J.R. Todd DHL Team Ready to Bounce Back From Brainerd
J.R. Todd and his DHL GR Supra team had a rough outing in Minnesota two weeks ago, but now, the team is poised to redeem itself at the largest and most-prestigious drag race in the world. The 2024 NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Season resumes Aug. 30-Sept. 2, 2024 at the Toyota NHRA U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis.
Despite making the semifinals and qualifying for this week’s Mission Foods Challenge, the last outing was a different kind of challenge. The DHL Toyota team suffered an explosion in qualifying that damaged its primary car and ruined the body. Then in the second round on Sunday, another explosion damaged a second body forcing the team to borrow a GR Supra body from Ron Capps Motorsports just to be able to race in the semifinals. Todd lost that race but said just getting back up to the starting line was a victory in itself. Now, two weeks later, the team is ready to go for the Toyota U.S. Nationals.
“It looks like we’ll have our primary car that we hurt in Friday qualifying back in action when we get to Indy,” Todd said. “Joe and Dan at PBRC (Precision Built Race Cars) got it front halved and back at the shop late last week so the guys could get it put back together and have it ready for Friday qualifying at Indy so that’s encouraging. It was just a matter of going through all the parts and pieces to figure out what happened in Brainerd and make sure it doesn’t happen again. We got our new body ready to go and got one of our old bodies updated and ready to go. I feel bad that the guys had to do so much work on what would have been some time off, but it’s just the hand we were dealt.”
Now, the team is ready for the Toyota U.S. Nationals and hopes to win what would be Todd’s third at the prestigious event after a final-round showing last year. It’s one most consider a “must win” in a successful NHRA career.
“I always say Sonoma (Calif.) is my favorite track, but Indy is probably everybody’s favorite race,” Todd added. “It’s a high-stakes event, and there’s definitely a lot of pressure. You can tell by looking at pretty much everybody’s face at the track. It’s a different atmosphere from most of the races during the season. Everybody stays over to test in Brainerd (Minn.) to get ready for the U.S. Nationals and the playoffs. We’ve won it twice and have been to a couple of finals in the past, and it’s my favorite race – I’ve been going to this one since I was 10 years old. I’ve seen a lot happen there and would love to be able to win it again.
“Winning this one is definitely a different feeling. A lot of the greats in our sport won that race, and there’s definitely a lot of history at that track. To be able to add your name to that list is a totally different feeling. It feels like you’ve been there a week by the time you’re done there on Monday. It’s a long event with five qualifying sessions – it just has a different feeling. Anytime all the legends show up at one event, it shows you the importance of one race.”
In addition to competing for the U.S. Nationals win, Todd is the No. 5 qualifier in the Pep Boys All-Star Callout, a standout Funny Car showdown for which the field is determined by qualifying points in the season’s first 13 races and the last seven races of the previous season. In this event, the top-four seeds “call out” or pick their opponent for the first round of the eight-car event. First round winners then “call out” their opponents for the semifinals. The special event is set for Sunday, Sept. 1.
“It starts Friday night,” Todd said. “We need to make a really good run in the first round of qualifying to get that out of the way so we’re not tip-toeing around the rest of the weekend worrying about qualifying so we can focus on the Pep Boys race on Sunday and get focused for the big race on Monday. Being the fifth seed, I don’t have any say in the call out so we’ll see who picks us. Honestly, it doesn’t matter because everybody who’s in the deal is tough to beat so we’ll have our work cut out for us. We just have to go out there and run as hard as possible every run of the weekend.”
And as if Todd and team needed more to think about, the U.S. Nationals is the final race of the regular season and sets the field for the six-race Countdown to the Championship NHRA Playoffs. After this weekend, the points will be reset to tighten the standings, and bonus points accrued during the season are applied prior to the first playoff race at Reading, Pa., Sept. 13-15, 2024.
“I always say you want to be top five going into Reading to give yourself a better shot running for the championship,” Todd said. “Now with all the bonus points (points leader) Austin Prock has accumulated, he’s going to have possibly over a round lead over the second-place car entering Reading. Ideally, it would be nice to rack up as many qualifying points, Mission Foods points and round points there on Monday to close up the gap. Right now, we’re fourth. I think it’s possible for us to get to second with some help from the cars in front of us. Either way, I feel confident we can maintain our top-five spot going into Reading – ideally, that’s where you want to be.”
After, of course, you hoist the U.S. Nationals trophy on Monday.
This story was originally published on August 27, 2024.
The post J.R. Todd DHL Team Ready to Bounce Back From Brainerd first appeared on Drag Illustrated.
