As much as they would like to admit their podcast was a calculated, planned-out affair, Funny Car drivers J.R. Todd and Shawn Langdon acknowledge with a smile that their quickly-growing-in-popularity show the Nomex Effect was the result of a BS'ing session. 

"Shawn and I after each race, just talking and BS’ing, whether it’s complaining or just ideas with anything," recalled Todd, current Funny Car point leader. "The more we talked each week, it’s like we ought to start a podcast where we can just sit and talk like we are now and then people can actually interact with us and hear our thoughts. Because a lot of stuff we talk about or ideas we have I feel like the average fan or even some racers just aren’t aware of it. So it’s cool to be able to express how we feel in it. I feel like a lot of people think we’re being negative just because we speak our minds about things, but we’re just telling it like it is where a lot of people won’t or are afraid to."

The Nomex Effect usually appears on Facebook Live, Tuesday at 3 PM, EST., but can fluctuate when schedules get hectic. The podcast is also available on iTunes for download, and their shows also are uploaded to their YouTube.com channel. 

Langdon welcomes his additional role social media journalist. He sees the Nomex Effect as a means to take situations into his hands. 

"We felt like it was an opportunity for us," Langdon said. "A lot of times you go to the race track, and you get overlooked. A lot of times there’s things that you want to say, and you get overlooked because the media doesn’t really want to hear what you have to say, they’d rather go a different direction and kind of go whatever direction NHRA pushes them, and whatever driver NHRA’s kind of pushing. 

"We felt if we started up our own little podcast, we say what we want to say with, to a certain extent, no repercussions. We feel like we can give an honest answer when we talk on our show. We can give an answer where people are going to try and shy away. A lot of interviews that a lot of people give at the race track are all fluffed and everybody’s got to be politically correct, you can’t say this, and you can’t say that, and you can’t say anything that they don’t want you to say. 

"So we felt like hey, they don’t want to give us interviews on TV, then we’re going to get our voice out, and we’re going to be the voice of the voiceless and the things that the fans don’t know. We’re just going to tell them how it is. Obviously, there were some changes this year so there were some easy topics for us to kind of pick up on that we could talk about."

Todd and Langdon understand they're not the first media effort to come out of Kalitta Motorsports, as three years ago the unbridled "Buck and Jaaano" show with tuners Nicky Boninfante and Jon Oberhofer became popular amongst the nitro community.

"I don’t want to say we’re trying to follow in their footsteps because we can never be Buck and Janno," Todd admitted. 

Though they might be considered media, Todd said he and Langdon don't consider themselves journalists in the sense of the word, but that's not to say they might not one day take on the role. 

"Shawn and I have talked about, we are going to apply for media credentials next year so we can get good parking spots and be able to go to the tower and interview some drivers and have some fun with them," Todd said with a smile. 

Being a journalist isn't an easy role, Langdon says without a doubt.

"Getting content and new content time and time again isn't easy," Langdon said. "You don’t want to beat the same dead horse every week. It’s just getting new content and getting new things and information. A lot of the things before that I never really paid attention to, I pay a little bit more attention to now just so I can have more knowledge about it, so when people do ask certain questions, I have a little bit more knowledge to where I can answer something where I guess answer something a little bit more intelligently. 

"It’s a different area that I’ve never really been exposed to, I’ve never really looked into that area at any other point in my career doing that."

Todd believes Langdon is the perfect counterpart for the Nomex Effect although getting a word can sometimes be tough.

"Man, at first he wouldn’t stop talking," Todd said. "People were like you need to talk more. 'I’m like I can’t because he’s doing all the talking." 

"I feel like if one of us gets going down the wrong track, the other one will reel the other in and vice versa. It’s cool because he’s extremely knowledgeable about the sport and can give his perspective on a lot of bracket racing things and we get to talk about stuff like reaction times because we’re both trying to make ourselves the best out here, so we give our side."

As Langdon sees it, going off on a tangent is just an example of being passionate about the sport their heavily vested into. 

"A lot of times when you’re passionate about something, and you love something so much like drag racing, you want to talk about it; it’s our lives, and this is what we do all the time," Langdon admitted.  "There’s times that I’ll get going on something, and it’s just like, you’re just talking passionately about it so you’re opening up and sometimes that can be a good thing and sometimes that can be a bad thing. You kind of open up to a different area than what a lot of people are exposed to when they’re watching a TV show, and you’re talking. 

"You open up to different things that you want to talk about that you’re not sure how to talk about. Sometimes you may take it in a direction, may say things that you may not directly mean or anything like that. Nothing that we talked about, these are things that we discuss during the day, they are things that J.R. and I talk about during the week, and that was kind of how this whole thing came about was during the week when J.R. and I are hanging out doing whatever, these are things that we discuss. 

"Like some of this stuff is really good stuff that the fans want to know, so why don’t you just talk about it to the fans and let them hear it? So that’s kind of what got it all started, and that was kind of where the idea came from. But yeah, we enjoy doing it. It’s fun."