Drag Illustrated Issue 113, September 2016 | Page 34
RAHN TOBLER
50th career victory with the Seattle win). We
haven’t had a good Countdown in the last couple
years, but we’re looking forward to going into
this one. Obviously, we’ve had a
good car the last couple of months
and even all year. We started out
winning Pomona. We’ve not only
developed into a driver and a crew
chief, we’ve developed into friends,
and to me that’s really one of the
most important things. We’ve
gone through some high points
and we’ve gone through some low
points together and those are the
kinds of things that you build on.
I think that puts us in the position
that we’re in now.
What was your reaction to NHRA
establishing a limit on the laidback headers?
We were fine with it. The
headers that we have now we’re
happy to keep and happy to move
on with and if they don’t let us
go any more than that, I understand. There are a lot of teams
out there that were building the
header of the week and we weren’t
like that. Since all that started a
year ago here, we’ve had two sets
of headers on our car: the ones we
put on at Indy last year and the
ones we put on prior to Epping
(this year). So we’re not out here
changing them every week. We’re
not looking for the next best thing.
But I’m sure there would’ve been
a little more development had we
been left alone. So we’re good with
it where it is, as long as we were
able to retain what we have, we
were happy.
You won your last championship
with Cruz Pedregon in 2008. The moment that
you clinched it, what’s the emotion?
I mean, it’s a great feeling. It’s what everyone
on this team works on, not just Ron and I, but
you have eight other guys on this team: the ones
that drive up and down the road, the ones that
put all the time and effort in and the sacrifice to
make all this happen for us.
If you want to talk about specifics of being
there that day? We clinched it after first round.
We had no clue we were going to be able to do it
after first round, but people went out, we stayed
in, and we were able to do it. But, we also had a
race to run, so we had to turn right around and
get back into the race mode, so we came back and
we won that race that day. It was a nice capper to
come back and win the championship and win
the race on the same day. In fact, on a side note,
I think we ran Ron Capps in the final round, but
I would have to go back and look at my notes.
Anyway, that’s a great feeling. It’s what we all
shoot for. Like I said, we’ve lost a couple of them
on Sunday afternoons at Pomona.
I was with Doug Kalitta and we
lost it to “The Run,” so you take
what you can get when you get it.
We’re pretty even-keeled around
here, whether we win, lose or
draw. That’s what we try to exemplify all the time. We don’t get
too excited when we win, we don’t
get too down when we lose.
Speaking of Doug, he’s a pretty
even-keeled kind of guy, but you
could see the emotion on his face
when he lost the title to Tony
Schumacher and The Run. What
was that like to be the crew chief
for that?
Well, it wasn’t good! And the
thing about it was, what most
people don’t understand, (Schumacher) had to run between a specific time area. If they had run too
quick, they wouldn’t have backed
(the original record-setting pass)
up. So they had a very narrow
window that number had to fall
in on. And what are the odds of
that? But sometimes the odds go
against you. And that’s what happened to us. We did all we could.
We won six or seven more rounds
than they did that year, and that
was not a Countdown year. But
they made up a lot of points in setting national records and qualifying and all that and it ultimately
led to we won more rounds that
year, but we ended up losing by
that 14 points. Obviously, the 20
direct points in that final round
made the difference between winning and losing. We did all we could and again, we won as a
team and we lost as a team. All you can do is put
your head down and come back the next year
and try harder.
DI DI DI
DI DI DI DI
DI DI DI
34 | D r a g
I l l u s t r a t e d | DragIllustrated.com
Issue 113
PHOTOS: NHRA / NATIONAL DRAGSTER
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