NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

Ryan Oehler has won a pair of NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing series events in his career, but they came during the 2020 and 2021 seasons so it’s been a while since he’s had an opportunity to hoist a coveted NHRA Wally trophy. After a few lean years, Oehler feels as though he’s well on the road to a breakthrough and his ambitious plan includes the addition of a second Buell V-twin, which is currently being ridden by Brayden Davis, who was quite impressive last season in his rookie campaign.

“We reached a point where we had to do something because what we were doing just wasn’t cutting it,” said Oehler, who qualified in the top half of the field just three times in 11 appearances last season. “For starters, we made 352 engine dyno pulls in the last year and a half. We’ve spent seven days a week, 12 hours a day working on our development program, looking for reliability and horsepower. Finally, we're getting somewhere.

“We're not 100-percent where we want to be. We definitely made some power, and now we're still trying to figure out this reliability factor.”

In testing, Oehler and his El Bandito Yankee team started with last year’s combination in order to get a baseline, and then gradually phased in the improvements they’ve made, most notably in the area of cylinder heads.

“Once we switched engines, we saw a good improvement,” Oehler said. “I ran a 6.75, which was a personal best in almost 2,400 feet [corrected altitude]. Then, we got Braden to make his first runs on a V-twin and he ran 6.81, so it didn’t take long for him to get comfortable. There is a lot of potential there.”

Rather than rest after the Gainesville test, Oehler and his team returned to their home in Illinois and rebuilt their stockpile of engines in order to prepare for the new season.

Most sane racers wouldn’t consider bringing out a second team vehicle until the primary vehicle was performing up to their specifications but Oehler has always been someone who functions outside the norm.

“That’s been kind of the scenario forever,” Oehler said. “We've been wanting to add, because we have three Pro Stock Bikes, and seven Gen 2 engines. I've been wanting to have someone that would push me as a rider to do better, and allow me to pass the torch a little bit. Brayden is all of those things. He’s an excellent rider and we’re helping each other.

As far as Davis’ long term statis with the team, that’s to be determined. Oehler is working equally hard to find funding run two bikes for a full season. He’s making progress, but isn’t quite there yet.

“I think as a team, you know, you work better because you can go after marketing partners together,” Oehler said. “With two bikes , you just doubled your pool. It’s gonna be a challenge to make the whole season, but right now we just take it one race at a time and hopefully we turn some heads this weekend and that'll help us for races to come.

“The bottom line is that I have to get I back into that happy spot as a competitive rider. We know what we’re capable of. We just need to go out there and do it.”