PARTNER PROFILE
ally couldn’ t do a turnkey solution. The Bickel shop definite could. I kind of fell in love with the place that day.”
That first black Corvette – the one Hord’ s team nicknamed the“ Batmobile” – became a highly successful car that’ s still competing in NHRA Pro Mod today. A run through the PDRA followed, then a 2017 jump to NHRA Pro Mod alongside Carl Stevens Jr. that produced a Charlotte win, five semifinal appearances, and a real sense of belonging before COVID brought the program – and plenty else – to a stop in 2020.
What Hord stepped into in 2025 was a company with a towering legacy. The late Jerry Bickel built his namesake operation over more than four decades into one of the most decorated names in doorslammer racing, building the chassis under Jim Yates’ McDonald’ s Pro Stock entries and serving as Yates’ crew chief during championship seasons. Bickel cars carried Rickie Smith to four straight Pro Stock titles, Jose Gonzalez to the 2021 NHRA Pro Mod world championship, and Jim Halsey to four PDRA Pro Nitrous crowns, among countless other wins and records. When Bickel passed away in April 2023 at 75, the sport lost a genuine pioneer.
Hord knows exactly what he inherited, and his short-term plan reflects it: don’ t fix what isn’ t broken.
“ Very few changes were made in the first 12 months,” he says.“ It was more about getting the chemistry right, getting the vision understood by everybody of where we’ re trying to go.”
Daughter-in-law Chelsea Hord – an engineer who came over from Northrop Grumman – puts the approach plainly.“ We didn’ t want to come in and make it our company— we wanted it to stay Jerry Bickel Race Cars. The name, the legacy, and everything people have trusted for years were already there. Our job was simply to build on that foundation together and make it even better.”
Much of that first year went into reestablishing relationships with customers and slowly getting the word out that JBRC is running full steam ahead again. As Bickel’ s health failed and the business contracted, some customers had drifted to other builders.
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