This is certainly unchartered territory for Dave Richards.

After racing part-time for 10 years, Dave Richards and Paul Richards Racing will be running the full 2024 NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series season for the first time in the Versatran/BlueBird nitro Funny Car.

His first stop with a full-time operation is competing at the inaugural $1.3 million PRO Superstar Shootout at Bradenton (Fla.) Motorsports Park, which began Thursday and concluded Saturday night.

“Being able to test is definitely new for us. I mean, if we make a test run or two throughout a whole year, that's usually a plus,” Dave Richards said. “But to be able to come out here and make as many runs as we can make in the timeframe of a couple days is definitely helping out. Typically, our first test run was Q1 at any national event.”

Dave Richards acknowledged his team was on a run count for a decade because of financial backing or lack thereof.

“It's all what the budget lets you do. So luckily, we're out here and we've got a good budget to go race all year, and we're going to keep trying to get better every run,” he said. “And here, it's basically still a test for us here, even though we're at the Shootout because this is a new car from when we crashed last year. So, we're still working out the bugs and we're still moving things around for me to get a little more comfortable in the car.”

Versatran, a division of Metalcraft of Mayville, the parent company of Scag Power Equipment, joined Richards and his brother, Paul, during the 2023 NHRA Drag Racing Series season. The team competed in 11 races, qualified in the top 16 eight times, and made it to the quarterfinals twice, ultimately finishing the season No. 16 in the Funny Car standings. In 2024, Versatran will be joined by Metalcraft of Mayville’s newly acquired company, BlueBird, the industry’s most reliable turf care power equipment company.

“I'm still a ball of nerves. It's getting better,” Paul said. “I'm glad I got a few short runs out of the way. But you want it like instant results, which it's hard to get with all this stuff, but I feel like we're making progress every time we put the car together, and I'm hoping today with three runs that we can do it in a short amount of time that we'll be smiling at the end of the day.”

Richards has entered 52 career NHRA national events behind the wheel of a nitro Funny Car. His best two performances came last season when he won two rounds. He upset reigning world champion Matt Hagan in Brainerd, Minn., and derailed three-time world champ Ron Capps in the fall race in Charlotte, N.C.

This season he is part of the new three-car SCAG Racing team with Funny Car driver Daniel Wilkerson and Top Fuel pilot Justin Ashley. The 2024 NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series season kicks off at the Amalie Motor Oil NHRA Gatornationals at Gainesville (Fla.) Raceway, March 8-10.