NHRA News: Prudhomme has the men to fix his Funny Car teams (4/22/2004)

Prudhomme has the men to fix his Funny Car teams

4/22/2004

Mike Green

John Stewart

When Don "the Snake" Prudhomme gets involved in a project, he expects nothing but the best. Having won 49 races and four Funny Car titles as a driver, Prudhomme insists on strong performances and race victories.

Prudhomme also has been around long enough to know every team experiences peaks and valleys. He insists that the key to success over the long haul is to minimize the off periods. Enter John Stewart and Mike Green, whom Prudhomme has entrusted with repairing and righting his struggling Skoal Racing Funny Car teams. Talking to them it's clear to see they won't be down for long.

Stewart and Green bring a vast wealth of experience with them to Snake Racing. The veteran tuning duo has called the shots for both Top Fuel dragsters and Funny Cars over the years, finding success at every stop.

Stewart, a former Top Fuel driver, joined Snake Racing following the 2003 NHRA campaign and has been charged with running Ron Capps' "Green" car, while Green recently returned to Tommy Johnson Jr.'s "Blue" fold following a brief stint with T.J. in 2001.

In this question and answer session, Green and Stewart discuss Prudhomme's involvement with the team, the differences between dragsters and Funny Cars, sharing information, and working with their drivers.

Q: Does Prudhomme provide you with everything you need?

Johnson has qualified in the top half of
the field at three of the first five races.
Racers Edge Photography

Stewart: Yeah, Snake gives us everything we need. We've got no excuses there. We've got the best money can buy.
Green: Definitely our race teams want for nothing. That's the way it's always been on his race teams long before I worked here. He assured me when I came here that the racecars come first. Whatever it takes to make the cars run better and be successful is at the top of the list. The racecars come first and we have whatever we need to win races and win championships.

Q: Does Snake get involved with the tuning process?
Stewart: He'll come in and say some things and suggest some stuff. The majority of the time, he'll come in and throw an idea at us that we've usually already talked about it. It's not like you can just rub a wand over these cars and they go. We're on the right track and we're working towards the common goal of making the car go down the track on a consistent basis.

If we try and change things every week, we'll never get where we need to be. It's just a matter of sticking with it and testing. We'll go to Bristol and run the race and the stick around on Monday because there are a few things we want to try. We've already run the new tire, so that shouldn't be a problem for us.
Green: He watches from the outside and if it seems that we're struggling, he'll come and ask what we're doing. He'll say, 'It looks to me like the car is going too hard or too slow or spinning the tires in the middle and what are you going to do to address that?' He gets a little involved, but he doesn't tune the cars. He gives his input and opinion, but it's more of 'here's my opinion and if it helps then great, if not, then sorry I got in the way.'

Q: Why can't you just use the tune-up from the Top Fuel car?
Stewart: Wheelbase, the length of the car, and the transfer [of weight] on a dragster. The wheelbase on a dragster is 300 inches compared to 125 inches on a Funny Car. You have 175 more inches of longer car to transfer that weight.

Dragsters plant a lot harder on the rear because the motor is in the back and all the weight is in the back. A Funny Car has a lot more rigid chassis and doesn't flex like the dragster or bow-up in the center. But the main thing is that extra 175 inches of wheelbase.

Prudhomme stays involved in all of his teams.
www.SnakeRacing.com

Green: They're definitely different. The key difference is that you have to make smaller changes on the Funny Car than you do the dragster. The dragster is a little more forgiving. It seems like the room for error is a little bit smaller on the Funny Car. The competition is closer in the Funny Car category, so you have to push harder to be near the top, and there are some real established teams that have been here for quite a while that run pretty good.

You do tune [dragsters and Funny Cars] kind of the same way. You have to incorporate the aerodynamics a lot more into the Funny Car than the dragster. We would have a wing adjustment on the dragster when conditions changed a lot, where with the Funny Car you have to make sure the thing is balanced when the track is good, or when the track is bad you have to make some major changes to keep up with it.

Q: How is the communication between your two teams?
Green: The communication between the two teams is very good. We discuss every run on both cars. The communication is as good as it's ever been. Much improved over what it used to be before this year.
Stewart: Motor-wise, we talk a lot. Clutch-wise, the blue car is set up a little bit different, so we can't really compare. We've been watching what they're doing and they watch what we're doing. They're trying something new with the mag that seems to be working fairly decent now. We've been watching that. We'll watch it at Bristol and see how they do with it there and then if it works good there, we'll try it testing on Monday to see if it helps our car. So, the two-car approach is working great. Both cars don't have to try the same thing. You can learn twice as much twice as quick. But the motors are very close, only the clutch is a little different.

Q: How much input do you get from your drivers?
Green: Quite a bit. The normal deal is the driver is the first guy we talk to after they get back to the pit following a run. He tells me what the run felt like to him, what the sensations were on the car, and we use that as one more piece of the puzzle with what the computer says and what we saw from outside the car. We put all three of those things together.

Q: John, how is your transition to the team going?

Capps had top speed of the meet in Houston.
Racers Edge Photography

Stewart: Coming from the [Gwynn Racing] dragster last year, which is a lot easier to run, things are getting better. As I said, the dragsters are a lot more forgiving. That longer wheelbase makes a big difference. Funny Cars are so temperamental. They're tougher to get down the track through the critical area, but as far as progressing, it's moving along well.

I'd like to be running better, but you can only do so much each weekend. Our main objective is to get the cars to go down the track and then start picking up the pace, instead of running good one lap, then smoking the tires the next. Our goal is to go down the track each lap, that's what we're working for now. There may be faster cars, but we want to be consistent. That's a big part of racing, letting your opponent know you'll get down the track each pass. With consistency comes the speed and then everything comes together and we're off and going.

Q: How do Todd Okuhara and Phil Shuler help you?
Stewart: It works out pretty well because we all look at the computer at different times and then we jot down different notes about what we think we should do. Then we all sit down and talk about it. If we all looked at the computer at the same time, we wouldn't get any different feedback. One guy sees something and another person sees something else. Each one writes down what we think we see and then we compare our notes and then go from there.

Phil is kind of in charge of the crew members. He also does all the timers. Todd and I do all the tuning of the car. My strongpoint is the clutch and Todd is real good with the motor, so we compliment each other well. Phil makes sure everything is right on the car.

I've always found that the more people you have giving opinions, even though they're not always right, it always provides another way to look at things. More heads are better, instead of trying to have one guy do everything. It just seems to work better.

Q: What has Garry Kennedy added to the team?
Green: Every race our communication gets better and it's easier for him to provide input from cars he's worked on in the past. He's brought some stuff to the table that he's seen and we've tried some things and a lot of it has helped us.

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