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<\/p>\nLong 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\u2019s Tony Stewart Racing Top Fuel dragster, when Strausbaugh had the same job, and he knew Dean \u201cGuido\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI always connect with the crew members and the crew chief,\u201d Stange said in a phone call with Drag Illustrated Founder and Editorial Director Wes Buck. \u201cI knew Mike Green when he was the rear end guy. He wasn\u2019t 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\u2019s 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\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever went out to dinner with John Force. My relationships were with all the mechanical people on the crew because that\u2019s what we all did, right? We were all trying to make things better and test and improve.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd that wasn\u2019t done purposely to say, hey, this guy\u2019s going to be somebody someday. It\u2019s a very genuine feeling. It\u2019s hard to explain. You respect what they\u2019re doing mechanically.\u201d<\/p>\n
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 \u201cStange\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
The crew guys he came up with are still part of how those parts get developed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI always call it an industry relationship, but for me, they\u2019re very close. I would consider them friends if they needed something,\u201d Stange said. \u201cWe don\u2019t 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\u2019ll help me with ideas for product. It\u2019s 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\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019s class, picked from more than 6,600 nominations, is more than 60 percent non-drivers.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody 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\u2019s a grind 15, 20 times a year,\u201d Buck said. \u201cSo making sure those kids that are doing that feel like somebody appreciates it, to me, that\u2019s a real victory. You don\u2019t got to be an aspiring nitro racer to see your name in lights.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s like getting a kid that\u2019s welding four-link brackets or something up at Bickel\u2019s. To me, it\u2019s like, yeah, that kid needs cheered on. He\u2019s not going to get to go to all the races. He\u2019s going to be in the shop. He\u2019s probably going to be putting out fires or dealing with whatever.\u201d<\/p>\n
Stange, whose company works with chassis shops all over the country, was quick to agree.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe builders are extremely important in that they go with the mechanical, a hundred percent,\u201d Stange said. \u201cWe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
None of it, he was careful to add, is a knock on the people holding the steering wheel. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t want to drive a fuel Funny Car,\u201d Stange said. \u201cThose dudes can drive. I don\u2019t think you just sit anybody in those vehicles either. And Pro Stock, Pro Mod, man, you really got to be on your toes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked why Strange keeps putting its name behind the program, Stange didn\u2019t talk about selling parts.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me, it\u2019s more of a personal, generational\u2026I don\u2019t 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,\u201d Stange said. \u201cWhether it\u2019s a profession or a hobby, it\u2019s extremely important for younger generations to have hands-on mechanical aptitude, competitiveness.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really not like, hey, I\u2019m going to get more sales. This is kind of what we\u2019ve done my [entire] life. I\u2019ve spent my entire life in this sport, and we do well, but I don\u2019t even think about the money other than what I can reinvest in my business. It\u2019s never on my forefront. I do it because I love it and I\u2019m passionate about it. If I wasn\u2019t, I would have sold everything years ago. Financially, it doesn\u2019t 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.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\u2019s sponsors.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of families connect at racetracks,\u201d Stange said. \u201cI think it leads to a lot of commonality and friendships outside the sport. So, for me, it\u2019s to give that exposure to the generation so they can see how joyful the drag racing community is.\u201d<\/p>\n
This story was originally published on November 13, 2026. <\/p>\n
The post \u201cThe Mechanical People Are the Ones That Really Drive the Sport:\u201d Strange Engineering\u2019s Jeff Stange on Backing the DI 30 Under 30<\/a> first appeared on Drag Illustrated<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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\u2019s Tony Stewart Racing Top Fuel dragster, when Strausbaugh had the same job, and he knew Dean \u201cGuido\u201d Antonelli […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-105212","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105212","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105212"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105212\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105212"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105212"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105212"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}