‘Did it once, can do it again’ is eight-time Top Fuel champion’s message to those writing off DSR.
Veteran team owner Don Schumacher has been rather non-committal about his plans for his NHRA race operation, now that it has has shrunk from seven pro teams to just one.
Right now, he fields just the Maynard Family/Scag Power Equipment Top Fuel dragster with son Tony Schumacher. The 77-year-old team owner told Autoweek he’s holding out for a fully funded car that would compete for a complete NHRA Camping World Drag Racing Series schedule.
However, although father and son never have spoken about the driver exodus last November, the eight-time Top Fuel champion predicted Don Schumacher Racing will rebuild to a multiple-car team once again. He even guaranteed it.
“As far as I know, if he’s got other plans, it doesn’t matter to me,” Tony Schumacher, 52, said. “I got this one car out there. We’ll build it into a two-car team. We’ll build it into a three-car team. We did it once. We can do it again. I just see it happening. You’ll see another car out by mid-year, guaranteed. It’s just the way he does that.”
Tony Schumacher is back for the full season with Don Schumacher Racing.
NHRA/National Dragster
Tony Schumacher is a partner in credit-card merchant processing firm RAC Financial. And he said that offers him networking possibilities.
“That’s how Scag came up,” he said of the sponsor who has helped him get back on the racetrack full time for the first time since 2018. “Simple stuff—money, business, business-to business operations out here. It took me three years to get it working. But I met them through that.”
During preseason testing the week before at Phoenix, sidelined Jordan Vandergriff, who turns 27 on Feb. 21, made a few passes in Tony Schumacher’s dragster. Vandergriff said he has been engaged in conversation with potential marketing partners: “There’s nothing set in stone yet. What I’m working on is probably going to put me in one of these (Top Fuel) cars. My goal is to be out here, maybe this year or next year.” But no one was saying Vandergriff will join DSR.
Tony Schumacher said he has other deals he’s expecting to finalize.
“I have these sponsors on the car right now and I have others coming,” he said. “I have others that wanted to be on the car that were actually, at the same time with Scag. So now you go, ‘Okay, what do you do, right? It needs to get moved onto something.’ I’m not ready to do another one, nor is he (his dad), but we’ll start piecing stuff together.”
As for Antron Brown and Ron Capps, who left DSR, along with Matt Hagan and Leah Pruett, Tony Schumacher said, “These guys have aspirations of being more than a driver. I never did. I just want to drive these cars. I like driving these cars. I like being in them. I never wanted to stand behind them and watch.”
He said he wasn’t sure how his dad felt about the changes but guessed, “It probably pisses him off. I mean, not that it’s one car (a one-car team now), just that he had a really great team. He had a lot of drivers that he had groomed and trained, and I think they put a lot of money into (them). And it probably hurts at first: ‘Really? like, why would they want to go?’
“It’s one of those things. I think he respects each one of them and what they’re doing,” the younger Schumacher said. I think it takes a week where you’re like, ‘Why?’ And then you go, ‘All right. I mean, I understand, right?’”
Tony Schumacher saw the positives. He said, “Watching from the outside, I think he’ll be happier. He doesn’t need to stand behind all those cars.” Pointing to Capps’ set-up and Brown’s hauler, Tony Schumacher said, “I mean, that car is in our shop right next to this car. That car is just on the other side of it, just like it used to be. The only difference is they’re sending my dad a check instead of my dad sending them a check.
“I told my dad, ‘I personally think it’s better. You go fish like you want to fish. You go do what you want to do. You’re 70, mid-70s. You do what you want to do, and you enjoy that. You’ve earned the right to do that. Let us go out here and do this stuff. So, that’s where we’re at.”
Keyword: NHRA Top Fuel King Tony Schumacher Expects Another Glorious Chapter to Don Schumacher Racing Saga