Dickie Venables has sent runs flying into the upper deck so many times he has a proverbial frequent flier card. Suffice it to say, Venables lives in the world of the long ball.
That’s why when the seasoned championship tuner left Tony Stewart Racing to join Kalitta Motorsports as tuner for J.R. Todd, it was expected the team would immediately begin delivering moonshots at the PRO Superstar Shootout in Bradenton, Fla.
Instead, Venables had the team firmly grounded and preparing for a season full of shock and awe when the right time presented itself. Bradenton was not the right time, though it laid the groundwork for the upcoming season.
“We were testing out a lot of things, additionally adding my combination in there which meant quite there were quite a few changes,” Venables explained. “We made a lot of headway. We’re not where we need to be, but I feel like we will be hopefully by the end of this week.”
There were plenty of planned half-track shutoffs and short squirts designed to walk the car into a new routine.
“I’m kind of known as aggressive, want to haul ass, swing for the fence type of guy,” Venables admitted. “I’ve learned just from experience that when I come into a new program like this, it’s different parts and pieces and we have to approach it in baby steps, one step at a time, and that was the goal I had. Wasn’t easy because I’m used to swinging for the fence, but you also have to be realistic and smart about how you run these things, or you can hurt a lot of parts and pieces and we don’t want to do that.”
Venables said being joined with talented tuner Jon Oberhofer and the team in place before he arrived has been instrumental in trusting the process of restraint.
“They service and do stuff as good or better than I’m used to, so it’s been an easy transition for me,” Venables said. “Then John O and I just worked together on the setup of the car and I’m really enjoying it and I really like the team. I think it’s going to be a fun year.”
Trusting the process is sometimes easieer said than done.
“You can’t force one of these cars to run good,” Venables said. “You can’t just throw a lot of clutch and engine power at it unless your baseline setup is okay. You have to make sure the engine’s happy, make sure your clutch application’s good, and then that’s when you start turning the knob.
“If you try and force it, or if you get mad at it and pissed off at it and you go, I’m going to make it run, and turn the knobs to the right, a lot of times it’ll bite you. It’s like an old horse. It isn’t going to be told what to do.”
Once Venables has the car galloping to the beat, he understands he’s got a jockey capable of winnign the Triple Crown in J.R. Todd. He’s excited about working with the past NHRA Funny Car champion, and even excited about the prospect of providing him a winning race car, because as he put’s it – the race car belongs to the driver.
“To me, it’s the driver’s race car,” Venables said. “Once it leaves the pit, that’s his car. He can drive it, stage it, it’s his ball game. You know? Obviously we communicate. If there’s something, we talk about it. I let the driver drive and let the tuners tune.”
Venables has been in the game long enough that he knows and understands how to go one-to-one with a driver.
“J.R. does a hell of a job,” Venables said. “He’s very smooth, he’s got good control of the car, his lights are good, and so it’s been super easy for me because he’s pretty much a natural now, all the time he’s been doing it. So it’s been very smooth.”
Todd, in his assessment of Venables as the team’s tuner, might be as close to a kid in a candy store.
“I’ve been to the shop already a couple times this off season, and I feel like team morale is high,” Todd explained. “The guys are excited. Dickie, he’s so easygoing and I’ve known him for a little while but never really spent a lot of time around him. He told me right away, he’s like, ‘Hey, man, this is your car. So you tell me what you need and I’ll make it happen.”
Such a directive can be a two-edged sword, Todd said.
“When you hear a crew chief tell you that, it’s like a breath of fresh air,” Todd admitted. “But at the same time, you know what you have in a crew chief of that caliber, so it’s up to me to go up there and not screw it up. I think we know it’s going to be a work in progress, going from where he came from and us getting different parts and pieces. And it’ll take some time to get it figured out and get it dialed in. But we definitely expect to go out there and win some races and contend for a championship.”
The both understand they can make life on the strip much easier for one another.
“You have to help each other,” Venables said. “From a crew chief standpoint, it’s super important to have the driver tell you what he feels in the car. So, I always have that communication no matter who it is. It’s like, ‘Hey, what did you feel?”
“Then I’ll look at the data and go, okay, well he said and I can see it here. Or there may be some things that he feels or sees that the data doesn’t tell you. So, you just have to put all that together and come up with the best plan moving ahead.”
And right now, after a dozen or more hits in Bradenton, Venables and Todd are headed in the right direction for success, and eventually an upper deck shot, or five.
“I knew that it was going to take us a couple of days to get it sorted out and we’re closer [then when we started],” Venables said. “We made headway each run. We haven’t hurt any parts, and we’re gaining on it each run. So I’m super happy so far.”
