The goal for Tommy Delago was simple. One day in his drag racing career he wanted to join elite company as a crew chief.
He wanted to be a world championship crew chief on a nitro Funny Car and on a Top Fuel Dragster.
Delago accomplished his first goal when he guided Matt Hagan to the 2011 world title while working for Don Schumacher Racing.
The latter mission seemed far harder to achieve since he didn’t work much with dragsters.
Well, now he has an opportunity to check the latter off his bucket list as he’s the crew chief for Justin Ashley heading into the 2026 season.
“Yeah, this is what I wanted a long time ago. I was trying to get over to a dragster. For a little bit selfish reasons, I look and go, well, at my age, I’m going to be 57 this year, even if I was good enough, which I don’t even know if I’m on that level, but I don’t think I’d ever be able to catch up to a Jimmy Prock or Alan Johnson when it comes to the amount of success and championships that they’ve won, but I find that it’s a very select group that have crew chiefs that have won in both. My goal was, ‘I’ve got one in a Funny Car. I’d love to have one in the dragster before I die as a crew chief.’ So that’s been a goal.
“It doesn’t have to be this year. Obviously, that’d be nice, but I also know the reality is even the years you have a car that should win the championship, it doesn’t mean it’s going to because there’s still a little bit of luck involved and a lot of moving parts. You got guys that can’t make mistakes. You got a driver that’s got to do it this way and that way every time.”
After three years away from drag racing, Delago got back into the NHRA mix on Jan. 4, 2022, joining Davis Motorsports/Justin Ashley Racing and working with fellow world championship crew chief Mike Green.
Delago has been with the team since then and on Oct. 17, 2025, he was tabbed as the crew chief for Ashley shortly after Ashley’s former crew chief Mike Green left the SCAG Power Equipment team to join Tony Stewart’s new Elite Motorsports Top Fuel operation for 2026.
Delago was in his role for one race in Las Vegas. Ashley qualified No. 6 and beat Josh Hart in the first round before falling in the second round to Shawn Langdon.
The final race of the season – the In-N-Out Burger NHRA Finals in Pomona, Calif. – was canceled by NHRA officials on Nov. 16 due to persistent and adverse weather and unsafe track conditions.
“Oh, the excitement level is off the charts. I mean, obviously we were really excited with the opportunity before Vegas, and the opportunity… Really bummed out when Pomona rained out, because I was really excited,” Delago said. “I didn’t want the season to end because I hadn’t had a shot like this in a long time to be able to make our own decisions, do it the way we want to do it.
“And just getting back to this role, it’s been seven years. So, it’s definitely something that was worked on very hard to get to and it’s just very exciting.”
Before 2022, the last time Delago was on the NHRA scene was when he was tuning Cruz Pedregon’s nitro Funny Car for the final eight races of the 2018 season.
Prior to that, Delago worked on Shawn Langdon’s Funny Car with Kalitta Motorsports during the first part of 2018.
“Obviously now we’re in the wintertime and there’s so much stuff going on, you might lose sight of how excited you are. And we got this second team that we’re building,” Delago said.
Just over a week ago, it was announced that Will Smith was joining SCAG Racing full time for the 2026 NHRA season as the driver of a new Bluebird Turf Top Fuel dragster. He’ll work alongside Justin Ashley’s team, with Scott Okuhara joining Glen Huszar as co-crew chief for his car.
“It’s really exciting. I’m also excited for Scotty. That new Bluebird car, it’s got some pretty cool dynamics going on. Will Smith’s getting his first shot at a full-time ride,” Delago said. “Glen Huszar is getting his first shot as a No. 1 crew chief, and Scotty Okuhara is getting his first shot at being a No. 2. Scotty and I worked together at Snake’s in 2000 on (Ron) Capps’ Copenhagen car. I’ve known Scotty for a long time. I’ve known how talented he is, and I’ve always been shocked that he’s never gotten the shot to be in this position.
“Glen and I talked and I was like, ‘I think this is a guy I think you should get.’ I said, ‘He’ll make you stronger and he’s good with the guys. He can do any job on the car. All he has to do is really learn how to tune.’ By osmosis, I bet he’s learned a ton of that even from his brother (Todd). He just doesn’t admit to it.”
Huszar was with Delago when he won the championship with Hagan and served as his right-hand man for over 10 years.
“The first couple weeks of building this new deal was a little stressful, but now we’re kind of getting back to where things are starting to get a little settled and we kind of got a plan and I started to get guys hired over there and got a couple good guys going to run the thing,” Delago said. “So, we’re just going to obviously start them out with our baseline that we ended the season with. And Jason McCulloch and I are going to work on some new stuff to see if we can get some new stuff panned out.
“I mean, the one thing is, I think having my own business – I still have my own business – really helps you come back down to Earth and realize how lucky we are to do this.”
Delago is no stranger to McCulloch or his father, the legendary driver/tuner Ed “the Ace” McCulloch.
“I brought Jason at the end of the year. I brought him on right when Mike Green quit and I was told that I was taking the car over,” Delago said. “I had talked to Jason and then Josh Hart had called me and said, ‘Hey, our deal’s ending anyway. I don’t mind if you take him now.’ Justin and I thought, ‘Well, if Jason’s willing to come over here now, it’d be great to get a couple of races under our belt before the offseason. That’d give us a head start going into testing.’ We’ve known each other forever. I worked for his dad for a long time. His dad taught me most of everything I know.
“I worked with Ace at Kalitta’s for a lot of years. Then when he left to go to Snake’s (Don Prudhomme), he took me with him. Well, first I started off on (Jack) Beckman’s Valvoline car in 2008, then we got Hagan’s in 2009, but Ace was one of the biggest reasons that I got hired at Schumacher’s. He recommended me to Schumacher to offer me a job. I was at (Bob) Gilbertson’s nitro Funny Car at the time.
“Ace has always been like my track dad. He’s always been there for me when it comes to racing, always tried to steer me in the right direction racing, and also always reprimanded me when I messed up.”
This season, Delago is excited to collaborate with Jason McCulloch.
“I know he’s got the experience and he’s great,” Delago said. “The way I look at it, Jason and I are equals. Yeah, you can’t have two guys making the final call on a car, but it doesn’t need to be a one and a two. It can be a 1A and a 1A-minus. I look at us as being very, very equal. Just one guy has to make the final call, but when it comes to respect, how we’re going to talk to each other and all that, I don’t look at him way down there at all.
“Yeah, it’s going to be fun, man. I have a ton of stuff I’ve been wanting to experiment with and try for years. Jason and I have been working on all of our test stuff that we want to test and building it and having it all built and ready to go. It’s going to be fun, man. It’s going to be fun.”
Delago said his team plans on finding a baseline during testing.
“Yeah, we’re going to test the third week of February in Gainesville, Fla. The 17th through 20th will be our first test,” Delago said. “We will probably just test our car. The Bluebird dragster probably won’t be ready by then. We’re hoping to leave our stuff down there and then bring the Bluebird dragster down there on the second of March and hopefully test on the third and fourth with both cars the Tuesday and Wednesday before the race.”
The 2026 NHRA season begins with the Gatornationals, March 5-8 in Gainesville.
“I mean, we all have to make money because that’s the way the world works. But I’ve come to the conclusion that if I was independently wealthy, I would still do this, but I would do it for free. I mean, I would. This is my passion.”
Now, Delago is focusing on what’s on his plate right now.
“Well, obviously the world championship’s a goal and we’re going to work hard at it. We’re going to do some extra testing this year, and testing doesn’t guarantee you anything,” Delago said. “But we know our egos aren’t blinding us. We know that our performance was definitely top three, top four on average.
“But when the tracks get cooled off, we definitely don’t have quite enough ammo. And we need some all-out raw performance when we need it. But obviously on the moderate to hot tracks, the combination’s pretty good. But it can always be better. So, I feel like we’re still a little bit behind the top guys, the top few guys. But the thing is, they’re all working in the winter to get better, too. So, you have to work a certain amount just to keep pace with them, but then we have to work even harder because we don’t want to just keep pace. We need to catch up, too.”
Delago acknowledged having Ashley as his driver has been a blessing.
“Justin’s amazing. We all know his driving talents and all that, but that’s not the secret in my mind to him,” Delago said. “The secret to him is he’s just a quality person. You don’t meet very many people that are as wholesome as him and just genuinely as good a person. I’ve probably only met three people in my whole life that are so well switched on, have their head screwed on straight, and are just such great people that if you make them mad, you’re probably wrong.
“We talk about everything. Obviously, I make all the final decisions, but I like to include everybody because the more brain power you have that can get along chemistry-wise, the smarter decisions that can be made.”
Delago is also a realist and knows nothing will come easy for him and his team this year.
“Well, we have a lot of catching up to do. You’re racing against guys like (David) Grubnic and Jim Oberhofer and Nicky Boninfante – or I should say crew chiefs – and obviously Brian Husen and Alan Johnson,” Delago said. “Alan Johnson has been kicking everybody’s as. I wouldn’t want it any other way. It was no different than when I ran Funny Car. Funny Car, Zippy (Mike Neff) was tuning Force’s stuff, and then there was (Dean) ‘Guido’ (Antonelli) on Ashley Force’s car and (Jimmy) Prock on (Robert) Hight’s car back in the day, and it’s no different.
“That’s our target. We have to shoot for it. We don’t know if we’ll get there. I know that I don’t have as high an IQ as Alan Johnson and some of the guys out there, but I do have a wild imagination. Sometimes that seems to work.”
