NHRA Funny Car driver Matt Hagan enjoys the silence of success
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — In a sport defined by deafening noise, Matt Hagan finds comfort in silence. That's also where he finds success.
When his radio is quiet as he and crew chief Dickie Venables stage Hagan's Nitro Funny Car, Hagan knows it's going to be good. And lately it's been very quiet — and very good.
"What's cool about Dickie is that there's not a lot of chatter on the radio," Hagan told Paste BN Sports as he prepared to extend his winning streak this weekend in the Amalie Motor Oil NHRA Gatornationals at Gainesville Raceway. "I've been in positions with teams that were still scrambling and talking over the radio as you were about to go. You'd think, 'Man, are these guys going to get it together?' But this team is solid in its decisions. There's never much that needs to be said when we get down to it."
Getting down to it this weekend means four more perfect lights Sunday for a fourth consecutive event victory, adding to wins at Pomona and Phoenix to open the 2015 NHRA Melllo Yello Drag Racing Series season and the 2014 season-ending win in November at Pomona. With Venables tuning Hagan's Dodge Charger R/T, the Don Schuamcher Racing team is at the peak of its game.
"One guy can't do this," Venables told Paste BN Sports. "We have that team mentality. Obviously it takes a good driver, and I feel very fortunate to be working with Matt. He's the best I've ever worked with. I've been a crew chief since 2003 and an assistant crew chief for 30-some years, and he's the best I've been around. That puts pressure on us because you know he's going to be there every time."
So good is Hagan — and so finely-tuned is his car — that Venables can call its number to the hundredth before each run. More often than not, he's spot-on.
"He'll come to me and say, 'The track is capable of a 4.02, but I'm going to set it up for a 4.05,'" Hagan said. "'If you can give be a couple of hundredths off the line, we'll be able to make it up.'"
That's not as much Babe Ruth pointing to a spot in the outfield as it sounds. Instead, it's the science of knowing the car, the conditions and the driver.
"When everything is working properly and responding to everything, you can do that," Venables said. "A lot of times, because we have a guy like Matt behind the wheel, we don't have to press as hard as other teams might. Matt will give us an extra hundredth or two."
More than anything, streaks in drag racing are rare. One event is four individual races each Sunday — assuming you make it through qualifying leading up to that. One mistake along the way — one bad light, one mechanical failure, one bit of wheel spin — and the streak ends. Hagan's streak is actually 12 consecutive round wins, a feat made more impressive by the fragility of it.
"You have to do everything right, and even then you can still lose," said Hagan, a 32-year-old native of Christianburg, Va. "Anything can happen. You can have a spark plug fail, lose a cylinder lose a round. But man, it's really come together with these guys. They just keep showing up and putting great cars under me, week after week."
Hagan does his part, as well. In a sport in which everyone at the top levels is fast off the line, Hagan is consistently at the top of the statistics for reaction times. It's not the quickness that's phenomenal, Venables says, but the repetition.
"He does it over and over," Venables said. "He's at the top of the sheet all the time. A guy who drives as well as he does is a special weapon. When you're facing him and you have to race someone that good, there's an intimidation factor. A lot of times it will make you screw up because you're trying to cut an even faster light than you normally do just to beat him. It's definitely an advantage when you have a guy this fast and this consistent."
As the defense of his 2014 Funny Car championship continues its positive beginning, Hagan knows that not only is the 2015 championship possible, but extending the streak is, as well. For that, he credits the team around him.
"These guys are like my family away from my family," he said. "We hang out together, drink beer together, eat dinner together. They become your group. These guys really have skin in the game. They're extremely competitive. They care about what they're doing and give the extra effort.
"I crawl into that race car every Sunday knowing we can win. There's not a Sunday that I don't think I can win or that our team can't win. We have everything at our fingertips."
Everything. Including silence.
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