Todd Smith could have been angry and bitter, but chose not to let the incident control his attitude.

With one race left to go in the 2013 season, Smith was fired from his position as crew chief on the Jack Beckman Funny Car. Instead of viewing the dismissal by Don Schumacher as a negative, Smith took a vacation and chose to view the scenario as one of those "when one door closes, another opens" moments.

"I didn’t have a negative thought about it at all," admitted Smith. "We had a disagreement on where I thought the future of the team was going, where he thought it was going, and he just felt like it was time that I needed to go.

“Maybe he felt like I wasn’t on-board. I was always. I believed in my team, believed in my people, I didn’t feel like I got the support I needed from him and so I think that we just had a disagreement on that. There were no hard feelings. It was like, 'okay you need to just go on down the road', and I was, that's fine."

Todd Smith could have been angry and bitter, but chose not to let the incident control his attitude.

With one race left to go in the 2013 season, Smith was fired from his position as crew chief on the Jack Beckman Funny Car. Instead of viewing the dismissal by Don Schumacher as a negative, Smith took a vacation and chose to view the scenario as one of those "when one door closes, another opens" moments.

"I didn’t have a negative thought about it at all," admitted Smith. "We had a disagreement on where I thought the future of the team was going, where he thought it was going, and he just felt like it was time that I needed to go.

“Maybe he felt like I wasn’t on-board. I was always. I believed in my team, believed in my people, I didn’t feel like I got the support I needed from him and so I think that we just had a disagreement on that. There were no hard feelings. It was like, 'okay you need to just go on down the road', and I was, that's fine."

Smith didn't have far to go down the road as he received a tempting offer from John Force Racing which was a no-brainer. He waited until the end of the season and accepted a position as crew chief of the Castrol Edge dragster.

"Like any big team when they call you it’s opportunity knocking, so I was excited about it," said Smith. "I knew the learning curve wasn’t going to be that bad on the dragster so it was just a matter of getting back in there and starting over, regrouping with a new group of people and just making it happen. I was excited, and I was really excited to work with Brittany."

Smith last tuned a dragster in 2011 when he was co-crew chief with Donnie Bender on the CoPart sponsored fueler driven by Brandon Bernstein. He believes his opinion of the more challenging application is outside the norm.

"I enjoy the funny car probably more so than I do the dragster but I like the dragster too because of its challenges," said Smith. "Some say a funny car is much harder to run than a dragster and I think just the opposite. I think the tuning window is wider for a funny car than it is for a dragster. I really enjoyed the funny car, I really did. The good thing I guess for me now is that I have experience with both so it keeps me employed."

Smith laughs at what he feels is a misconception, at least in his eyes, about the approaches of tuning a Top Fuel dragster after leaving Funny Car. In the past, the belief is former Funny Car tuners are more aggressive because it's their nature, but Smith believes they are aggressive because they have to be.

"I think you have to be much more aggressive with a dragster," said Smith. "My approach with the funny car was a lot like the dragster-  the tuning numbers were just different. I ran the car as hard as I could possibly run it all the time. All tuners, they develop these tendencies towards their philosophy about tuning and their approach to all of it. A lot of it, I think, applies to both cars; the numbers are just different. I think that the dragsters are just harder to run, myself. Now both classes are so competitive that you can have a really good car and never win."

Smith, in conjunction with Dean Antonelli and the team, has made a significant turnaround from last year.. In 2013, the team averaged qualifying twelfth, this year they've improved to an average of sixth with three No. 1 qualify runs. They're also poised for a championship run from the No. 7 spot in the points.

"We’ve kind of are just now starting to see the rewards of all the work we put out," explained Smith. "It’s been eight months of steady hard work. A lot of personnel changes, just a complete revamping of the whole team. Going through every part and every system on the car and changing everything to make it work. Getting everybody in sync and everybody on the right page. Any crew chief will tell you he’s nothing without his crew.

"We’ve spent six months going through personnel trying to find the right personnel. It takes a certain type of person to do this now. With the amount of races that we have, the travel, and the hard work and the commitment it takes, not everybody’s willing to do that. Until you can get a group of guys on board and willing to do that I can’t really do my job. It’s been a lot of hard work; that’s basically what it’s all been."

And for Smith, there's still more work to do, a workload that doesn't have time for bitterness.

The act of cutting and pasting articles from this publication to a message board is a clear copyright violation as is pulling photos to post on social media sites. All articles and photography published in CompetitionPlus.com are protected by United States of America and International copyright laws unless mentioned otherwise. The content on this website is intended for the private use of the reader and may not be published or reposted in any form without the prior written consent of CompetitionPlus.com.