Bob Tasca III’s offseason surprise hire of two-time and reigning Funny Car champion Austin Prock and his whole crew didn’t signal his own exit from drag racing. He’ll be testing his Ford Mustang – the one Prock drove to victory last Sunday at Maryland International Raceway – June 29 at Summit Motorsports Park at Norwalk, Ohio.
“I’m getting back in the Prock Rocket. I’m going to drive the car. Obviously, I want to keep my license current,” Tasca said. “The bottom line is we just couldn’t do two cars this season; there was too much going on. We didn’t have the funding for the second car in full. And quite frankly, we didn’t have the parts and pieces. It would have been a big distraction to Jimmy [Prock, Austin’s crew chief father] and the guys.”
He discredited the chatter that the decision to step from his Ford Mustang at the end of the 2025 season was difficult.
“Listen, people say it was hard. Honestly, it was one of the easiest decisions I ever had to make, because the only reason why I’m out here is to compete and win a championship, period,” he said. “I’m not out here for any other reason. And I want to deliver that for Ford. I want to deliver it for all these Ford fans out here. And I knew my best shot to do that was to partner up and bring the Prock family on board and for me to step out of the car and put Austin in.
“I can tell you this: I wouldn’t have done it for anyone else. I wouldn’t have done it. It had to be the package. It had to be the Prock family and Austin all in. And that’s what we decided to do. So you can see the fruits of our labor starting to pay off.”
He’ll make it a two-car team eventually, he said: “At some point, I think we’ll have a second car. I don’t want four, don’t want three, I want two. I think two is the best number to go out here and learn from one another and not become a distraction. You get those three-, four-car teams. Sometimes they can be more harm than good, quite frankly. Jimmy’s seen that. We’ve all seen that in our careers. So we’ll see how it all pans out, but I’m looking forward. We already have it all planned out, by the way. It’s going to be me and Jimmy against Austin and Thomas and the two-car team and the old guys against the young guys – we’re going to just duke it out.”
Tasca said, “That’s the plan, anyways. We’ll see when it comes to fruition. But right now, I’m their biggest supporter and fan. And I’ll get to hit the throttle. They say if I ask Austen nicely, he’ll let me drive.”
His own sons are learning the family business – and learning that right now, at least, they’re more part of the “Sell on Monday” end of their great-grandfather’s mantra than the “Win on Sunday” end. “The truth,” Tasca said, “is they all would drive, but we put a lot of money into this race car, and we do that by selling a lot of Fords. So our focus is on the dealerships, and they get to come to the racetrack.” Already, his 23-year-old is “running our New York platform, 13 stores.” Two others are involved in the family business.
