For the past three years, Richie Crampton was a full-time driver of a Morgan Lucas Racing Top Fuel dragster.

That will not be the case in 2017.

Morgan Lucas announced following the season-ending Auto Club NHRA Finals in Pomona, Calif., Nov. 13 his team was disbanding.

Although Crampton will not be piloting a MLR dragster in the upcoming season, he still is working for the Lucas family as a fabricator.

“I’m staying on working for Lucas, one of my jobs has always been building our own race cars, even when I drove, which was pretty cool to drive my own race cars that I helped build,” Crampton said. “We’re currently building another race car for (Torrence Racing). We will obviously maintain everyone’s MLR’s chassis that are out there currently and we also are going to branch out into other race car work and I will be waiting in the wings until another driving job becomes available.”

Crampton showed from 2014-16, he is a standout driver. He competed in 72 races for MLR, winning seven national events – five in 2015 and two in 2014 – and finishing a career-best third in the point standings in 2015. This past season, Crampton came in ninth in the points and had one runner-up effort at Sonoma, Calif., July 31, losing in the finals to J.R. Todd. He also qualified No. 1 five times in his career.

“I always knew of the volatility of motorsports in general, so I knew that at any time I could lose my driving gig, that’s just the reality of what we get to do,” Crampton said. “Having said that, I was exceptionally lucky in the three years that I drove to have been NHRA Rookie of the Year, 2014 U.S. Nationals champion, and win seven national events. I hit the ground running as a driver and I was very spoiled very quickly, and I accomplished a lot in a short period of time. I feel very lucky to have done what I done, and obviously I want to continue to drive in the future, but I’m really lucky to have something to fall back on that’s racing related. I will still be going to work at the same address each day, I just will not be driving a Top Fuel dragster.”

Crampton said he’s keeping all his driving options open.

“That’s one of the great things about the Lucas family and driving for Morgan,” he said. “They’ve basically given me the ability to have the flexibility to go and drive if something pops up. Morgan has given me the freedom to go do that, and I will see what it is out there. Obviously, whatever I do will be in full respect of the Lucas Oil family. I want to stay around racing and still intend on attending as many races throughout the year that I can just to keep my name out there and keep my face relevant. Maybe do some on-air stuff for FOX, and try and step myself up to the next level and try myself where I can and then see what happens. I’m going to focus and concentrate on my job at hand during the week at Lucas’ building race cars and be sure to keep my face out there when I can and hopefully before too long I will be in a race car again.”