Winning in the NHRA Pro Stock class is not easy, or cheap.

Rick Jones learned firsthand while helping his son Rickie compete in the ultra-competitive category the past three years.

So, when Rickie failed to qualify at the NHRA’s U.S. Nationals last Sunday, the elder Jones had enough.

“We’re done,” Rick said Friday. “We have been thinking about it for a couple of weeks and at Indy we decided we were done. We didn’t make any announcements or anything, but you know it is just that we have some other opportunities we want to pursue. NHRA Pro Stock has been great to us. NHRA has been great to us. We will still be there, but you know Pro Stock over there is very difficult. It is a lot of fun, but it takes a lot of work and devotion. It takes a lot of money. I mean a tremendous amount of money. We just do not want to go over and qualify. We want to have a chance to win.”

Winning in the NHRA Pro Stock class is not easy, or cheap.

Rick Jones learned firsthand while helping his son Rickie compete in the ultra-competitive category the past three years.

So, when Rickie failed to qualify at the NHRA’s U.S. Nationals last Sunday, the elder Jones had enough.

“We’re done,” Rick said Friday. “We have been thinking about it for a couple of weeks and at Indy we decided we were done. We didn’t make any announcements or anything, but you know it is just that we have some other opportunities we want to pursue. NHRA Pro Stock has been great to us. NHRA has been great to us. We will still be there, but you know Pro Stock over there is very difficult. It is a lot of fun, but it takes a lot of work and devotion. It takes a lot of money. I mean a tremendous amount of money. We just do not want to go over and qualify. We want to have a chance to win.”

At Indy, Jones just missed out in the 16-car field, qualifying 18th with a 6.632-second run at 208.14 mph. Jones was piloting the Elite Motorsports Pontiac GXP this season in the NHRA.

The Jones family’s departure from Pro Stock is a clear indication of the exponential cost of running a championship-caliber team.

Veteran Pro Stock driver Larry Morgan told Attitude’s CompetitionPlus.com last month just how much money was needed to field a Pro Stock team.

“If you want to qualify and run Pro Stock, you’re going to have to spend $1 million a year. You can think you can do it cheaper than that, but you can’t,” Morgan said.

Rickie Jones actually had success in the NHRA Pro Stock class, finishing 16th and 10th in the point chase in 2008 and 2009. Presently, Jones is 15th in the Pro Stock points, despite not qualifying at Norwalk, Ohio in June and skipping the West Coast swing - consecutive races in Seattle, Sonoma, Calif., and Denver.

Rickie Jones’ team took some time off after not making the show at Norwalk, to work on improving engines for his car.

As part of finding more horsepower, Jones’ Elite Motorsports team tested for three days last month at Martin, Mich. Unfortunately for Jones, no significant gains were made.

Jones qualified 11th at the NHRA Lucas Oil Nationals on Aug. 12-15 in Brainerd, Minn., losing in the first round to Shane Gray. Then, Jones failed to qualify at Indy. Rickie has competed in 53 career NHRA Pro Stock national events, highlighted by three runner-up finishes.

Those performances left Rick Jones exploring different options for he and his son, specifically the American Drag Racing League. Rick is at the ADRL’s Dragstock VI event in Rockingham (N.C.) Dragway this weekend. Rickie is making his debut in the Extreme Pro Stock Class.

“We can see a huge market for us over in the ADRL,”said Rick, who runs the Quarter-Max chassis & racing components and RJ Race Cars, Inc., business. “The Pro Mod market is a huge place, 10.5 and Extreme Pro Stock and all these cool classes is just a huge marketplace for us, so we’re just looking. We’re here looking again this weekend and we’re helping our customers and we will just see what happens. The marketing of our company and our business, we will build it with racing. When I first came to IHRA I had one car entered in the whole race and by time we finished racing IHRA, we had cars winning championships in Top Sportsman, Pro Modified and Pro Stock. What really helps us is when we build our own car and race it in that class, we learn a lot about it. We can obviously do a lot better research and development and build a better car. Even though you have to race your customers, we’re never worried about that because you have to race somebody.”

Rick wasn’t ready to tip his hand on any future ADRL plans.

“We haven’t started building anything yet for us, but we’re going to make up our mind very soon here,” Rick said. “You will see a change, that’s for sure. I actually haven’t 100 percent decided what ADRL class we might build a car for.”

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