Kyle Wurtzel knows the oldest joke in racing, all too well.

How do you make a small fortune at the track?

Answer: Start with a large one.

Wurtzel, a financial planner in his “real” life, pilots a Top Fueler dragster when he’s not crunching numbers at Northwestern Financial. He’s been racing about 12 years now and recognizes that maybe he should’ve started smaller when he entered the sport.

“Built a Nostalgia Nitro Funny Car,” Wurtzel said. “Kinda screwed myself from the beginning, because I started with nitro. We wanted to run faster and eventually move up, so that’s kinda what we worked towards. And, just enjoy it.”

His first event of 2016 was Atlanta, which started off strong. The following race at Bristol? Not so much.

“Went to Atlanta and ran our personal best with a 3.85,” Wurtzel said. “And then all the parts looked beautiful, and we went to the next race and some gremlin snuck in the motor and hurt us a little bit in Bristol.

“We’ve kinda regrouped since then with Chicago. Chicago parts looked good again, and we ran a .86, so we’re hoping for good results this weekend.”

Racers want speed and speed is obtained with cool temps and cloud cover. Neither of those things are in the forecast for this weekend. However, a slick race track evens the field for drivers like Wurtzel, who don’t have the budget several of his opponents boast.

“You look at weather in Charlotte and St. Louis recently, those were ideal events for guys like (Pat) Dakin going rounds,” Wurtzel said. “Because we think we can still go out there and run a low .80, and these guys gotta try to back it down enough to do that. So, that’s their challenge.”

Races may be, for the most part, won by the team with the deepest coffers; but the sport is built on the backs of independent racers like Wurtzel, who knows exactly what they’re getting into.

“I mean, we know what we’re getting ourselves into, and we know that we’re here to play with the big boys,” he said. “So, our goal is just do the best we can. We’re working on trying to get a .78, .79 car. We’ll go up there and try to run what we can run, and where the chips fall, the chips fall.”