Canada’s all time highest longevity drag racing team attains remarkable count in 2025…

As incredible as it might sound, Paton Racing began celebration of it’s 60th season within drag racing recently – when second generation driver Todd Paton entered the PDS/Fast Eddie Speedwear Top Fuel dragster for the NHRA Four-Wide Nationals, held in North Carolina.

At that event, which was Todd’s first NHRA nationals level race entry as a driver since Phoenix 2022, Todd collected a very rewarding elapsed time — 3.871 secs to qualify #14 in the tough field. Todd, who was making just his 2nd driving appearance within the 4-wide format too, did not however advance past quad round one on Sunday.  But in that heat he ran a 4.020 secs, an ET which could have potentially been much quicker.

“It was nice to run that 3.871 (secs) career-best,” Todd said. “That beat my previous best of 3.911 secs from Epping NH back in 2016. On Sunday’s run things were tracking well to something considerably quicker — but we started to spin the tires at about 400′ and then it tossed the blower belt.”

“But we accomplished our goals, which were to improve my career-best performances and figure out some of the problems that have haunted us over the last couple of events. We made some changes in the bell-housing that yielded some big results.”

While Todd’s on-track focus was front and centre that racing weekend, the race appearance was in itself just the beginning of something bigger for 2025 —  a celebration of six decades of dedication from Paton Racing.

Todd & Tony Paton kicked off the Paton Racing 60th Anniversary tour with an inspiring Top Fuel racing effort at NHRA zMax recently.

“My brother Tony and I decided to bring the car out to zMax to kick off Paton Racing’s 60th Anniversary,” Todd revealed, “After that we now have a pretty full match race schedule this summer (both in Canada and the USA) — but we want to get out to a few more NHRA events prior to that too. It felt really good to get back behind the wheel again. Driving the car at match race events over the last few summers has kept me current, but it’s a little different when you’re running at the National Event and really trying to ‘swing for the fences’”.

“Our mindset this year is that Tony and I obviously wouldn’t be here without our parents (Barry and Lynne) and 2025 is dedicated to the memory of both,” he emphasized. “They started drag racing back in 1965 out of the Western Canadian prairies before moving to the Maritimes. We’ve had many people drop by the pits who had seen Barry race back in the day. It was so good to hear those stories that mean so much to not just myself and Tony, but the whole team as well.”

As a tribute to the Paton Racing deep history and Canadian ambassadorship within drag racing — we have included just a few images from their very extensive and successful special times within Funny Car class racing.

You can also link to a pertinent previous post to DragRaceCanada which – as fate would have it – was exactly 10 years ago this month – featuring team founder and patriarch Barry Paton : HERE

For more information on Todd Paton’s industry leading data collection company for drag racing visit : www.RacePDS.com
For more information on Fast Eddie Speedwear visit: HERE

Posted by Bruce Biegler
Photos by Mike Gregg (NHRA zMax) & Bruce Biegler (DragRaceCanada Archives)