At this time last year, ahead of the 2023 NHRA season, Bob Tasca III was riddled with anxiety.
For the first time in his career, not a single member of his Funny Car crew was the same.
They had all been “hired away,” as Tasca put it. It was an unprecedented situation for the Rhode Island native, who went to work assembling a new cast of characters for his Tasca Racing operation. He selected Todd Okuhara and Aaron Brooks as his co-crew chiefs, disregarding the fact that they had never previously worked together.
Tasca just had a gut feeling that the two would find their chemistry.
“I had a lot of anxiety, like, ‘Will this work?’ Or, you know, ‘What’s going to happen this year?’” Tasca recalled. “You’ve seen it so many times in sports and racing. You can get talented people together, but they don’t work together.”
Luckily, that wasn’t a problem Tasca had to solve.
Okuhara and Brooks quickly fell into step with one another, and the results showed it.
At the second race of the season, Tasca led the Funny Car field into eliminations as the No. 1 qualifier. Five races later, the 48-year-old was standing in the winner’s circle, hoisting a Wally.
“We came out of the box ready to go. We were low ET at a bunch of races early in the season, and then we kind of caught our stride at the end of the year and competed right down in the last race for a championship,” Tasca said.
He finished 17 points behind champion Matt Hagan — less than a single elimination round win, which is worth 20 points — and a career best of third in the standings.
To go that far and come up so short, Tasca equates the feeling with being pierced by “a dagger.” It might’ve produced a storybook ending for the fans, but wasn’t quite so entertaining for the third-generation drag racer.
“I had just gotten over it until you brought it back up,” Tasca joked.
Though he didn’t win the title, the team’s labor was not in vain.
Tasca made it out of the Funny Car battle with a season-leading number of No. 1 qualifiers (seven), three Wallys, the top speed of the class (338.57 mph) and a tight-knit crew that will continue with Tasca Racing in 2024.
“Last year, no one expected us to do much of anything,” Tasca said. “This year, they’re expecting us to perform. I can tell you this — I would much rather have that pressure than have the pressure that nobody thinks you’re gonna do anything.”
As Tasca begins his 17th season in the Funny Car ranks, he can’t help but like his chances heading into a new NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series campaign.
While he certainly has experience in his corner, Tasca believes his newfound harmony with Okuhara and Brooks has been the key to his progression as a driver.
“They’ve spent so much time with me on my feedback, what I’m feeling, what I’m hearing, the handling of the car — it’s made me better at reaction times and better at driving,” Tasca said. “I’ve personally never had the chemistry that I have with these two guys.
“You see it in NASCAR, you see it in drag racing. When you find that chemistry between crew chiefs and drivers, you win a lot of races. We did it last year and we’re gonna do it again this year.”
The only difference is that in NASCAR, drivers lose races by seconds.
Tasca’s margin for error is in the thousandths. He beat Robert Hight for his final win of the year at zMAX Dragway in Concord, N.C., by a mere .001 seconds.
“It gut-wrenching for the drivers, but it’s incredible for the fans,” Tasca said, clutching his heart as he shook his head with a smile.