Funny Car veteran Bob Tasca said following the season-opening Gatornationals that “the first five races of the season are really critical to show performance.” 

He has done that with a pair of top-qualifying positions now, thanks to his 3.852-second elapsed time Saturday at 324.59 mph in the BG Ford Mustang at the Circle K NHRA Four-Wide Nationals at Concord, N.C. 

But Tasca, the Phoenix leader, as well, hasn’t won yet. And the ultra-driven owner-racer indicated he’s not far away from remedying that – even with new crew chiefs and despite his car shutting off on his pole-seizing pass. 

What he has discovered is that he can excel not just on hot racetracks but also on the cooler ones, that he can run the E.T.s that championships are made of, and that shifting conditions don’t mean varying performance levels.  

“We need to string a few together on Sunday. But we’ve just been working on getting this car to run really hard and compete at the top of the pack,” Tasca said.

“So we got a good baseline for tomorrow. Who knows what the conditions will be? The weather is a little crazy right now, but we have a good hot-weather set-up and we have a really good cool-weather set up. And I like our chances.” 

Tasca said, “Come championship time, if you can't run mid-to-low [3.]80s, you're not running for a championship. And that's just the harsh reality of the level of performance out here. And what made us really happy on that [No. 1] run, actually, is we never showed our hand. 

“The car shut off at 920 feet [on zMAX Dragway’s 1,000-foot course]. We had a malfunction with the wheel counter, which shuts the car off in the event the driver can't. And it was, like, crazy, because I was wide open throttle. The car felt like it was a rocket ship, and then it just quit. So that's why I only ran 324 mph. But that was on an .84 run,” he said. “And truthfully, that was the run we've been looking for since we put this program together. Very pleased with that run.” 

His outstanding run was a mere two-thousandths of a second off John Force’s year-old track elapsed-time record of 3.850 seconds. 

“Had it not shut off, we would have been sitting here, trust me, with the track record,” Tasca said. “So we're going to just try it tomorrow. That's all I’m going to do. Actually, it was a thousandths off my career best. I ran an .851. Shutting the car off at 920 feet has cost me now my career-best run and the track record. I never felt so bad and went so fast.” 

He said he and crew chiefs Aaron Brooks and Todd Okuhara “probably got a little too greedy on that last session,” when he got out of shape early in the run and wound-up clocking a 7.613, 90.86 effort. “It's one of the challenges of four-wide: You don't get the same lane twice, right? And every lane is a little different. I don't care how good they make it – they've done a great job – but every lane is a little different. And we really didn't think we pushed that hard on that last session, but it was just too fast.” 

His was the only car out of four in his quad to make it down the racetrack. And he said that would have bothered him “if we were plugging in our normal set-up. I'm not saying we tested this weekend, but we were trying a lot of different things. There's 16 cars here. You're on the Bellagio of racetracks, right? And if you're going to go try something to go really fast, here's the place to do it. So, we wouldn't have run the run we ran today had we not done what we did Friday.

"So as much as you don't like to smoke the tires or shake, learn as much on those runs as you do on an .85 run. And then the last one, we were trying a little too hard, so, no. This car has gone up and down the racetrack all season long, so we needed to learn some things. We did. We got the pole, and we got some confidence going into Sunday. So far, mission accomplished.” 

Tasca lost crew chiefs Mike Neff and Jon Schaffer to Tony Schumacher’s JCM Top Fuel team, but Brooks and Okuhara have enabled him to broaden his expectations, especially on cooler racing surfaces. 

“We ran great in the heat for the last three years, and we just didn't have it when it counted on these kind of conditions. So to have two No. 1 qualifiers of the first five races ...  I mean, we were in the top four almost every time. Shows you that all the effort we put in the offseason, all through testing, the mindset of Aaron and Todd, is polarizingly different than Mike Neff and Jon Schaffer,” Tasca said. “Not good or bad, obviously. Mike won a lot of championships, won a lot of races. They just think different, and you can see it in the car. You can see how we perform on these tracks, and I think ultimately it sets you up for that championship run. 

“Now, we're going to string some runs together on Sunday,” he said, “but remember, we're five races in with a complete new team and a complete new package. We're racing against guys that have thousands of runs with a package, a team, the Capps and the Forces and the Hights. I mean, they have just a plethora of data that we don't have yet as a team, and yet we've still competed at a very, very high level. So it gives us a lot of confidence. 

“We're going to be going to some hot races now. So all of this data we won't see, we won't be able to test, we won't be able to know until the championship starts,” he said. “And to have this under our belt, I'm way ahead of where I was the last three years, so certainly very pleased at this point. And trust me, we didn't forget how to run on hot tracks, so we'll be ready for those, as well.” 

Although he said he has “a lot of confidence,” he said, “I really want to get a win and my goal was to get a win in the first five races. I wanted to win. And we went to the semis in Pomona. We had some tough first-round loss in Vegas. Good thing I didn’t bet on it, me and Capps losing the first round. I would have lost a lot of money on that one. But that's drag racing. What makes it exciting is that anyone, anytime, can come out here and win.” 

And, he figures, why not him?