Duluth teen wins prestigious Wally Ring in Jr. dragster race
A 13-year-old Duluth racer won drag racing’s Wally Ring, joining a junior league where half-scale cars, safety gear and local points racing lead to bigger stages.
Jasper Urbick’s latest run in junior drag racing ended with one of the sport’s biggest prizes, the Wally Ring, putting the 13-year-old Duluth driver on a stage far beyond a local bracket win. Urbick said, “Winning the Wally, that's just that was so big for me,” after the Jr. Dragsters victory.
The achievement sits inside a tightly structured sport. The NHRA Summit Racing Jr. Drag Racing League is open to drivers ages 5 to 17 and uses half-scale dragsters powered by a five-horsepower, single-cylinder engine. NHRA says the cars can reach 85 mph and run the eighth-mile in 7.90 seconds, although younger racers are kept to slower limits. A basic new Jr. Dragster starts at about $5,000, and racers need licensed membership plus safety gear that includes an approved helmet, jacket, neck collar, gloves, long pants and arm restraints.
For Urbick, the win also reflects the work that happens well before a trophy run. Grove Creek Raceway in Grove City lists junior classes for Novice, ages 5 to 9, Intermediate, 10 to 12, and Advanced, 13 to 18. Its 2025 trophy-getters page showed Urbick finishing fourth in Intermediate, and its June 8, 2026 points table listed Jasper Urbick in the JR-INTERMEDIATE category. Grove Creek says drivers who join its Championship Series can qualify for the NHRA Jr. Drag Racing League Western Conference Finals, giving local racers a path from regional points racing to a bigger championship picture.
The Wally itself carries that larger significance. NHRA calls it drag racing’s most prestigious trophy, named for founder Wally Parks, and says the first one was awarded during the 1969 season. The trophy stands about 18 inches tall. For a teenager from Duluth, winning one ties a Northland racer to a national standard that has defined the sport for decades, while keeping the St. Louis County and northern Minnesota racing scene in the conversation.
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