For everything NHRA drag racing is, it also is a business.

That was apparent Monday when Don Schumacher removed Ed “Ace” McCulloch as the crew chief of the NAPA Auto Parts Dodge Funny Car driven by Ron Capps replacing him with veteran tuner John Medlen.

McCulloch, a longtime crew chief, had served as the leader of the on the NAPA Funny Car since 2005. McCulloch will remain at DSR and assist Medlen and the NAPA team, as well as help the crew chiefs on the two other DSR Funny Cars driven by Matt Hagan and Jack Beckman.

For everything NHRA drag racing is, it also is a business.

That was apparent Monday when Don Schumacher removed Ed “Ace” McCulloch as the crew chief of the NAPA Auto Parts Dodge Funny Car driven by Ron Capps replacing him with veteran tuner John Medlen.

McCulloch, a longtime crew chief, had served as the leader of the on the NAPA Funny Car since 2005. McCulloch will remain at DSR and assist Medlen and the NAPA team, as well as help the crew chiefs on the two other DSR Funny Cars driven by Matt Hagan and Jack Beckman.

“Well the obvious thing is we have not been doing very well at the last few races,” McCulloch said late Monday night. “I’m not making excuses, but we have changed a lot of things around. We weren’t really getting the results we were wanting to get and we were not winning rounds. Don decided he wanted to make a change and decided he wanted (John) Medlen to make the calls on the car. First off, the car is a good car. It’s close and it’s not that it’s way out in left field. I want the team to do well. Don told me what he wanted to do and in my opinion Don Schumacher Racing is the best race team out there. It’s a class act. I’m not mad at anybody and I respect his (Don’s) decision. He wants me to stay and help with it and I do not want to leave. I want the car to do well, and if I can help the car do well, I really do not care if Medlen is the crew chief or not. I would have liked for it to have been handled a little bit differently, but I understand this is the business we are in.”

Capps is presently seventh in the point standings, but he has lost in the first round in the last three races at Chicago, Englishtown, N.J., and Bristol, Tenn. Capps, who finished third in the point chase a year ago, also has yet to win a race this season.

“I was shocked (about the crew chief change), and I’m still in shock, but I understand what Don’s (Schumacher) thought process is,” said Capps, who also worked with McCulloch as his crew chief for several years at Don Prudhomme racing prior to coming to DSR in 2005.
“For me, driving for Ace has been more than crew chief-driver relationship, he has taught me how to be a racer. Plus, he also has helped me through lot of things in my life off the track. Both of us have gone through some of our hardest parts of our lives together. Us as teams spend more with each other than we do our own families. On the racing side of it, there are guys out there who think they’re great drivers and I used to think the driving part was all I needed to do. But, a guy like Ace is a guy who will teach you how to be a racer and there’s a big difference. So, this hurts (not having McCulloch as his crew chief), and it’s tough. But, I understand the business-side of it and that’s the part you have to separate from the personal side.”  

The NAPA team has a quick turnaround with Medlen as wrench boss as it is competing at the Fourth annual Summit Racing Equipment NHRA Nationals at Norwalk, Ohio, Thursday through Sunday.

“We will put the pieces together and we will go to Norwalk and we will see how it works out,” McCulloch said. “In a few days, we will probably know more about what’s going on than we do (Monday). It remains to be seen what I will do. I don’t have a clear-cut answer on how it’s going to be because I don’t know that yet. (John) Medlen and I had a long talk (Sunday night) and he wants to come in and he would like to be another set of eyes and go on and run the thing. He’s not that familiar with what we do, so to throw him into this, not saying he’s not capable of doing this because he is, but to throw him into this thing with no help and say ‘here go do it,’ that’s not the car he is used to running when he was with (John) Force. We will have to assist him in showing him what we do and if he sees things that are not right or there needs to be a better way, then that will be his decision.”

Medlen spent 15 years at John Force Racing before joining DSR in mid-March to serve as co-crew chief with Tommy Delago on the Diehard Funny Car driven by Hagan. Medlen was the crew chief for former JFR driver Tony Pedregon when he won the 2003 world championship.

“There are a lot of people who would dream about having John Medlen tune their car and he has been a ray of sunshine since he joined the DSR team,” Capps said. “I’m intrigued and excited about driving for John Medlen. I know as a person he is one of the best people I know. These guys on my NAPA team would jump in front of a truck for me and for Ace. These guys have become my family and we’re going to try and continue on and do the best that we can. The transition is not going to be that bad when you have a guy like John Medlen come in. His character is outstanding. He is a guy who really brings a lot to you as a person and that transfers over to how you approach everything on race day and things like that.”

Capps admitted the upcoming race is going to have a completely different feel for him.

“Norwalk is going to be emotional weekend on two fronts,” Capps said. “Not seeing Ace point at me through the windshield, and then having John Medlen point at me through the windshield is going to be an emotional thing because obviously I was tight with his son Eric. I also had got to know John pretty well, so this is going to be interesting.”

Eric Medlen died March 23, 2007, as a result of injuries he suffered when he crashed during a test session at Gainesville Raceway in Florida.

As quickly as Capps adjust, so to will McCullough.  

“John and I get along well, we do not have any problem,” McCulloch said. “I want the car to be successful, first and foremost for the sponsor NAPA, and I want the car to win. And, if I can be a part of and if I need to help John (Medlen) or be there or whatever, I will do that.”

Although the NAPA Funny Car has been struggling, McCulloch has no regrets about his tuning decisions.

“The only way you get better is if you learned and the only way you’re going to learn is to change,” McCulloch said. “Some of the things we changed, I really, really like. The car to the 330 (foot mark) right now is as probably as good as any of them out there. Now, we’re having a little bit of trouble beyond that, but we’re working on that. There’s a light in the end of the tunnel. It’s not like this thing is completely out in the ditch and there’s no direction. It’s a good race car and it will be good. I wish some of the things we were working on, I wish they would have come around a little bit quicker or we would have caught on to it a little bit quicker. But, with the format the way it’s now with the Countdown and with the testing ban we have, I changed my whole approach. NHRA tried to, by awarding points for each qualifying run, they tried to force you to go out there and try to get that point every run and run low ET every run, which would eliminate you to try and test stuff during the races. To me, if you can’t test outside the track, then you have to test at the track. We’re trying to learn things and we run a lot of stuff. Once we get a grip on it, then we go race it, but we’re just not quite there yet.”

The NHRA testing policy is four days per team during the season.

“It’s difficult knowing we were trying things for the better of the team when we could’ve easily just put the same setup we had in it (the car) last year, and continued down the road,” Capps said. “But our three teams, Rahn Tobler (crew chief with Beckman), Tommy DeLago (with Hagan), and Ace got together and took an approach that if we were all trying the same thing, we were kind of burning up time, so we all tried to do something different to help each other’s team. Ace, I could see every weekend, there was a little bit of a struggle, but there was a small ray of sunshine in what we were trying to do. That’s the hard part when they throw you a little bit of bone like that.”