-Force rivalry, it couldn’ t have been any better.”
The trials on Sunday leading up to Prock’ s first victory with Tasca Racing is fitting, as the team has faced their fair share of struggles throughout this season up to this point. Prock came into Maryland International Raceway with a 2-5 record in elimination rounds, sat 11th in points, and had a very vocal contingent of the internet enjoying every minute of it.
While Prock knew it would take time to get everything lined out during the process of forming a new team, he admits he was perhaps overly confident in how quickly he believed they could accomplish the task. The team would be starting
July / August 2026
“ I’ ve been very adamant saying that we’ re going to get the last laugh. There’ s no doubt in my mind.”
from scratch, working with all new, different parts than they were used to at JFR.
“ It is 10 times more work than I think what anybody else thought or thinks, maybe on the internet,” Prock says.“ You really don’ t understand what goes into creating one of these race teams that can contend at a championship level.
“ Everything that we had at John Force Racing was one-off and built in-house; only our race car had it,” adds Prock.“ When that gets taken away from you and you restart … you have a new short block. It’ s pretty close to the same, but all the little nuances of it, how do you QC it in, what do the studs need to be torqued to, etc. You compile all of that into each area of the race car, and all of a sudden you have 300 problems. You’ d fix one problem in the clutch and it created another problem. You’ d fix one problem in the fuel system and it created another problem.”
While the results may not have immediately shown it, Prock insists the team has made steady improvements since day one.
“ We had nothing to show for it until Chicago. It took six races to finally see those improvements show up on the E. T. board. It’ s been a grind, but all of us are more intelligent because of these struggles.”
Prock knew that maintaining an even keel was paramount to the team’ s success. While he knows he might have been too ambitious in his immediate goals, he also knew he had to maintain complete faith in the team that had been put in place. In the midst of all that, Prock made a decision about himself.
“ After Gainesville, I was obviously very upset, and rightfully so,” Prock says.“ I went to Phoenix and I told myself my number one goal when I’ m at the racetrack is to have fun. Because even when you’ re winning, this job is way too stressful to not have fun. You just have to maintain that attitude, because if you’ re struggling and you don’ t have a good attitude going into work ev-
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