Long before Mike Green was a two-time world champion Top Fuel crew chief, Jeff Stange knew him as the rear end guy on a Lee Beard-tuned dragster. He knew Neal Strausbaugh, now co-crew chief on Leah Pruett’s Tony Stewart Racing Top Fuel dragster, when Strausbaugh had the same job, and he knew Dean “Guido” Antonelli when Antonelli was a crew member at John Force Racing. That history goes a long way toward explaining why Strange Engineering, the Morton Grove, Illinois-based driveline and suspension manufacturer Stange leads as president, is a longtime supporter of the Drag Illustrated 30 Under 30 and one of the sponsors backing the class of 2026.
“I always connect with the crew members and the crew chief,” Stange said in a phone call with Drag Illustrated Founder and Editorial Director Wes Buck. “I knew Mike Green when he was the rear end guy. He wasn’t the crew chief. He was the rear end guy. I knew Neal [Strausbaugh] when he was doing the rear end. Guido, I knew him from Force. I still do have a very close relationship with Austin Coil, he’s taught me a lot. And God bless Bernie [Fedderly]. All those guys were great to grow up with, but it was always the mechanical guys. I would say hello to John Force, but I don’t think I’ve ever went out to dinner with John Force. My relationships were with all the mechanical people on the crew because that’s what we all did, right? We were all trying to make things better and test and improve.
“And that wasn’t done purposely to say, hey, this guy’s going to be somebody someday. It’s a very genuine feeling. It’s hard to explain. You respect what they’re doing mechanically.”
Stange has been around those people his entire life. His father, Bob Stange, was building suspension parts for himself and his friends out of a two-car garage in Evanston, Illinois, in the late 1950s, and founded the company in 1964. It became Strange Engineering after “Stange” kept getting corrected in print, and by the 1973 Winternationals, 14 of the 16 Funny Car qualifiers were on Strange parts. Jeff started working at the shop in the summers when he was 12. Bob Stange, a 2010 International Drag Racing Hall of Fame inductee, passed away in May 2023 at 84, and the family-owned company his son now runs has grown from roughly 30 employees in the 1980s to well over 100, building rear ends, axles, driveshafts, brakes, shocks and struts for everything from bracket cars to Top Fuel dragsters.
The crew guys he came up with are still part of how those parts get developed.
“I always call it an industry relationship, but for me, they’re very close. I would consider them friends if they needed something,” Stange said. “We don’t go out all the time, but we communicate and we talk about the race cars and other stuff, and I help them with something and they’ll help me with ideas for product. It’s really just kind of a community. Even Warren Johnson, he was a driver, but that guy was awesome to work [with], taught me a lot. But it’s the mechanical people. No disrespect to the owners and the drivers because we absolutely need them too. But the mechanical people are the ones that really drive the sport.”
That is the same argument Buck has been making with the 30 Under 30 since the first list in 2015. The program, now in its 11th edition, has honored more than 300 young people in drag racing, and Buck said this year’s class, picked from more than 6,600 nominations, is more than 60 percent non-drivers.
“Everybody wants to drive a race car, but not everybody wants to do the bottom end on a Top Alcohol Funny Car or be the rear suspension guy. That’s a grind 15, 20 times a year,” Buck said. “So making sure those kids that are doing that feel like somebody appreciates it, to me, that’s a real victory. You don’t got to be an aspiring nitro racer to see your name in lights.
“It’s like getting a kid that’s welding four-link brackets or something up at Bickel’s. To me, it’s like, yeah, that kid needs cheered on. He’s not going to get to go to all the races. He’s going to be in the shop. He’s probably going to be putting out fires or dealing with whatever.”
Stange, whose company works with chassis shops all over the country, was quick to agree.
“The builders are extremely important in that they go with the mechanical, a hundred percent,” Stange said. “We work with the builders, and I have a lot of relationships, a lot of different builders trying to make it better and them trying to make me better.”
None of it, he was careful to add, is a knock on the people holding the steering wheel. “I wouldn’t want to drive a fuel Funny Car,” Stange said. “Those dudes can drive. I don’t think you just sit anybody in those vehicles either. And Pro Stock, Pro Mod, man, you really got to be on your toes.”
Asked why Strange keeps putting its name behind the program, Stange didn’t talk about selling parts.
“For me, it’s more of a personal, generational…I don’t want to say gift, but responsibility that I have to pass on a legacy of even the generation before me, my father, now me, to pass it on to younger generations and help support the younger generations so eventually they can pass it down,” Stange said. “Whether it’s a profession or a hobby, it’s extremely important for younger generations to have hands-on mechanical aptitude, competitiveness.
“It’s really not like, hey, I’m going to get more sales. This is kind of what we’ve done my [entire] life. I’ve spent my entire life in this sport, and we do well, but I don’t even think about the money other than what I can reinvest in my business. It’s never on my forefront. I do it because I love it and I’m passionate about it. If I wasn’t, I would have sold everything years ago. Financially, it doesn’t make any sense if you look at it that way. But I am just very passionate [about] what I do, about community and performance products. And I just really want other kids to see that.”
The 2026 Drag Illustrated 30 Under 30 class will be revealed in the November/December issue of Drag Illustrated and introduced in person at the annual 30 Under 30 press conference, Friday, Dec. 11, at 1 p.m. in Sagamore Ballroom 6-7 at the Indiana Convention Center during the PRI Show in Indianapolis. Honorees receive the custom 30 Under 30 jacket along with gift certificates and products from the program’s sponsors.
“A lot of families connect at racetracks,” Stange said. “I think it leads to a lot of commonality and friendships outside the sport. So, for me, it’s to give that exposure to the generation so they can see how joyful the drag racing community is.”
This story was originally published on November 13, 2026.
The post “The Mechanical People Are the Ones That Really Drive the Sport:” Strange Engineering’s Jeff Stange on Backing the DI 30 Under 30 first appeared on Drag Illustrated.
