“We’ll put the preacher in it.”

That’s what Luigi Novelli decided to do with his Top Fuel dragster, as he prepares to step into the public for the first time since his literal heart-stopping incident at last June’s Camping World Drag Racing Series event at Norwalk, Ohio.

Mike Bucher, senior pastor at Calvary Chapel of Cleveland at Brooklyn Heights, Ohio, is “the preacher” Novelli tapped for the honor when he realized the NHRA is not prepared yet to grant him medical clearance to compete again.

Bucher’s selection wasn’t random, beyond his Christian belief that God has a plan for him to use the drag-racing platform to share the gospel of Jesus. Novelli, 79, had raced alongside Bucher’s dad, the late Jim Bucher, and that has been their connection.

And although Bucher knows that Jesus, the King of Kings, is far more glorious and eternally satisfying than the Kings of the Sport, Top Fuel dragsters, he’s grateful, thrilled, and even a wee bit wary about having this opportunity to drive a nitro rocket prepared by the Torrence Racing team.

Tracing the courses of Bucher’s and Novelli’s lives and how they intersected means going back to the 1970s, when Novelli and Jim Bucher barnstormed the Midwest’s Division 3 dragstrips.

That was when Mike Bucher, who just turned 60 in April, was a young boy who liked to hide under the kitchen table and listen as his father talked with his friends about drag racing. He’d sit for hours in his dad’s Top Fuel car in the family garage. And he clearly had Top Fuel dragsters constantly on his mind – his teachers would send home notes to his parents, complaining of his lack of attention in class and his obsession with drag racing.

Meanwhile, Novelli, of Crete, Ill. – who came to the United States through Ellis Island – started racing in midgets and stock cars and moved into drag racing in 1962, 60 years ago . . . and, curiously, was known then as “Lou” Novelli. 

Novelli’s competitor, Jim Bucher, passed away when his son Mike was just 15. All these years later, Bucher fielded a tribute car for his father. When Novelli saw it, he introduced himself to Mike Bucher.

“I didn't know my dad as an adult. All I remember is a 15-year-old kid being yelled at. I wanted to hear some stories,” Bucher said. So he asked Novelli, “You got stories about my dad?” And Novelli said, “Heck, yeah. He used to kick my rear end every time.”

Then a day later, Novelli had the scare of his life. On the blistering-hot Friday, the first day of the Summit Racing Equipment Nationals at Norwalk, Novelli collapsed in his pit, and local EMTs treated him at the scene. He made the Friday night run. But the following day, Novelli made a pass that was disqualified for striking a center-line timing cone.

Unbeknownst to anyone at the exact moment, Novelli had suffered a heat stroke in the car. He later told Chicago news station WGN (and Bucher’s account from the crew confirmed) that he started to exit the car and fell back into the seat immediately. His heart had stopped beating, and by the time his crew members reached Novelli, he was purple. The crew and first responders performed CPR.

“They pulled me out of the car, and in fact, I was kind of mad after that,” Novelli said later, “because they broke my ribs.” But he conceded, “If it wasn’t for them, I probably would have been dead.” He said he hadn’t drunk enough water to stay hydrated.

Novelli was airlifted by helicopter to a local hospital, where he spent four days recovering from cardiorespiratory arrest brought on by severe dehydration.

Bucher knew where to turn for help. He prayed, as did many others at the racetrack. Bucher said, “They said he died. We all started praying. Everybody was praying for him. He was revived on the helicopter 15 minutes later. Then everyone thought he would be brain-dead. I kept in contact with his crew. Two days later, he woke up perfectly fine. The hospital was on my way home, so I stopped to see him. Only his crew chief and daughter could see him. They let me in during midst of COVID. I told him, ‘Luigi, you are a miracle. He has kept you alive for a purpose.’”

Novelli has said he wants to return to the seat of his National Machine Repair Dragster, but so far, the NHRA has not approved his physical. His longtime team members, Bucher said, had been “waiting, waiting, waiting. They were going to do Charlotte. They were going to do all these different races. They all wanted to race.” They even told Bucher at the PRI Show last December, “If he can't drive, we want you to drive.”

Finally, they asked Novelli if he planned to sell his operation if he isn’t allowed to race again. That’s when he said, “We will put the preacher in it.” And Bucher received the phone call two weeks ago, letting him know the seat was his for at least the June 24-26 Norwalk race.

“If things [go] great, they want to do Brainerd. They want to do Indy, maybe Topeka or something. They want to do a few more. We'll see,” he said. “We'll just go one step at a time. Let's just see how this goes.”

He said Novelli “still wants to drive. And I hope he can. He's done a lot of changes health-wise, trying to get in that place.”

But Bucher’s first thought was not, “Yes! I’m back in a Top Fuel dragster!”

Nor was it “Yippee – Bobby and Dom Lagana and Jason McCulloch prepared this car and made it a clone of Steve Torrence’s and kind of like Tripp Tatum’s.” (Everything on it is the same as those dragsters, but the team never had a chance to make any runs with it because of Novelli’s incident.)

And his first thought certainly was not, “I’m going to show everybody I should be out there fulltime!” Bucher – who lives at Columbia Station, Ohio, near Cleveland – said, “It's my home track. But I'm a pastor. I can't do a lot of races. We'll just go one step at a time.”

His first reaction was a prayer request: “Pray that I am a light for the Lord to the whole crew. Also pray I can do this. I am not yet comfortable going 300 mph in less than four seconds.”

Bucher said, “Bobby Lagana is supposed to be helping tune it, and he says there’s no reason it won’t run low 3.80s. Basically, you have 12 full-time cars that are 3.70s and 3.60s, and then you got about eight part timers. This year, I think there are going to be probably 20 cars or more. And so it's going to take in the 3.80s probably to qualify, unless it's super-duper hot, which Norwalk can be. Krista [Baldwin] is going to be there, Tripp Tatum, Billy Torrence, Wurtzel, we're going to be there.

“Let's go A to B the first run. The goal of the first session is don't be the first car in the second session, because I guarantee, if you watch every event, every event, 10 cars don't go down the track first session. And so, if you're just A to B, then you're going to be in the middle of the pack. In the second session is when you’ve got to run good. But if you go out there and blow the tires off first session, well then, now you're the first car in the second session, and you can't go after it because you got to be too cautious. There’s some strategy here,” he said.

“I just want to go to A to B. The hard part for me is I don't get to race every week,” Bucher said. “My last run was Night Under Fire [also at Norwalk] back in August. Listen, I'm not comfortable going 300 miles an hour yet. I'm still a little nervous. I have major butterflies until the first run because I'm always like, ‘Can I even do this? I don't know if I can do this. Am I crazy?’ And then I make the first run, I go, ‘OK. I can do this.’”

Bucher’s family and extended church family will be attending the Norwalk race. He said, “I have Hope Over Heroin on the car, and that ministry is going to be there.”

The outreach program – a collaborative effort of churches and community throughout Ohio and Northern Kentucky – combats the heroin epidemic. In addition to raising awareness and trying to prevent addiction to helping recovering users, Hope Over Heroin offers practical solutions for people struggling or their family members/loved ones who want to help but don’t know what to do.  

Bucher’s Hope Over Heroin helpers are volunteering to help [track owner] Bill Bader, and so are many members of his congregation. “They volunteered to do the cleanup stuff afterwards,” Bucher said. “And there'll be a lot of people there – a lot of people. I like Bill. He likes what I'm doing with Hope Over Heroin. So last year he invited me to be in the Night Under Fire, which was just Brittany [Force], Justin [Ashley], Antron [Brown], and me. Like, who doesn't belong in that group?”

Anticipation ratchets up the anxiety, but Bucher said he knows he can put that aside: “It definitely is more crazy watching it than driving it. And I never pray more. And I do feel like the Lord helps me and I have the most peace ever once the engine starts. In the lanes it's huge stress. But once the engine starts, that's when all the stress disappears. And to me, it just becomes automatic.”

But Novelli has reassured him, too, that everything will be all right.

“He's kind of funny, too, because he said, he can be like a grumpy old Italian guy,” Bucher said. “But when I'm sitting in the car doing a warm up, I’m like, ‘So what do you want me to do?’ He said, ‘Just sit there and look good.’ If I go to do something wrong, he’ll smack my hands. I like him. He's a gentle soul, and he's an American success story.”

None of this upcoming experience would be possible, Bucher said, were it not for the support of these folks and their companies: Chip Lofton, Vita C Energy , Mike Ashley, Realty Warehouse, Bill Stuart, The Glosser, Surace Smith, Becky Elias, Mufflers for Less, Dave Nelson, Gene Lampshire/TFC Transportation, Tom Scheiman/Sweeties Candy, and Steve Craig/UniControl.