Dickie Venables cannot help it. The multi-time championship tuner has self-diagnosed himself.

"I'm definitely a tinkerer," Venables admitted.

Venables during the pandemic definitely doesn't have idle hands, as he's crafting himself a devil of a workshop behind his house. Shortly after drag racing became suspended on March 12, 2020, Venables went to work on crafting a 1,500 square shop into the image in his mind which never happened because 24-races annually never afforded much time or energy to do anything else.

"The shop was a basically a pole barn," Venables said. "I'm turning it into a real shop, getting insulation done and putting up sheet metal walls and doing all that stuff myself. Unfortunately, I'd rather be racing, but I'm glad that I had a big project like this to keep me busy through all this."

It's a measure of solitude in a time when time is about all the drag racing crew chief has these days.

"It's tough not being at the shop," Venables said. "It's tough not being at the races. But I obviously the situation that's out there for all of us is very serious, and I think we're all doing the right thing by staying low until this subsides and they figure something out hopefully. And drag racing's my life. But life is more important. There's always another drag race. So I'm content with abiding by all the rules. And fortunately, my boss is gracious and hasn't laid anybody off and we're just riding it out."

Venables isn't building a barn but intends to make hay while the sun is out.

"Probably never would have had the time to do it if we were racing," Venables said. "I would have done it eventually. It would have taken my days off here and there. It was something that I was going to get started on this spring when I had off time. But it turns out it's been something to keep me busy. And I think that's the biggest thing. If we're all cooped up at home, myself, I'd go stir crazy. I've got to have something to do."

For Venables, crafting and constructing is a change from what he used to do with longtime pal Mike Guger. The two used to push remote control cars to the breaking point and beyond.

"I'm sitting here looking at a couple of them right in front of me right now here at my shop, and they've got dust on top of them," Venables said with a chuckle. "But that might not be a bad thing. This project's been keeping me busy, and I enjoy doing it too."

Venables remains focused on the project at hand, but this doesn't mean tune-up variables and ideas of how to make the Funny car driven by Matt Hagan quicker don't pop up here and there.

"I don't know that that ever goes away," Venables admitted. "I find myself when you're working with a construction project when you're working with the race car stuff; you're dealing with thousandths of an inch. And I found that you can't be that way with some 2x4 studs.

"I want to make it perfect. If it's within a quarter of an edge, you just send it. But I think about it. I've thought about it a lot just because of that factor. I measure something and want this panel to fit perfect. And I'm like, "Wait a minute, this is not going to go 330. It'll be fine."

"Making the car go faster, that's something, that's how we're wired as a crew chief. You're always trying to think of a better way to do something that's within the rules and just try and do better than the other guy next to you."

Venables said he and Hagan remain in contact through text messages and the occasional group text where the crew throw shade at one another.

"It seems like there's always a conversation going on on my phone that the other guys are having," Venables said. "Matt and I, we text all the time."

It's been said one doesn't realize what they have until its gone, and while Venables has not had drag racing taken away from him permanently, the break has only reaffirmed what the sport means to him.

"It's my life," Venables explained. "It were to go away; I'm not sure what I would do. I think about it all the time. I'm 56 years old, and I'd like to do this another ten years. And obviously, when you get to this point in your life, you start figuring out, it's like, 'Okay, well retirement's probably coming, but I still want to do this."

"What if it ended tomorrow? What would I do?" And that question crosses my mind almost on a daily basis. And I haven't come up with a concrete answer. I mean, I started going to the races when I was six months old with my father and, it's such a big part of my life.

"Other than that, probably the most important thing that's happened to me within the last six years is I met my girlfriend, Donna. And we have a good life together. It's a passion. I'm not going to lie to you. It's something you live. Doing what you do, you know what it's like, and it consumes us all."

For now, Venables is consumed with getting the shop done.