Can just tuning a car ever be enough for someone who was always one of the best to ever drive one?
“It was a little different the first time I was standing up there watching somebody else go down the track, but you get over that in a hurry,” says Bob Newberry, who retired four years ago as one of the most prolific drivers in NHRA history and now serves as a crew chief for Leah Pruett-Leduc’s Pro Mod. “I still miss driving on occasion, but I was never just a driver anyway. I was always a builder and a tuner, too. I never had somebody else tune my stuff.”
Newberry, who works for Roger Burgess’ R2B2 mega-team, is one of just a handful of drivers in NHRA history to amass 50 national event victories. He won championships in three different decades – Comp in 1979 and Top Alcohol Funny Car in 1992 and 2005 – and finished second in the final standings six times, including three in a row in the mid-1990s. Newberry won NHRA national event titles in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s – kept winning, in fact, right up to the last year he drove, 2007, when he picked up number 50 at the Summernationals in Topeka.
Now, Newberry heads up a top-flight team, with all the equipment anyone could want and a dedicated crew to set up and maintain the car. “I don’t miss all the work of running my own car, I can tell you that,” he says. “I used to do probably 90 percent of the maintenance on my cars, and I don’t miss that at all. What I do miss is the developmental part of it, making and buying little things to make my car go faster and rubbing on all the parts every week at the shop.
Can just tuning a car ever be enough for someone who was always one of the best to ever drive one?
“It was a little different the first time I was standing up there watching somebody else go down the track, but you get over that in a hurry,” says Bob Newberry, who retired four years ago as one of the most prolific drivers in NHRA history and now serves as a crew chief for Leah Pruett-Leduc’s Pro Mod. “I still miss driving on occasion, but I was never just a driver anyway. I was always a builder and a tuner, too. I never had somebody else tune my stuff.”
Newberry, who works for Roger Burgess’ R2B2 mega-team, is one of just a handful of drivers in NHRA history to amass 50 national event victories. He won championships in three different decades – Comp in 1979 and Top Alcohol Funny Car in 1992 and 2005 – and finished second in the final standings six times, including three in a row in the mid-1990s. Newberry won NHRA national event titles in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s – kept winning, in fact, right up to the last year he drove, 2007, when he picked up number 50 at the Summernationals in Topeka.
Now, Newberry heads up a top-flight team, with all the equipment anyone could want and a dedicated crew to set up and maintain the car. “I don’t miss all the work of running my own car, I can tell you that,” he says. “I used to do probably 90 percent of the maintenance on my cars, and I don’t miss that at all. What I do miss is the developmental part of it, making and buying little things to make my car go faster and rubbing on all the parts every week at the shop.
“A lot of my friends still drive their Alcohol Funny Cars, and I do miss the competition, but Pro Mod is more competitive than Alcohol Funny Car,” Newberry says. “There’s just a really high level of performance in this category right now. There are 24 or 26 entries at almost every race, and just about any one of them can win at any time. I mean, it’s hard just to qualify.”
Pro Mods are also more expensive than Alcohol Funny Cars – a lot more expensive. “The cost of the motor is about the same as one for an Alcohol Funny Car, but the cars themselves are much more complex, much more expensive to build,” Newberry says. “For a roller, you’re looking at probably double the expense of an Alcohol Funny Car. The motors are similar, other than the blower technology. If you don’t have really good blower on your Pro Mod, just stay home because you’re not going to qualify. What makes Pro Mod so exciting for the spectators is the mix of all the different types of race cars. In Alcohol Funny Car, probably 99 percent of the cars have screw blowers. Here, you’ve got nitrous mountain-motor cars, turbo cars, and blown cars. NHRA has a tough job trying to keep a level playing field between them all.”
It’s a whole new world for Newberry, one he didn’t know he’d be a part of until just before he actually was. It’s not that after a quarter century of racing Alcohol Funny Cars he finally got fed up with running his own operation and sold out – he got an offer that was too good to refuse.
“I didn’t know I was going to quit when I quit,” Newberry says. “I still had one more full year of major sponsorship with Valvoline. But I didn’t know what was going to happen after that last year, I could see that sponsorship money was about to get a lot harder to come by, and I had an offer [from Nick Bastaio] to buy not just my car but my whole operation – car, truck and trailer, spare motors, spare parts, everything – and to hire me to tune for a year and then tune for Alexis [DeJoria] the following year. I wasn’t looking for that – it presented itself. Not many opportunities like that come along, so I took it. It was a good deal for both of us. Nick got to buy a complete championship program, and I got rid of everything in one shot and didn’t have to try to sell each thing separately. It was a sure thing. But I still had another year left in my program, so if it hadn’t been for Nick, I absolutely would have raced my car for at least one more year.”
Instead, he’s a crew chief, which he was all along anyway. He just isn’t the one who climbs in when the car gets to the staging lanes.
“It’s a little harder to tune now because I’ve never done it when I wasn’t the one sitting in the car,” Newberry says. “It makes you more reliant on the computer. You can’t take what you see on the computer and what you felt in the seat anymore – you can only go by what the computer tells you – but Roger runs a very professional program, and this is a great opportunity. It gives me the latitude to do what I want when I want, and we have some great personnel here. It’s been a rewarding experience. A lot of teams don’t have the finances to do things we do and test like we do. As long as I feel OK and they want me to be here, I’ll be here.”
Yet Newberry, 62, still hasn’t completely ruled out returning to the seat. “I’d do it for a short period of time,” he says. “I don’t feel any different than I did when I was 50. The only stipulation would be that there would have to be proper funding. I’m a competitive person, and I still enjoy the sport, doing what I’m doing right now. But I’ve never said I wouldn’t drive again. Am I pursuing it? No. Would I? Probably. It’s probably wishful thinking, and it’s not something I’m really going after, but if the situation was right, yeah, I just might.”
