Morgan Lucas Racing
Meet the Team
The way J.R. Todd sees it, nothing in drag racing is more important than timing.
That’s true on the race track, where wins and losses can be determined by milliseconds, and it’s true in the pits, where being in the right place at the right time can transform a contender into a champion. Todd is confident he’s in the right place to make that transformation in the 2008 NHRA POWERade Drag Racing Series. The 26-year-old Indiana native has joined 24-year-old Morgan Lucas on the Lucas Oil Top Fuel team and he’s confident the youngest team in the sport has the potential to put the John Stewart-tuned Torco Racing Fuels/Seelye Wright dragster in the Countdown to the Championship.
“I think with the communication between Morgan and myself we can help each other out as drivers tremendously,” said Todd, who has won five national events and reached seven finals and was the National Hot Rod Association’s rookie of the year in 2006. “I’m really looking forward to that.
“We both have really young teams and it kind of takes the pressure off of the driving when you have a young bunch that can go out and have fun together, but stay serious about their business at the same time. With this Countdown format (the top ten in points vie for the title in the final six races of the 24-race season) it raises the stress level of the drivers. A young team can ground you pretty quick and at the same time still be able to kid around. That’s why I’m excited.”
Excitement is a perpetual state of being for Todd, who has followed German poet Friedrich Von Schiller’s admonition to “keep true to the dreams of thy youth” while establishing himself as a rising star in drag racing and an inspiration to the African-American community.
His father, Mario, was a dirt track motorcycle racer and Todd, whose given name is Mario Todd Jr., said he was “pretty much born and raised at the race track.” Dad reluctantly allowed him to ride dirt bikes as a boy, and J.R. still does that to relax, but frowned on the idea of his son racing them because of the high risk of injury.
Instead, in a precipitous bit of timing, when Todd was 10 the NHRA launched its Junior Drag Racing League, and instead of racing two-wheeled motorcycles on dirt ovals Todd began racing scaled-down four-wheel dragsters on paved quarter-mile strips.
“After my first weekend at the track driving one (of the cars) I was hooked,” said Todd, who is single and makes his home in Avon, Ind. “We got involved in the sport and did a lot of traveling – coast to coast and even Puerto Rico a couple of times. From then on I knew that drag racing was what I wanted to do the rest of my life.”
Todd raced in the developmental league for six years and then, at 16, got his Super Comp license and raced in that class while finishing his high school education. He also attended the Frank Hawley Drag Racing School and obtained a license to drive a Top Alcohol dragster, the final stepping-stone to Top Fuel.
The chance to take that final step came in May of 2000, when Todd, then just 18, got behind the wheel of one of Bruce Litton’s dragsters at a match race in Norwalk, Ohio.
“I didn’t know what to expect,” Todd said. “I got in there for the warm-up and this thing is extremely loud and you could just feel the power. You’re nervous as can be. I had the biggest butterflies possible in my stomach. This is the night before the match race.
“I stood on the gas for about 300 feet. It was insane. It’s the biggest thrill and rush you could ever imagine. I was lost for words after that. I came back and they asked how it was and I told them I was ready to go to the finish line to just experience how fast one of these things can go. I was hooked on Top Fuel after that.”
Todd drove seven races for Litton in the International Hot Rod Association that year and finished sixth in the final point standings and was anticipating competing in the full season the following year. Unfortunately, Litton’s Indianapolis race shop was destroyed by fire and the team was forced to shut down and regroup.
Todd was out of the driver’s seat, but he wasn’t out of work. During his time with Litton he had been an active member of the crew that prepared and maintained the dragsters, and when crew chief Nick Boninfante Jr. left Litton to go to work for Bob Gilbertson, he asked Todd to go along.
For the next three years, Todd worked on Gilbertson’s Funny Cars and “learned the ins and outs of a nitro motor; how to work on one and what makes them go up and down the track.” And Todd said when he got an opportunity to resume his driving career with owner Dexter Tuttle in 2006, his time as a crew member made him better prepared for success.
“When I first drove a fuel car I didn’t know much about the mechanical side of things,” Todd said in an interview with CompetitionPlus.com before that rookie season. “Now, after working on them, I have a lot more respect for what happens with the car and (to) the guys working on them.
“Knowing what the guys have to go through helps me to be a better driver. Also, knowing what the car does helps me out. Before, all I did was get in and step on the gas. Now I have more respect for what is going on with the car in general. With my knowledge as a mechanic I should be able to feel what is going on (during a run down the track) and be able to go back to the crew and tell them what happened or what can improve.
“I have had to learn everything from the ground up. I did whatever I could for five years, from cleaning oil pans to working on the motor, because I knew it would make me a better driver someday.”
Tuttle’s team had limited financial backing, most of it coming from Tuttle himself, so the plan for 2006 was to run a partial schedule. But Todd caught everyone’s attention when he was the No. 3 qualifier for the season-opening Winternationals at Pomona (Calif.) Raceway, and eight races into the campaign businessman Evan Knoll (Skull Gear/Skull Shine) stepped forward with the sponsorship necessary for the team to compete on a full-time basis.
Todd, who had run just three of the first seven events, won three times and finished that season eighth in the point standings. His first title came at Denver, with back-to-back wins over Larry Dixon and Tony Schumacher, in just his eighth start. Two races later, at Sonoma, Calif., he again beat Schumacher in the final round, and late in the year at Reading, Pa., he got his third title with a final round win over Melanie Troxel, who ironically is the driver he’s replacing at Morgan Lucas Racing.
He also was the runner-up to Schumacher at the second Las Vegas race and lost in the semifinals three times, which was more than enough to earn the 5-foot-6, 140-pound bachelor the Auto Club Road to the Future Award.
“In the middle of the summer that car really started coming around and we qualified No. 2 (at Denver) and the next thing you know, we’re beating Tony Schumacher in the finals,” Todd said. “A lot happened in a short period of time and from then on it seemed we were one of the cars to beat.”
Not surprisingly, Todd and the Tuttle team went into last season hoping to contend for the championship, and that seemed like a very realistic goal when they opened the campaign by qualifying No. 5 and eliminating Troxel, Doug Kalitta, David Grubnic and Brandon Bernstein en route to career win No. 4. – The CarQuest Winternationals at Pomona, Calif.
Things quickly began to unravel, though.
“After that we went to Phoenix and struggled there,” Todd said, “and on Monday I got a call to notify me the crew chief (Jimmy Walsh) had moved on to another team. That was one of the ultimate lows I could feel. (But) We bounced back a couple of races later and won Houston with Johnny West as crew chief.”
Shortly afterward, however, West was replaced by first-time crew chief Kevin Poynter, and Todd said that while Poynter learned at a rapid pace, the team struggled with consistency. They did earn a spot in the Countdown, but failed to qualify for the opening round at Indianapolis and had three straight first-round losses before closing the season with a trip to the semifinals at Pomona.
It was at Pomona that Todd’s move to the Lucas Oil team was formalized, and two weeks later he and Morgan Lucas sealed their partnership by competing in the Tecate SCORE Baja 1000 off-road race.
“I’m not saying I couldn’t wait for ’07 to end,” Todd said. “It’s just that we had such and up and down season throughout the year with all the changes we had. Once I found out I would be joining up with Morgan Lucas Racing it made the anticipation for ’08 all that much greater.
“It’s so hard to explain to the average person the feeling you get driving a Top Fuel car. Just being able to go out there and do something you love for a living is something not too many people get to do and I can wake up every morning and go out there and have fun. It’s what I’ve grown up dreaming to do and now I’m actually living out my dream.
“I’m thankful I got hooked up with the right people. Timing is the most important thing when it comes to finding the right deal in drag racing. You could miss it by just a minute. I’ve just been lucky to be around some great people at the right time and it’s worked out for me.”