Drag racing – that one motorsport in reach of nearly anyone who wants to compete. Just visit your local track — whether it’s a quarter mile or only a short eighth mile run — and you’ll see everything from rail cars to family sedans making their way to the finish line. I’ve even seen 50cc minibikes used in bracket competitions that have gone on to win!
One thing the competitors all share is a passion for their sport. Isn’t it part of growing into adulthood to sit at the stoplight and gun the engine in challenge to the car next to you?
It’s that same passion that slowly turned this sport into a business worth billions of dollars. The names of the pioneers may be familiar to you: “Big Daddy” Don Garlits, Don “The Snake” Prudhomme, and of course, Connie “The Bounty Hunter” Kalitta.
Even now, at nearly 78 years old, Connie Kalitta still has a passion for the sport and is still active in the team he created back in 1959. Throughout nearly 60 years of involvement as driver, tuner and crew chief, Connie and his teams have amassed six world championships and more than 100 national event titles, covering five different professional sanctioning bodies. Currently, Team Kalitta is home to the 2015 National Hot Rod Association Funny Car champion, Del Worsham, pilot of the DHL-Toyota Camry car. Other teams on the Team Kalitta roster include the Tequila Patrón Toyota Camry Funny Car driven by Alexis DeJoria, the J.R. Todd piloted Sealmaster Top Fuel dragster and the Mac Tools Top Fuel car with Connie’s nephew, Doug Kalitta, at the controls.
Recently, I was invited to visit the Team Kalitta Motorsports facility in Ypsilanti, Mich., to get a look behind the scenes and meet the man responsible for the day-to-day operations, Jim Oberhofer. Little did I know at the time, but the lessons and experiences Jim had to share would prove just as valuable to you in your professional careers as it does to those involved in professional racing at any level.
On-the-job training
Oberhofer is the vice president of operations for Kalitta Motorsports, or at least that’s the official title on his business card. But he’s more than that simple description allows for. He is responsible for the day-to-day operations and the future growth of Team Kalitta, a job he admits he relishes.
In addition to those duties, he is also the lead crew chief for the Mac Tools Top Fuel entry, where he competes not only with the hottest teams in the sport but his mentor as well. “Connie loves drag racing,” shares Oberhofer. “He’s passionate about it. He’s paid the ultimate price (referring to the loss of his son, Scott, in a racing accident back in 2008) but he still moves on. He’s almost 78 years old but he’s as competitive as those half his age. For me to do battle against him at the racetrack (Connie is still head tuner for the team and crew chief for the J.R. Todd Top Fuel entry), that’s a lot of fun.”
“Most of the time, he usually ends up winning,” Oberhofer adds with a smile.
Oberhofer’s rise to the head of operations began with a passion for cars and racing he learned from his father. “My dad owned a paint and body shop on the east coast of New Jersey and later moved us to Plano, Texas, where he opened a shop there. He was also an avid drag racer, starting with Junior Fuel dragsters in the ‘60s and moving on to Top Fuel in the mid ‘70s.”
Oberhofer literally grew up around the sport, following his father from track to track even when he was too young to stay in the pits. As he grew older, he learned both automotive repair and collision repair from his dad, working in his shop during the days and helping out on the track on the weekends. At that time, the drag racing community was small and tight knit, and he had the chance to meet Connie and his son, Scott – and they got to know him.
Oberhofer was offered a job with the Kalittas in 1988, where he started using his body and paint skills to repair and paint Funny Car panels and chassises. He even shared a story of painting an airplane for his boss (who also owns Kalitta Air, a successful air charter business). Reflectively, Oberhofer shares, “I really have to credit my experiences with Connie and Team Kalitta for teaching me how to work on cars, and how to run a business. But even more importantly, it’s taught me how to succeed in life in general.”
Consider your position in your shop. Where are you in your career path compared to the path Jim followed? If you’re fortunate, you’ll be working for an owner who understands what Jim learned from his mentor.
Something we can all learn from
“The one thing I had to learn better than anything – delegating. I used to think I could do everything by myself. I learned to surround myself with great people – whether it’s on the teams, in the office or in the shop. We take a lot of pride in the fact that we’ve been able to hire a lot of great people who do a lot of great things for Kalitta Motorsports.”
If you’re the shop owner, consider the wisdom in those words. You can’t do all the work yourself and if you try, you’ll quickly burn out and your business will ultimately suffer. Instead, learn how to recruit and keep the best people you can find, share your goals and ambitions and encourage them (by your own actions and example) to buy into that vision. Make your success their success.
If you’re an experienced technician, you can still take advantage from the wisdom of Oberhofer’s comments. Your own skill sets aren’t going to grow on their own. Oberhofer was clear that he learned much from his fellow teammates and from heeding the words of those proven successful in their individual fields. Tuning a racecar producing more than 10,000 horsepower and capable of reaching 350 miles per hour in 1,000 feet is not something you learn how to do in the classroom. And neither are the skills you need to master (continuously) to remain at the top of your game in the shop. Even a top professional tuner like Oberhofer is in awe of the technologies you face on a daily basis, and even commented on the challenges faced by the professionals in our arena in dealing with the ever-evolving electronic systems. “Our cars are still using mechanical fuel injection, but soon we’ll see EFI in the Pro Stock class. But even when that day comes, it will be a very basic system when compared to what you guys have to work on,” he observes.
And whether you’re just starting out in the industry or you’ve been a shop owner for years, to reach your ultimate potential you need a goal. You can’t get there if you don’t know where you want to go!
“When I first came here, we ran two cars: Connie’s Top Fuel dragster and Scott’s Funny Car, and we had 4-5 people that made up the whole team. We used to put both cars and the tow van in one trailer and we went down the road. And we used to say to ourselves, ‘Wow, this is big time!’”
When Oberhofer took over the team’s operations responsibilities, the facility they called home encompassed 50,000 square feet. At the time, though, the team was only using about one third of that space and owner Connie Kalitta wanted to lease the extra space to interested outsiders.
But Oberhofer had a dream of filling that space with racecar stuff and begged Connie to hold off. Today, 29 years into his career with Team Kalitta, the facility is just that – filled with racecar stuff including their own in-house chassis building section and a CNC shop used to manufacture needed components. Going into the 2000 season (the year Oberhofer took the reins), the team had the intention of only fielding one car and had a staff of 8 employees. Today, the team fields four cars and has a roster of 65 employees, including those focused on areas every business needs to survive – office staff, marketing teams, human resources professionals and more.
From sport to big business
“Back in the early days, racers like Connie would pull people out of the stands to help them work on the car. After an all-day event, they might give them a T-shirt for the help. Now we have all these people on the payroll with bonus programs, health insurance and 401Ks.”
A lot has changed, and Oberhofer remembers the transition from sport to big business. “It’s really cool to see the passion at the grassroots level.” Jim describes how the old days were filled with people passionate about the sport, his mentor Connie Kalitta among them. He laments that today business needs may be supplanting the innovation that these early pioneers of the sport brought to the table. It’s not that innovation is no longer possible – quite the contrary. But according to Oberhofer, the sport overall has advanced so fast that it has left some of the infrastructure behind.
“Many of the tracks we compete at were built in the ‘60s or ‘70s, when the thought of running that fast (350+ mph) never even crossed anyone’s mind. Common sense has to take over so we don’t go completely crazy with what we’re doing. But there’s still that competition. When you roll up to that starting line, for me as a crew chief, we try to give our driver everything they need to beat that car in the other lane.”
Around the mid-90s, the sport began going to a whole new level. Hospitality became important for sponsors. Drag racing especially lends itself well to sponsors who want to entertain guests, customers and VIPs. Unlike other venues like NASCAR or Indy, hospitality areas could be set up right in the pits and allow easy viewing of the crew as they worked on the cars between rounds. “People love watching the crew tear down a Top Fuel engine and put it back together in under 30 minutes,” says Oberhofer. It also acts as a showcase for some sponsors’ products – Mac Tools for example. Doug Kalitta’s Mac Tools team (as are all the Kalitta teams) is fully equipped with Mac Tools products for use in the shop and at the track.
The growth of the sport also includes a new TV deal Oberhofer shared with Motor Age. Starting in the 2016 season, NHRA will partner with Fox Sports to broadcast 17 of the Mello Yello series events live. The additional media exposure, hopes Oberhofer, will help him take the team even further than he has to date. Even with the stresses of being on the road competing and overseeing the operations of four major race teams, Oberhofer is still as in love with his work as the day he started. “I love what I do, I love coming into work every day. And I am fortunate that Connie has given me the opportunity to run this business as if it were my own.” With an added chuckle, Oberhofer says, “And as I’m the first to tell Connie, I’m better with his money than I am with my own!”
One challenge that Oberhofer happened to share is one that many of you have also shared – finding new talent for his team. His solution? Partner with local vocational programs already in place to farm new talent. “Bob Lawson (another Kalitta professional) and I are on the advisory council for Ohio Technical College. We helped them create a curriculum to help their students who wanted a career in the racing industry, whether it was with our team, NASCAR or whatever. To date, we’ve hired 12 students from that program and most have been great additions to the Kalitta team.”
Sound familiar? It should. We’ve preached for years on the need for shop owners to involve themselves in their local programs. In addition to Ohio Technical College, Oberhofer also told me of students they’ve recruited out of other area programs. If a major racing team like Kalitta Motorsports is looking to hire these program graduates, shouldn’t you beat them to the punch? Involve yourself in your local school’s Industry Advisory Council and you’ll have a say in how that program is run and what curriculum is taught. And you’ll have a front row seat on each new crop of students, some of whom may be just the great addition you need to propel your own business to the next level.
Educators — you need to pay attention as well. When was the last time you got out of the classroom and into the field, introducing yourself to area shop owners and asking for their participation?
What happened to drivability?
Yes, I know, this story is taking up space in the technical side of the magazine. So to satisfy the requirement, here are some interesting factoids for you. The champion DHL Toyota Camry Funny Car has a wheelbase of 125 inches, a regulated 500 CID engine producing 9,000-9,500 horsepower burning an also-regulated mixture of 90 percent nitromethane and 10 percent ethanol. Its best run, to Oberhofer’s best recollection, was a short-lived record time of 3.89 seconds and 327 miles per hour.
The Top Fuel cars campaigned by Team Kalitta have a 300-inch wheelbase and produce more power – 10,000 to 10,500 horsepower. This is possible by using a different ignition curve and blower overdrive rate, and they can get away with it because the engine is mounted over the rear wheels, improving traction.
“You can be more aggressive tuning a Top Fuel car, but the driver has to have more finesse,” says Oberhofer. “The opposite is true of the Funny Cars. You have to tune with finesse but drive it like an animal. Try to tune like an animal and drive like an animal (in either class) will cause you to lose races.”
So much for the tech side.
I’d offer this in way of explanation of why I thought this story would be important to you, our readers. Drivability is all about correcting conditions that keep the vehicle from running as best as it can. The lessons Oberhofer had to share go a long way in helping you, no matter your current role in the industry, to correct those conditions that are keeping you from “running” as best as you can. And if even just one lesson shared here adds to your success and future well being, then our ultimate motive of helping you succeed in a tough business will have still been met.
Like the Motor Age cover says, “Advancing the automotive professional since 1899!” See you at the finish line.
