Paton Racing > Power Play « DragRaceCanada.com

Paton Racing > Power Play

by editor on Nov.09, 2026, under Hotzone

The season-finale appearance for Paton Racing may very well have provided a preview for more things to come….

During the recent NHRA Mopar Las Vegas Nationals — Canada’s Paton Racing was entered and that occurrence came with a Top Fuel class debut for non-other then Chris Powers – of Mountain Motor Pro Stock class racing fame.

Powers, who is based from Carlise Pennsylvania, had completed his licensing process upgrade with the Paton team following last summer’s Brainerd Nationals in Minnesota.

The Las Vegas race was his first ever competition fray into the world’s fastest motorsports class category.

Within the cockpit of the Paton Racing dragster which had seen action this season with both Todd Paton and Keith Murt as drivers, Chris Powers qualified well with pretty darn impressive 3.807 secs at 321.19 mph to make the field at Vegas.

Chris Powers made an impressive run to qualify at his first ever Top Fuel race.

“Our car ran great with a pair of 3.88’s the Friday,” stated team owner Todd Paton. “Then we made changes to the clutch for Saturday and made an early shutoff 3.88 in Q3 — which set us up nicely for that quick run in Q4 on Halloween night.”

During round one on Sunday versus Tony Stewart, as fate would have it, Chris had the parachutes deploy prematurely — during his first ever NHRA career Top Fuel round.

“Turns out that during a flash fire we had in Q3 — some chute cables got burned,” Todd continued. “The new cables we installed got cut a little short which caused a chute release when the car launched. But in fact on that run the car still had a better 60′ than the 3.80 pass! But I had to click it off (remotely) — since Chris didn’t know the chute was out.”

Todd Paton

Todd did confirm that the Las Vegas event is the last race this season for his team – they will not run at the Finals at Pomona this coming weekend.

But he also did hint at some more possibilities with Chris Power for the future.

“He and I are working on trying to put together funding to do more events in 2027,” he affirmed. “Paton Racing will be running our new car next season.”