It didn't take long for his phone to begin ringing last Thursday as soon as news leaked out that Dickie Venables had resigned his position as crew chief for NHRA Full Throttle Drag Racing Series Funny Car points leader Tony Pedregon, and that's certainly understandable.

After all, the second-generation racer not only has 25 years of nitro experience with legends including Shirley Muldowney, Don Prudhomme, Don Garlits, Connie Kalitta, Gary Ormsby, and Cory McClenathan, but he also showed great leadership and organizational skills in helping lead Pedregon's fledgling team from four walls and a cell phone to a world championship in just four seasons since they took the plunge together to leave the comfort, safety, and, above all else, the resources of John Force Racing -- where Pedregon had just won his first championship in 2003 -- to strike out on their own the following year.

And although he has been holed up in his Indianapolis-area home for the past week fielding phone calls from teams eager to tap into his expertise and skills, he's taking his return to the tuning wars on a less than high-horsepower pace, carefully weighing options and offers that he nonetheless expects will put him back into battle in time to have an impact on the Countdown to the Championship. He's just still trying to catch his breath.

"It's been a crazy week; all of this has happened so fast," said Venables.

The crux of the matter was Pedregon's release of Kurt Elliott, one of the new team's first hires in 2004 and Venables' right-hand man, just a few days before last weekend's Lucas Oil NHRA Nationals in Brainerd.

"Tony called me in his office on the Monday before the race and informed me that he was releasing Kurt," said Venables, who declined, out of his respect for and continuing friendship with Pedregon, to go into details behind Pedregon's decision. "I questioned that decision and thought about it for a couple of days and just couldn’t agree with it. I tried hard to put myself in Tony's position and see it from that side, because layoffs are happening all over the country in every line of work, and I understand that, but in my mind, we were already down to bare bones and couldn't do it with any fewer people than we had, let alone my assistant crew chief.

Together, Tony Pedregon and Dickie Venables won 15 NHRA national events and the 2007 NHRA world championship.

Starting from almost nothing, Venables helped assemble a race- and championship-winning team in just three years.

Venables and Pedregon unexpectedly left John Force's team after Pedregon's 2003 championship there, but Force, left, was among the first to congratulate Venables after his 2007 championship season.

"My main goal was just to be able to finish the season together and then evaluate. We just couldn’t come to terms, and I felt strongly enough about Kurt that I told Tony I just wouldn’t go to the races without him. I put a lot of emphasis on people. You can teach anybody how to do this, and although you have to hire people based on their abilities, it's tough out here, and it’s important to have people who can work well together. Kurt was a dedicated and important part of the race team for five and a half years and who took a great load off of me that allowed me to think about the race car.

"It would have made more sense to me to make some other kinds of adjustments to ease the financial burden. I don’t know what the situation is with contracts with the sponsors, but maybe we could have sat out a race or two because we were already locked into the Countdown. I feel like there were a lot of other ways we could have saved money.

"In the end, though, it was just a disagreement. I felt I had to stand firm in what I believed. I respect his decision, he said he respected mine, and that was the end of it. There was no screaming or hollering; we just agreed that we needed to part. I don’t want to muddy the water because we're still friends. I think the world of the guy. We started a race team from scratch, and a lot of people didn't think we could do it, and we did. I'll always remember that he's the first guy who gave me an opportunity to do what I wanted to do, which is to run one of the race cars myself."

Complicating the matter for some was the fact that Pedregon won the race in Brainerd, with brother Cruz's crew chief, Rahn Tobler, overseeing the tune-up with help from several others, though Venables said he expected nothing less from Pedregon and the team.

"It didn’t surprise me a bit," said Venables. "I know what's there, and it's a pretty friendly combination, and Tony is a positive kind of guy, and there are still good guys on the team. All of the information was there for them, and they did a good job of managing it. I talked to Tobler and [newly hired car chief] Tony Shortall before the race to tell them what I thought would be a good baseline setup, but I didn't really communicate with them during the event. You can’t read the racetrack and the weather from home. I'd only add to the confusion; I told them just to follow Tobler's lead. I have to give Tony a lot of credit, too; I know the media was hammering him all weekend, and he went out there and drove like he can and did a good job."

Although he's looking forward to whatever happens next – a reconciliation appears to be out of the question – Venables still can look fondly back at their years together, which began with Venables' 1998 hiring at John Force Racing, where Pedregon already was a team driver. Venables worked with crew chief John Medlen and was part of the 2003 championship season, and he and Pedregon grew close. When Pedregon surprisingly decided it strike out on his own, he picked Venables as his crew chief.

"I was definitely surprised when Tony came to me and told me his plans and that he wanted me to be part of them," said Venables. "We had nothing to our name. It was just me and four walls and a cell phone in one of Bill Simpson's leased shops in Brownsburg [Ind.]. It couldn’t have turned out any better. We've won 15 races together and a championship. That's something I'll always cherish."

He's proud of his two championship seasons with Pedregon – ironically, none of Venables' many years with Muldowney and Ormsby were during their championship years -- and, of course, he knows that he may well have kissed goodbye his chances for another title by sticking to his guns.

"It's very, very tough," he admitted. "You don't always get the opportunity to have a good-running car and be leading the points at Indy time. That being said, I still think that I can help someone else win a championship."

Venables said he'd prefer to stick with Funny Car but wouldn’t have a problem tuning a Top Fueler. "It's certainly easier to go from tuning a Funny Car to tuning a dragster – just look at the great job that Brian Corradi and Mark Oswald have done for Antron Brown this year — but I'm much more up to speed on Funny Cars right now.

"I'm a racer; I'm not going to sit around long," he said. "Right now, I'm just taking it easy. I told everyone I need some more time – it's only been a week, and there's a lot going on with Reading this weekend as well – and I've told everyone I'm not going to make a snap decision, that I want to see what’s out there and weigh everything, but my goal is to have something going by Indy. By the time Indy is over, I'll have some sort of direction. I don’t think I could sit at home much longer than that."

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