NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

Saturday morning at the Cornwell Quality Tires NHRA U.S. Nationals, J.R. Todd was feeling a little forlorn. As the callouts began for Sunday’s PlayNHRA Funny Car All-Star Callout, no one was calling his name.

“I'm like, ‘This sucks. Nobody wants to race us,’ “ he recalled. “I felt like that grade-school kid whose name doesn’t get called to be on a team.”

But there was a very good reason: Todd and his DHL team had suddenly become if not the most-feared team in the pits, then certainly a team that no one wanted to mess with after their sterling performance two weeks earlier at the Lucas Oil NHRA Nationals in Brainerd. The team reached the final round after a jaw-dropping 3.86 in the semi’s and even though they didn’t make it down the track in the final against Austin Prock, everyone knew that the sleeping giant had been awakened.

When the team added three-time world champion tuner Dickie Venables to experienced Jon Oberhofer, people expected great things from the 2018 world champ, but results, perhaps expectedly, were slow in coming, and the two pieces of the puzzle melded. They racked up just 11 round wins through the season‘s first 12 events, three of which came in a runner-up in Epping.

“We had the best car on Sunday in Brainerd, and Dickie said we just got greedy trying to see what we could get away with and found the limit,” Todd said. “But that’s what I like about Dickie. I like his approach, being aggressive. He's always pressing, seeing what we can get away with. He wants to be aggressive, and the last few races, the car is responding to the changes he's making.

“We're still growing, but we're fighting things that he wants to do differently with the car, but now the car is responding. In pre-season testing, we made some really great early shut-off runs, and he's like, ‘Yeah, I like to be aggressive,’ but that kind of changed as the season went on, just learning different things with the bellhousing and the engine setup. Now, I think we're getting back to that point where we were early in the year. I don't want to say that we're there yet, but we're definitely not way behind these guys like we were a handful of races ago.”

The timing, of course, is exquisite as the teams prepare to head into the Countdown to the Championship playoffs, but first there’s the matter of the U.S. Nationals, where. Heading into battle Sunday, Todd still has the chance for an Indy triple-up after winning Saturday’s Mission Challenge.

Today he’s racing in the Callout and, of course, Monday is the"Big Go," a race he won twice, back-to-back in 2017 and 18/

“I've been to every U.S. Nationals since '92 or ‘93, when I was 10 years old,” said the native Hoosier. “I’ve seen a lot here. I got to race my Jr. dragster here at the US Nationals, and it’s just like home to me.

“People always ask what my favorite track is, and I tell them Sonoma, but this is my favorite race by far. I mean, nothing beats the US Nationals. You roll in the gate and you just feel different compared to any track on the tour. It’s just it's one that when you win at; people don't forget about it. ‘Snake’ [Don Prudhomme] said, ‘No one cares about your championships if you haven't won Indy. I'm fortunate enough that I've that we've won both.”

Todd will start his Callout run today against Matt Hagan, a two-time Callout runner-up, and both will be looking for their first win at the high-dollar bonus event.

“I have a lot of respect for him,” Todd said. “There's no nonsense between he and I on the on the starting line. It reminds me of racing Robert Hight back in the day. Just go up there and do your deal and let the car do the talking.”

So far, the DHL team is backing to talking about championship dreams.