Like all the other NHRA nitro-class crew chiefs, Tony Stewart Racing’s Neal Strausbaugh, Mike Domagala, and Phil Shuler walk the tightrope of sending their 12,000-horsepower race car down the dragstrip, knowing it could rock a record elapsed time or speed or detonate in spectacular disaster – or maybe worst of all, just look mediocre. They have about four seconds to test their work. And on race day, they have to prep that car so the driver can reach the finish line before the opponent.
Just thinking about that is intense. But that’s simply routine. That’s the job description. Strausbaugh, Domagala, and Shuler have had another significant task for about the past six or seven months. Since boss Tony Stewart brokered a deal with Richard Freeman last September to drive a Top Fuel dragster for Elite Motorsports, the three gradually have assumed a transitional role.
Leah Pruett, Stewart’s wife and driver of the team’s Top Fuel entry, said, “We worked really hard at passing the baton off from Tony to me.” Oh – and keeping the high performance the same, all while improving, she said.
No pressure.
But they are starting to perfect that.
Pruett has qualified no worse than third so far this season and at the most recent race led the Top Fuel field.
Crediting a full team effort, she said, “What people finally saw [at] Pomona was a car that rips and sticks more consistently and is finally lower in qualifying than what we had been before and a driver that is being relentless and not giving up. So, hopefully, if we package this up altogether, what people see is, yes, Leah is back in a badass hot rod and driving the wheels off this thing and is going to find [herself] in the winners circle sooner [rather] than later.”
But the Top Fuel side of TSR Nitro isn’t operating in a vacuum. Matt Hagan and his Funny Car team, with Shuler and Mike Knudsen calling the shots, are thriving with the new system, as well. Already building on the momentum from last year’s Countdown – in which Hagan won at St. Louis and St. Louis and was within 101 points and a strong chance at fifth series championship before rain determined the title at the Finals – they sparkled at Pomona.
Both Shuler and Hagan have collaborated with Pruett and her team maybe more than ever before, and both have benefited. Hagan’s victory at Pomona was the Funny Car class’ 1,000th, and for him, it was proof that Stewart’s and Pruett’s blueprint is right on the money. Like NASCAR’s Denny Hamlin, who co-owns 23XI Racing with Michael Jordan but races fulltime for Joe Gibbs Racing, Stewart has dueling interests in drag racing. But he hasn’t divorced himself from TSR Nitro. He has a handle on what’s happening in his own organization. Pruett said that the two of them are superstitious, so they “race without seeing each other all day. That’s not a reflection of how we work in front of that all week, months – everything is super-cohesive.”
Take, for example, how everything played out at the Winternationals, with Pruett’s strong showing, Stewart winning the Top Fuel trophy, and Hagan winning the Funny Car final.
“Coming into that final,” Pruett said, “it felt so world finals. We’re four races in and this feels like the championship right now. So with Tony running Justin [Ashley], me hoping so bad that he would continue to find a way to dig, dig, dig, but I didn’t ever question it. And then for Matt to run behind, I did not think about, ‘Man, what’s this going to be like when we double up?’ It was living in the moment: ‘These are big finals right here.’ I’m thinking about how [Knudsen’s] strategy had been tuning for that weekend and how he continued to push and seeing his confidence level just get better and better.
“It’s like watching a show that you don’t know how the end of it is, but you were there helping produce it, to a degree. So when Tony’s up there and he’s in the left lane, which is the lane that I had lost that final in [in 2023], I think the whole entire temperature of the drag strip rose because of the number of people that was on the starting line. That’s how many people are involved in the success,” she said.
“It was out of this world. And Phil’s standing there in the water box and Matt’s rolling right up and they had right lane. And it was like this whole second wave of ecstaticness of emotions that you truly don’t get to get very often,” Pruett said. “And there was a different feeling between celebrating for Tony and Richard and that was, I was very proud of them and like, ‘OK – now they can fly off and they’ve made it to where they’ve wanted to be and now let’s continue racing. The emotions for Matt winning the 1,000th [was thrilling].
“So, for Matt to be there [running against Ron Capps], and both were in a deserving spot, I think I jumped higher and I screamed louder when Matt won. That is because that is my TSR teammate. That is Matt. I’m in the trenches with him with that team all the time,” she said.
Pruett said she receives advice from the four-time Funny Car champion who was a teammate at Don Schumacher Racing. “Matt and I talk a lot, and he is in my corner. And he is not letting me … ‘give up’ is not the word, by any means . . . but consistently supporting me in continuing to dig, find something else, try something new, find this, find that.”
For Hagan, that relationship is a product of the efficiency with which the entire organization operates. It’s an organic one that stems from his comfort level that he said is a situation he never has experienced before in his career.
“That [1,000th Funny Car] win, along with winning championships and everything else, is a result of what we’ve created here and what they’ve created here and the environment we’re in,” he said.
“Leah and Tony, they juggle and race the cars, but they also do a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff. And I know Leah the last couple years has been dealing with a lot of front office stuff, a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff, a lot of personnel stuff. So they’ve had to make changes. They brought in Phil Shuler. I mean, she was a big reason for that happening. They had a relationship there. Phil has been a great add to this deal. Leah has been really behind the scenes, the person getting that stuff done. And they’re doing the same thing over there with the Elite team. They’re putting a group of people together that just really work well, and it’s cool,” Hagan said.
“It’s never just been this atmosphere where everything is good. That’s what’s so exciting for me: I’ve never had this. I’ve been very, very successful, and we’ve had a lot of things kind of go our way. We work really hard and work through adversity with a lot of stuff. But right now,” Hagan said, “I’m in a spot to where I show up and just everything is great, man. There’s smiles on all the guys’ faces and wrenches in their hand and they’re signing multi-year contracts to stay with each other and keep this thing going. And we’re in a really good spot and it makes me excited to see what’s going to happen with it being such an early win in the season.”
Hagan was reflective, completely aware that “it takes an army, man. It really does.” He said, “And I think that as cool as it is to put these trophies up on the shelf and to look at them and all that kind of stuff, when I do pull them back and look at them, think about the time and the energy and the stuff that all the people, the adversity everybody goes through to make that happen . . . it takes everybody. And, I repeat, we’re in a great place, man, so I’m excited.”
