Tony Schumacher is unflappable.
After longtime crew chief and master tuner Alan Johnson left at the end of the 2008 season to start his own team, Schumacher just wished him well and moved on.
Now the man who won a record-tying 15 of 18 events last year for his fifth straight NHRA Top Fuel title — and sixth overall — is starting the new season this week at the Kragen O’Reilly NHRA Winternationals in Pomona, Calif., with a new crew chief and an all-new crew.
“Before he left, Alan said, ‘We’d have won again.’ But we have a new opportunity and a new challenge,” Schumacher said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. “We’re going to have to dig and learn to work together. It’s going to be exciting.
“We’ve won 56 races. But that 57th trophy, I don’t want it to be four free rounds. I want it to be hard-earned, dig-deep, suck-it-up moments. Greatness. I want it to be what it took. You had to sacrifice something. That’s what made us what we are.”
Not that Schumacher is starting over with a novice. His new crew chief is Mike Green, who guided Cory McClenathan to a third-place finish in the points last year.
“We’d like to start off the way (Schumacher) did last year, with a win,” Green said. “Don’t forget that I was over in the other lane against them in the finals with the Fram car (and McClenathan). It would be nice to take it a step further this year.”
Schumacher, who drives for his father’s Don Schumacher Racing team, also relishes the challenge.
“Whether we ever win 15 races in a season again, come on, it ain’t going to happen,” the Sarge said. “That was the most perfect year. That was the most dedicated I’ve ever seen the team. So many things had to flow, so many had to work right and so many people had to jell to make that season happen.
“If we’d have come out with the same team this year and won 10, that would have been a letdown. We had to make a change. We had to do something to make it exciting.”
The muscular, crewcut Schumacher said he is excited by the idea of having to rebuild a championship team.
“That’s my favorite part,” he said.
Schumacher flashed a gaudy championship ring from 2006, the year in which he roared back from more than 330 points behind to win his fourth title with a victory on the final day of the season.
“I talk about that one all the time,” he said. “We didn’t fire people. We built people, from being down in the dumps and getting beat to sucking it up and winning a championship. We can do that.
“The people we assemble at Don Schumacher Racing, we just motivate them. I’m a very positive guy. I’m a very positive guy when we’re losing because life is not about winning, life is about figuring it out. That’s my forte and what I look forward to doing.”
To get it done this year, he’s going to have to beat Larry Dixon, a two-time Top Fuel champion, last year’s runner-up and now Johnson’s driver with his new, well-financed Al-Anabi Racing team.
“I’m glad that Dixon is in that car because it’s going to be a really big motivation to beat those guys,” Schumacher said. “We’re going to have to dig really deep and work as a team to beat those guys because they are outstanding.
“If I can win a championship with a new crew and a new team … it will prove to a lot of people that it wasn’t just AJ, it was nine people doing that job. And AJ is the first person to admit it was everybody.
“I’m in a no-lose situation,” Schumacher added. “We’re going to go out there and dig and make it happen, and that’s what I live for. It’s figuring it out.”
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