NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

(Above) Old No. 4 was pulled down from the rafters (below) above the DSR crew chief offices in Brownsburg, Ind., where old Funny Car chassis patiently wait for their chance to race again.

Joe Fitzpatrick, Don Schumacher Racing fab shop manager, looks over Funny Car chassis No. 4.

This is the double K-member (the X) that helps hold Funny Car framerails in place while also reducing vibration.

The rear part of the chassis on Matt Hagan’s Funny Car failed in Brainerd.

Matt Hagan finally collected his first victory at the Chevrolet Performance U.S. Nationals, but the car in which the former world champ rode to victory took an interesting road to the winner’s circle.

Earlier this year, Dickie Venables, Hagan’s crew chief, was in need of a backup car. So, he looked to the rafters above the crew chief offices at Don Schumacher Racing’s headquarters and found DSR Funny Car chassis No. 4, built way back in 2009.

“It’s the fourth Funny Car that DSR ever built,” said Venables. “It’s been sitting up above my office ever since I started work here in 2013.”

After pulling chassis No. 4 down from the rafters, they sent it to the DSR fabrication shop, where Joe Fitzpatrick and his crew put on a new front half. It was then loaded on the transporter as Hagan’s backup car. They made a couple of test runs with old No. 4 in Las Vegas and put it back on the truck, where it sat until the team returned from Brainerd.

After setting a new national elapsed time record in Brainerd with their primary car, Hagan made it to the final of the Lucas Oil NHRA Nationals. But, while facing off against Del Worsham for the Wally, something happened to Hagan’s car that would force Venables and company to go to a backup plan for the Chevrolet Performance U.S. Nationals.

At the initial hit, the wheelie bar failed because the tree it connects to in the rear of the car broke.

“That caused the car to stay down on the tire; the tire wadded up and shook really hard,” said Venables. “It broke the X underneath his feet, along with the rear tree.”

The team returned to the shop with their broken car on Monday but had to be ready to go to the test at Lucas Oil Raceway at Indianapolis on Wednesday. They didn’t have enough time to fix that car, so Venables made the decision to go with old No. 4.

The team made only two early shutoff runs during the two-day test, and Venables liked what he saw.

“It wasn’t any different than what we ran in Brainerd or prior to that,” he noted. “It acted exactly the same, ran exactly the same. I wouldn’t even know it was a different car if I didn’t know it. So, we just decided to stay with it.”

That turned out to be one of the best decisions Venables ever made. Old No. 4 opened up qualifying for the U.S. Nationals by running a new track record elapsed time of 3.858 seconds to grab the No. 1 qualifying position, a spot Hagan held onto throughout all five qualifying sessions.

On Sunday, Hagan began feeling the effects of a bad head cold and wasn’t 100 percent physically for Monday’s finals, but Old No. 4 didn’t let him down.

The car performed flawlessly as Hagan and company mowed through the field setting up a showdown with Worsham in the final.

Old No. 4 was a tick slower than Worsham’s newer car, but Hagan saved the day with a quicker reaction time, and, as they say, the rest is history. Both Hagan and Venables celebrated their first wins at drag racing’s biggest event while almost following a Hollywood movie script.

“To me, it’s really not [a surprise],” said Venables. “I know what the guys do in the fab shop, and I always tell the guys, ‘Tubing is tubing, and pipe is pipe.’ It’s just kind of something that holds everything together.

“It wasn’t that big of a deal, but it is kind of cool,” Venables said with a big smile on his face.

Old No. 4 will undergo one more facelift before heading back out for the NHRA Mello Yello Countdown to the Championship. Two days after winning the U.S. Nationals, it was back in the fab shop, where the team raised the top of the roll cage three-quarters of an inch to give Hagan more head room.