![\"John](\"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Tasca-action-Gators-min.jpg\")
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Crew chief shuffles are nothing unusual in most NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series seasons. It\u2019s well known that Bob Tasca III hasn\u2019t been satisfied with the direction his team has taken. After returning to the Funny Car wars in 2018, Tasca built his new team from the ground up, installing former Don Schumacher Racing assistant crew chief Eric Lane in the catbird seat, depending on his DSR contacts and the knowledge gained as second to Ron Capps\u2019 tuner Rahn Tobler to help elevate his game.<\/p>\n
Tasca\u2019s successes have been elusive and the addition of Mike Green, formerly crew chief to eight-time champion Tony Schumacher, who Green oversaw in his eighth championship, didn\u2019t appear to be showing any real signs of change. The rumors began to fly that Lane was out, Green was gone, Mike Neff would take over those duties since Schumacher, whom the Californian tuned in 2018, hadn\u2019t approached a single water box in 2019 and is on the sidelines. Rumors are great for stirring up interest; they\u2019re not always viable (which is why we don\u2019t write about them terribly often).<\/p>\n
Turns out none of the above scenarios is correct. The Monday morning news is completely different from what anyone was talking about over the past week. Mike Green is leaving Tasca\u2019s Motorcraft\/Quick Lane Racing team and Jon Schaffer, most recently co-crew chief for rookie Austin Prock, is departing John Force Racing to join Lane as co-crew chief on Tasca\u2019s Ford Mustang Funny Car. Schaffer joins the team effective with this weekend\u2019s Virginia NHRA Nationals at Richmond while Green piruoettes to JFR.<\/p>\n
Jon Schaffer, although only 31 and the youngest full-time professional crew chief in NHRA (as he was when tabbed by John Force), has plenty of experience in both Funny Car and Top Fuel applications.<\/p>\n
![\"John](\"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Jon_Schaffer-min.jpg\")
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\u201cI\u2019ve known Jon and raced against Jon for many years,\u201d Tasca said, \u201cand I\u2019ve always looked at him as an up-and-coming talent, no different than I feel about Eric. I\u2019m optimistic that the two of them working together will be a powerful combination.<\/p>\n
\u201cPart of putting this program together in conjunction with Ford was to win races,\u201d Tasca continued. \u201cWe committed to that from the beginning and I\u2019ve been working to create the best team I can that\u2019s capable of producing the best results. I have very high expectations for our program. The only thing that is acceptable to me is for this team to win races and compete for a championship this year.\u201d Tasca currently holds 10th position in the Funny Car standings, on the \u201cbubble\u201d for inclusion in the Countdown to the Championship six-race playoffs that begin after the Chevrolet Performance U.S. Nationals on Labor Day weekend.<\/p>\n
Tasca III debuted Ford\u2019s newest Mustang at the start of this 24-race season in Pomona. Both he and Ford Motor Co. have been expecting good things from the aerodynamics of the Mustang shell, but they haven\u2019t gotten far yet, winning only five rounds of competition.<\/p>\n
Speaking of his new crew chiefs, Tasca said, \u201cIt may take us a few runs of a few races to get exactly where we want to be, but these changes are based on the long-term goal, and that goal is to win races and win the championship with this Motorcraft\/Quick Lane Ford Mustang. I didn\u2019t feel like the setup I had was capable of doing that at any point this season and, just like the leader of any company, I wanted to set our team up for success in the near term to meet the long-term goals.\u201d<\/p>\n
From the Northern California town of Discovery Bay, Jon Schaffer spent his formative years in the karting and open wheel ranks before trying out stock car racing. It was his friendship with hometown NHRA Top Fuel driver David Baca that brought Schaffer to NHRA racing. Like anyone else, Schaffer was taken with the power of Top Fuel and Funny Car engines; he decided to make his career tuning them. He\u2019s worked with six-time champ John Force as well as with Prock, most recently sharing tuning duties with Ronnie Thompson.<\/p>\n
\u201cBob has a great organization that has been well-established, so there\u2019s already a team, the parts, everything\u2019s already here to succeed,\u201d Schaffer said. The team is based adjacent to DSR and shares parts with that multi-championship squad. \u201cI\u2019m just bringing the knowledge I\u2019ve gained over the last few years. I\u2019m looking forward to working with Eric Lane to see if we can get this thing a little quicker and consistent and start winning some races.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m looking forward to working with the Tasca family. I appreciate them giving me a chance and I\u2019m excited for what the future will bring for Tasca Racing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Crew chief shuffles are nothing unusual in most NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series seasons.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":62116,"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":[5614,5624,2,38,6829,41,7,1632,1729],"class_list":["post-62114","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-funny-car","tag-john-schaffer","tag-news","tag-nhra","tag-racing","tag-the-crew"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Tasca-action-Gators-min.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-g9Q","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62114","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=62114"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62114\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62124,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62114\/revisions\/62124"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62116"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}