Dickie Venables wondered if his day would ever come. 

Venables, crew chief for the Mopar-sponsored Funny Car driven by Matt Hagan, had long desired to win drag racing's most prestigious race, the NHRA U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis as a crew chief. The last 12 years winning the event seemed like an impossible task.  

Venables has had his cars lose races they should have won, made a bad call here and there, and once had his trousers blown off on the starting line from an out of control Funny Car which left him embarrassingly in his underwear.

There was a different aura in the air two weeks ago, as Venables guided Hagan into the staging beams for the Funny Car final against the defending series champion Del Worsham. 

"Honestly, the full magnitude of the moment didn’t set in until I walked away from the car on the start line and I stepped back, and I looked and realized where we were," Venables said. "I thought, 'we’re in the final round of Indy. This is it.” 

"At that point, we’ve all done all we can do. It’s up to Matt and the race car and the man above. I thought well this is our day or it’s not. When the light came on…it’s hard to explain."

Hagan, a driver known for his sheer bruteness of horsepower and record-setting repute, delivered a bit of driver finesse and delivered for Venables a holeshot victory, 3.964 to 3.958 decision. 

"You begin to wonder if you will ever get your day, because I had won this race before as a crewman, but never as a crew chief," Venables admitted. "You do everything in your power to try to treat Indy as just another race. You go up there and race the race track like you would in any drag race."

Considering the NHRA U.S. Nationals as just another race is akin to calling a date with the prom queen just another social occasion. 

"It’s really easy to say that, I'll admit," Venables explained. "You can tell yourself that all day long but honestly, you know it’s Indy, there’s extra pressure, and you put it on yourself."

The magnitude of winning Indy was instilled in Venables as a youth while racing with his father Dick Venables. The elder Venables was an underfunded Top Fuel driver but held the event in such reverence the legend of winning the event rubbed off on his son. 

And in winning his first, Venables couldn't have written a better script. 

"Never would have thought the No. 1 qualifying run would have held throughout qualifying," Venables said. "It's a long race, to qualify No. 1 and to win, I couldn’t ask for anything more. Emotionally it’s like a huge weight off of my shoulders."