Spotted in the Top Fuel pits this weekend was Mike Guger, longtime nitro-class mechanic and tuner for Leah Pritchett at Bob Vandergriff Racing before the boss closed the doors and retired in April. Guger, the last to shut off the lights and lock the door at BVR because he stayed on to manage and sell some inventory, remains unattached.

That’s despite the fact he and Joe Barlam tuned Leah Pritchett to the February victory at Phoenix – which earned her a career-first performance in the Traxxas Shootout.

“I haven’t heard from anybody,” Guger said. “It’s the nature of the business. Not a lot out there right now, you know? At this point, maybe in a month or two, things will shake loose a little bit. It’s only been, what? - five or six weeks. In the big scheme of things, that’s not that much.”

Guger hasn’t heard from anybody in the Top Fuel ranks, but he said Khalid al Balooshi had approached him about the possibility of hiring him to tune his Pro Modified car(s) in the Middle East.

“That was a couple weeks ago. I’m kind of waiting to hear on that,” he said. “In 2010, he took a bunch of cars over there, a lot of cars. I just found one of the cars, Alex Hossler drove it. And I liked running it, I enjoyed it, I really did, it was pretty cool.”

He said the schedule likely would mean “about six races in Bahrain and six races in Qatar. I would do it. I got no problem with that. Something different. I’d be into it.”

It would mean a paycheck. However, Guger said, “I don’t want to do it for a paycheck. I want to do it because that’s what I want to do.”

He said he isn’t sure what direction his career might take. With Vandergriff saying recently that he might field a Top Fuel team again, Guger left the opportunity open to rejoin Vandergriff.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’ve been thinking pretty hard about that, and I haven’t really come up with anything yet.,” Guger said. “I’m approaching 60 and I’m getting kind of, you know, I don’t know… I don’t think age matters a lot out here. I don’t think it’s age. I think it’s money. Who’s got money, you know? I’ve been doing it for 45 years or whatever. So it’s time – I think it’s time to do something different.”

As for a resurrected BVR, Guger said, “I don’t know who or how. But I know that he is talking about running again, so we’ll see.”

He said he would go back to work for Vandergriff if the opportunity were to arise.

“Sure. Why not? We had a few issues. But I will say this for him: He gave me my shot.

Nobody else gave me a chance [to be a crew chief] and he did. I’ll always remember that.”