![\"Tasca](\"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Bob-Tasca-action-min.jpg\")
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When Ford Motor Co stepped away from NHRA competition, it meant changes for Funny Car stalwart Bob Tasca III, whose family has been selling, servicing and racing Ford products for nearly a century. Ford\u2019s departure also meant a racing hiatus for Tasca and his family, but they returned with Ford at the start of the 2018 NHRA Mello Yello 24-race season.<\/p>\n
With a brand new team led by Eric Lane, an ex-John Force Racing (JFR) crewman who had more recently been assistant to Rahn Tobler on Ron Capps\u2019 Don Schumacher Racing (DSR) Funny Car squad, Tasca and Ford returned to a changed game, one that is most certainly more competitive than when they left just a scant few years earlier. They won some rounds over the course of 18 regular season and six playoff races, but didn\u2019t make the Countdown to the Championship playoffs and showed signs of needing better input.<\/p>\n
For the 2019 season, Lane\u2019s been joined by Mike Green, more recently crew chief on DSR\u2019s Top Fuel dragster for driver Tony Schumacher. Much of the Tasca Ford Mustang is comprised of DSR parts and the car is built and maintained in conjunction with DSR. There are signs that the turnaround is coming and Tasca currently holds, tenuously, tenth-place points as he searches for his next, fifth Wally winner\u2019s trophy.<\/p>\n
Going into next weekend\u2019s Virginia NHRA Nationals at Virginia Motorsports Park, Tasca is looking to build on his grand memories of the Richmond-area racetrack, where last year\u2019s return race saw a sold-out crowd. With a new racing surface on the venerable track, Tasca is ready to show his capabilities.<\/p>\n
![\"Tasca](\"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Bob-Tasca-III-mug-min.jpg\")
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\u201cThat was a standout race of the year,\u201d Tasca said of the series\u2019 2018 return to Richmond. \u201cThe support of the fans was incredible. I just remember how appreciative the fans were, and they were thanking us for coming – when we should have been thanking them for coming. The quality of the racetrack was unbelievably smooth,\u201d Tasca remarked of the repaving efforts. \u201cWhether it\u2019s hot or cold, if there\u2019s an excellent surface, these cars can perform and we\u2019re thrilled to come back to Richmond.\u201d<\/p>\n
After a quarter-final departure in Atlanta last weekend, Tasca has just two round wins in his past five races, a number the Rhode Island native is looking to change pronto. \u201cI\u2019m not happy with where I\u2019m at and I\u2019m not happy with our performance. We haven\u2019t shown consistency and we\u2019re making some really big changes going into Richmond,\u201d Tasca said. \u201cI\u2019m optimistic that it\u2019s going to change the attitude of the car. Were hitting the reset button and I\u2019m excited about it.<\/p>\n
\u201cRichmond is a big race for us. We\u2019ll have a different setup, but we have high expectations of what this team should accomplish. We\u2019re not there yet and we\u2019ll keep working until we get there,\u201d he declared. \u201cWe need to get better and that\u2019s the bottom line, but I do feel confident in the changes and Richmond can be an exciting race for me. We\u2019ve got the new body from Ford, something we spent the last year working on. We\u2019re still fine-tuning some things, but we have very high expectations. We want to win and compete for a championship, and anything less than that is unacceptable. Were going to continue to make adjustments and I\u2019m looking forward to seeing it come together.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When Ford Motor Co stepped away from NHRA competition, it meant changes for Funny Car stalwart Bob Tasca III.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":62037,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3465,3470,5029,3399],"tags":[5614,5624,2,43,41,7,1632],"class_list":["post-62036","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-drag-racing","category-news","category-racing","category-nhra","tag-anne-proffit","tag-bob-tasca-iii","tag-drag-racing","tag-ford","tag-news","tag-nhra","tag-racing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Bob-Tasca-action-min.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-g8A","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62036","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/65"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62036"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62036\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62039,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62036\/revisions\/62039"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62037"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62036"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62036"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62036"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}