Drag Illustrated Issue 140, January 2019 | Page 73
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s far as Mario Todd was con-
cerned, his son always had talent. It
didn’t take much to see where J.R.
got it, either. Mario was a standout
racing dirt track motorcycles, but
his professional career was done by
the time J.R. was born in 1981. Still, J.R. heard
the stories and how his father was “the baddest
dude in the sport” and he understandably wanted
to follow in his footsteps.
But when that dream got nixed early on after
his parents didn’t allow him to race on the dirt
track scene at a young age, he quickly gravitated
to another sport.
With his professional racing career over, Ma-
rio found a recreational outlet taking his street
bike to nearby Edgewater Motorsports Park just
outside of Cincinnati. Eight-year-old J.R. would
join him, sitting in the stands and watching at-
tentively. “He would watch every car go down the
track,” Mario remembers.
J.R. was so locked in he noticed something
immediately about his father’s success, or lack
thereof, on the starting line. “I told them they
needed to leave on the third yellow,” J.R. says.
“They’re getting smoked on the starting line be-
cause they’re waiting on the green light.”
In the midst of the humbling experience of
getting taught a lesson from his eight-year-old
Ja n u a r y 2 0 1 9
A Dominant Run
J.R. Todd and his DHL Funny Car team were
dominant during the Countdown to the
Championship, reeling off three wins – including
back-to-back victories to close out the year
– and advancing to five final rounds to hold
off Robert Hight en route to the title.
son, Mario quickly found out J.R. was right – and
that he may have a knack for the sport. “He kept
telling us, ‘You guys are late. You have to leave
on yellow.’ Lo and behold, he was right,” Mario
says. “I thought maybe he has a talent for this.”
By that point, J.R. was hooked and much to his
joy, the NHRA soon started the Jr. Drag Racing
League. Mario joked a $3,000 investment soon
became a $60,000 one, but it was well worth it
for the Todd family.
It was perfect timing for J.R., who stopped
growing a short time after, ending his dream of
playing football for Notre Dame. Instead, his life
was consumed with drag racing. “Once you get
involved in drag racing, you eat, sleep and breathe
it,” Todd says. “That’s when you’re hooked on it.”
He won the track championship the first year
he raced at Edgewater, accumulating a number
of victories and championships over the next
several years. Todd met Langdon for the first time
at the conference finals at Bandimere Speedway,
and it became obvious Todd had a special talent
behind the wheel.
By the time he graduated high school in 2000,
Todd had bracket raced and competed in Super
Comp and was firmly entrenched in the sport.
He then took a giant leap by getting his Top Fuel
license in Norwalk a week after graduating. Todd
got the opportunity to drive a second dragster for
Bruce Litton in IHRA that year, but the first of
Todd’s wild turns in the sport came that offseason
when Litton’s race shop burned to the ground,
leaving Todd without a ride other than a handful
of match races.
What seemed like a budding Top Fuel career
came to a screeching halt, the first of many life
lessons Todd had to learn to swallow in the sport.
But he teamed up with Nicky Boninfante – learn-
ing the colorful ways of the Kalitta Motorsports
group in the process – and worked as a crew mem-
ber on Bob Gilbertson’s Funny Car under Bon-
infante and Tommy DeLago from 2003-2005.
Todd got his break the next year driving for
Dexter Tuttle, showing his true potential with
three wins and the Rookie of the Year award. He
made his first Countdown to the Championship
appearance a year later and raced a full cam-
paign in 2008, but when sponsorship dried up,
Todd was released from Morgan Lucas Racing
DragIllustrated.com
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