Photography: John Force Racing / Gary Nastase / Auto Imagery
SONOMA, Calif. (July 23, 2025) – On the home track of his friend, the late Eric Medlen, Mission Foods point leader Austin Prock aims to re-establish the dominance of his Cornwell Tools Chevrolet SS this weekend when he pursues the Funny Car Championship in the 37th NHRA Sonoma Nationals at Sonoma Raceway.
Bounced out of last week’s NHRA Northwest Nationals in the second round, bringing an end to a two-race win streak, the 29-year-old is anxious to get his national record-holding (341.68 mile per hour) Chevy back in competition.
“I’m ready to get going again,” he said. “Sonoma is one of my favorite tracks on tour. We had a good hot rod last year but came up short in semifinals, so I’d like to add my name to the list of winners in wine country.”
That list includes Medlen, who grew up in nearby Oakdale, Calif., and who won the 2006 Sonoma Nationals just eight months before he lost his life in a testing accident in Gainesville, Fla.
“Eric was a great friend of mine, and a mentor to me,” Prock said. “He took me under his wing (when Prock was just a kid, hanging out in the John Force Racing pits where his dad worked his magic on the Funny Car driven by Robert Hight). He took care of me and taught me things.
“So, it’d be cool to win on his home track and add my name to the JFR winners (Medlen, Hight, Force and the latter’s racing daughters, Brittany and Courtney),” he said.
Although he grew up at the dragstrip, Prock developed his car control skills driving quarter-midgets and sprint cars out of Tony Stewart’s shop with brother Thomas, now an assistant crew chief on the Cornwell car. At JFR, where he worked as a clutch tech, he got his first opportunity, not in a Funny Car, but in a Top Fuel dragster.
Despite interruptions resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic and sponsorship issues, he won a race in each of his three full seasons in Top Fuel, earned Rookie-of-the-Year recognition in 2019 and finished as high as third in points (2022). Nevertheless, his ultimate goal always was to drive a Funny Car “like my grandpa.”
Now, he’s not only following in Grandpa Tom’s Funny Car footsteps, but he’s also doing so in a car prepared by his dad, his brother and Nate Hildahl.
Although he has yet to hoist the trophy at Sonoma Raceway, the 16-time tour winner knows he is driving for a team that sent Hight to the winners’ circle four times (2008, 2018, 2019 and 2021) while setting the existing track record (3.807 seconds at 339.87 mph in 2017).
