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<\/p>\nLongtime NHRA Funny Car Crew chief Dickie Venables is the new crew chief for J.R. Todd\u2019s DHL GR Supra Funny Car, the team announced today. The 2025 NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series begins March 7-9, 2025 at the Amalie Oil NHRA Gatornationals in Gainesville, Fla.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n
Venables, 60, is a four-time NHRA Funny Car championship crew chief having won the title in 2007 with then driver Tony Pedregon at Tony Pedregon Racing; he was the assistant crew chief for Pedregon\u2019s 2003 title at John Force Racing. After working with Del Worsham at Alan Johnson Racing, Venables joined Don Schumacher Racing in 2011 and led driver Matt Hagan to the NHRA Funny Car championship in 2014, \u201920 and \u201923.<\/p>\n
Venables comes to Kalitta Motorsports from Tony Stewart Racing where he teamed with Hagan since the team\u2019s inception. Longtime Kalitta Motorsports team member Jon Oberhofer will serve as Venables\u2019 Assistant Crew Chief. Venables replaced Todd Smith who joined Kalitta Motorsports in 2016.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m super excited about this next phase of my career \u2013 I\u2019m really happy to be in Michigan getting comfortable with everybody and meeting people I didn\u2019t know before,\u201d Venables said. \u201cKalitta Motorsports obviously has a lot of resources and great teams so I\u2019m really happy to be part of it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere is no magic wand you can wave over one of these cars. It\u2019s something we have to take one step at a time \u2013 as long we make progress with the changes we\u2019re thinking about making, I think we\u2019ll eventually get to our goal. The biggest thing about that is you have to have good people, and the whole Kalitta organization is well represented out there.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve seen what they were able to accomplish with some of the mishaps and unfortunate things that happened to the race cars in both Funny Car and Top Fuel. Those guys never gave up. They got the chassis fixed and got the cars back on the race track \u2013 that\u2019s the definition of team work. I\u2019m excited and looking forward to getting the season started.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cDickie Venables is real pro, and he\u2019s a major addition to a talented DHL GR Supra team,\u201d Team Kalitta General Manager Chad Head said. \u201cDickie\u2019s talents and experience will put the DHL team in a position to challenge for the 2025 Funny Car championship.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Team Kalitta Top Fuel teams finished second and fourth in 2024, and each team will have the same leadership in the new season. Doug Kalitta followed his 2023 NHRA Top Fuel championship with a second-place finish in 2024. Crew Chief Alan Johnson and Assistant Crew Chief Mac Savage return to the Mac Tools team for the 2025 season. Shawn Langdon finished fourth in the final season standings last year in Crew Chief Brian Husen\u2019s first season at the helm of the Kalitta Air Careers Top Fuel team, and the talented duo both return for the new season.<\/p>\n
This story was originally published on January 23, 2025. <\/p>\n
The post Four-Time NHRA Funny Car Champion Dickie Venables Joins Team Kalitta as DHL Funny Car Crew Chief<\/a> first appeared on Drag Illustrated<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Longtime NHRA Funny Car Crew chief Dickie Venables is the new crew chief for J.R. Todd\u2019s DHL GR Supra Funny Car, the team announced today. The 2025 NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series begins March 7-9, 2025 at the Amalie Oil NHRA Gatornationals in Gainesville, Fla.\u00a0 \u00a0 Venables, 60, is a four-time NHRA Funny Car […]<\/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-98187","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98187","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=98187"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/98187\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=98187"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=98187"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racepages.com\/Videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=98187"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}