NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

Brian Corradi began his tenure in the sport as a crewmember on former high school classmate Dean Skuza’s Funny Car, where he learned under veteran tuner Lance Larsen. He worked his way up the ranks until he was granted the lead-tuner role during the 2003 season, and he promptly guided Skuza to three final-round finishes before his team folded due to lack of funding.

In 2005, Frank Pedregon hired Corradi to call the shots during a part-time schedule late in the season, and Corradi showed his talent by nearly winning the prestigious Chevrolet Performance U.S. Nationals and reaching the final round again in Dallas. This attracted attention from other camps, and Corradi was hired at Don Schumacher Racing to tune the Matco Tools Funny Car in 2006. He was reassigned to a Funny Car driven by Mike Ashley during the season, and when Ashley left to form his own team at the end of the season, Corradi went with him, joining Mark Oswald for what has become the sport’s most potent 1-2 punch.

Corradi won three events with Ashley, including the U.S. Nationals. Roger Burgess purchased the team, and Corradi guided Melanie Troxel to her first and only Funny Car win, in 2008. The next season, Ashley purchased the Matco Tools Top Fuel dragster team from David Powers Motorsports and assigned Corradi and Oswald to tune Antron Brown, thus beginning an ongoing relationship that has yielded 39 wins and the 2012 and 2015 NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series Top Fuel world championships. The team swept the Western Swing that season and won six events. Schumacher picked up the team late that season, and it has been a force to be reckoned with ever since.

The co-crew chief dynamic between Corradi and Oswald has worked tremendously because of how they get along and their insistence on a structure that plays to each other’s strengths. Oswald, the 1984 Funny Car world champion and a 2016 Int’l Drag Racing Hall of Fame inductee, is organized and capable of building just about anything, and he often cites Corradi’s incredible instincts as a key ingredient to the team’s success.