Rahn Tobler is the “sensei” of professional drag racing.

He has taught some of the best current crew chiefs currently competing in the NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing.

The sport’s Renaissance man also has taught assistants the cultural and spiritual benefits of hip-hop music and fine wine.

Walk into his office/lounge in one of the NAPA AUTO PARTS technology trailers in the pit area this weekend at Norwalk, Ohio, and you’ll hear the beat of hip-hop artists from NWA, Dre, Tupac or anything old school. On Saturday night the Tobler Assistant Alumni Association and Friends Club might be sipping on a fine bottle of wine from Chateau Montelena Winery.

NHRA announcer Brian Lohnes calls Tobler “Toby-Wan Kenobi” as drag racing’s version of Obi-Wan Kenobi, the Jedi Master who served the Galactic Republic in “Star Wars.”

Last Sunday at the Mello Yello event at Bristol, Tenn., Tobler mastered some of the most challenging racing conditions in recent memory to lead Ron Capps and the NAPA AUTO PARTS team to the Funny Car title in the NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals.

Perhaps more impressive than what his team accomplished was that he beat a new team led by rookie crew chief Eric Lane, one of his former assistants, in the championship round.

And Lane was one of three former Tobler assistants competing Sunday putting Tobler’s fingerprints on one-fourth of the qualified field with Dickie Venables and John Collins leading other DSR Funny Car teams.

Tobler led Shirley Muldowney to NHRA Top Fuel titles in 1980 and 1982 as her crew chief and another in 1981 in the American Hot Rod Association when it was on par with NHRA. He also was a crewman on Muldowney’s team that won the title in 1977 with Connie Kalitta, who owned the team and was crew chief.

Tobler later led Cruz Pedregon to the Funny Car championship in 2008 and Capps to the crown in 2016 at Don Schumacher Racing where Tobler has worked since 2010.

Former assistant Venables won a championship at DSR with driver Matt Hagan in 2014 and one with John Force Racing as a co-crew chief in 2003 for Tony Pedregon and four years later after Pedregon formed his owned team.

It’s quite a living legacy, and next in line is likely to be Dustin Heim who replaced Lane as crew chief on this year’s NAPA team this year. Heim has worked with Tobler since 2007.

“Somebody told me the smartest thing you can do as a crew chief is to surround yourself with people smarter than you,” Tobler said. “These guys are individuals.

“I have a couple little brain cells that allow me to run these cars. I know what they need, how to finesse them, deal with conditions, tune the engines and those kinds of things.

“My assistant crew chiefs and our eight crew guys make it look very easy and make me look very smart. I don’t build very much on the car – I have and could – but my guys are better at it now.

“A football coach’s job isn’t to make tackles or throw touchdown passes.”

Capps has driven for legendary crew chiefs Roland Leong, Ed “Ace” McCulloch, Tim Richards and Tobler. He won’t rank them, but Tobler is the only one to lead him to a world championship.

“I always admired what he did with Shirley without a huge budget,” said Capps, who has won 26 titles since Tobler joined him two races into the 2012 season.

“A big thing is how much fun it is to be around him. Tobler makes it fun. Winning is always fun, but it’s more fun with Tobler.”

It took a while for Capps to realize after a few wins with Tobler that Tobler gets into the Funny Car and rides it to the winner’s circle while carrying a custom-made bejeweled “kronk cup.”

But more than the fun, his trademark is teaching.

“Everything has to be right and ready to race,” said Collins, who owns eight wins with driver Tommy Johnson Jr. and three top-three championship finishes as a crew chief. I learned a lot about how to race from Tobler.

No one in racing has a longer crew relationship with Tobler than Venables.

When Tobler was 16 living in Houston, he would ride his bicycle after a part-time job at a grocery store to watch through a garage door as the Stephens & Venables Top Fuel front-engine dragster team worked on its rail. He began helping in the shop and eventually earned a job where he got to know Dick Venable’s son, who was eight years younger than Tobler.

The day Venables graduated from high school Tobler hired him to begin traveling with the Muldowney team.

“I learned a lot from him at an early age,” Venables said. “I grew up in drag racing, but my first professional experiences were with Rahn and Shirley in 1982. He taught me what racing at a pro level required.

“It starts with the ability to be prepared for life, basically, but that carries over into racing.”

Lane got his start in professional racing when hired by Gary Densham after he graduated from Universal Technical Institute in Southern California in 1998. He later followed Densham to John Force Racing in 2000.

“I learned a lot from Densham and how to do everything on the race car,” Lane said. “Then it went to the next level when I went to JFR and later to DSR to join Tobler.”

Lane and Collins seem to follow Tobler’s more conservative approach to performance while Venables is more apt to earn top qualifier spots and set track and national performance records.

“Some crew chiefs go out and want to run low (elapsed time) on every run,” Tobler said. “We’re not going to qualify No. 1 or 2 a lot, but it happens. We tend to look at Sundays as our focus.

“We’re not going to for those ‘Oh, my God’ runs. We build data in qualifying to help us on Sunday.

“(Lane) knows the philosophy and has been with us for a lot of wins and a championship. He had to start from nothing with Tasca’s new team and build it from there.”

After losing the first round of eliminations in seven of the first eight races, Lane guided Tasca to his first semifinals of the season at the ninth event, and last weekend to his first final when he lost to Capps.

“That was the cake round at Bristol because it didn’t matter if we won or lost,” Lane, who has a three-year contract with Tasca, said of facing Tobler for an NHRA Wally Trophy. “That was the fun part of it.

“It didn’t hit me that we were racing him for the title until I looked over at Tobe when we were ready to let Bob go into the (starting line) lights before the final run and (Tobler) gave me his little grin.

“I walked away, and that was like one of the coolest moments of my career.

“Now it’s about having fun with the guys, and we did.”

Just the way Tobler taught him.