If you hang around drag racing long enough, you see a lot of guys who are fast, talented, and consistent, but just can’t seem to close the deal. For the longest time, John DeFlorian felt like he was stuck in that category. He was the guy who could build a rocket ship for someone else at Jerry Haas Race Cars, and he was the guy who could qualify well, but that big trophy, the world championship, always seemed to stay just out of reach.
He even joked that he was turning into the “Doug Kalitta of Mountain Motor Pro Stock,” a reference to the NHRA legend who spent decades chasing a title before finally getting it. But in 2025, the script finally flipped. DeFlorian didn’t just win; he overcame a disaster of a start to write a storybook ending right in his own backyard.
DeFlorian and the Season That Almost Wasn’t
To understand why this championship means so much, you have to look at how close DeFlorian came to parking the trailer for good. The 2025 season didn’t start with champagne. It began with heartbreak. After a solid third-place finish the previous year, expectations were high. Then came Charlotte and Epping.
It wasn’t just that he lost in the first round; it was how he lost. In Charlotte, a crankshaft snapped in fifth gear. For a privateer team, that’s not just a bad day at the track. That’s a financial catastrophe. That was his only engine. He scraped together enough cash just to get to the track, and suddenly, he was staring at a pile of broken parts and a season that looked dead on arrival…