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Rahn Tobler has been contemplating retirement for a while. After all he\u2019s spent nearly 50 years working in the sport of drag racing. The Californian initially intended to make his departure from duties as crew chief for Don Schumacher Racing\u2019s NAPA Dodge Charger SRT Hellcat NHRA Funny Car at the close of the 2021 season, about the time driver Ron Capps\u2019 sponsor would be renegotiating its three-year pact with DSR.<\/p>\n
That trajectory has changed and Tobler, 66, announced his departure from DSR and the NAPA team he\u2019s led since 2012, effective the end of January 2021, well before the beginning of NHRA\u2019s Camping World Drag Racing Series season in March at Gainesville. \u201cIt\u2019s been a very storied career,\u201d Tobler said in announcing his retirement. \u201cI never thought, when I started in 1971 with Dick Venables, working with a local Top Fuel team in Houston, Texas, that I\u2019d still be doing this almost 50 years later!<\/p>\n
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\u201cI\u2019m very fortunate to have worked with so many successful team owners and wonderful people. I think back on Shirley (Muldowney) and the success we\u2019ve had, my time with the Kalitta\u2019s, and Cruz (Pedregon), but I\u2019d have to say, the best part of my career has been these last 10 years at DSR.\u201d Since bonding in the spring of 2012, Tobler and Capps have captured 33 NHRA National event Wally winner\u2019s Funny Car trophies, Capps\u2019 milestone 60th nitro triumph and the 2016 NHRA Funny Car championship, one that had eluded the driver until that time.<\/p>\n
Prior to joining Schumacher\u2019s team, Tobler earned Top Fuel championships in 1980 and 1982 with Muldowney, as well as the 2008 Funny Car title with Pedregon. In total, he has amassed 70 NHRA national event wins and four championships. \u201cDon Schumacher has given me so many unbelievable opportunities to be successful and Ron (Capps) and I had an incredible run. To win 33 races over what was almost nine seasons, and winning the championship in 2016, I\u2019m just so proud of what we were able to accomplish – what a way to go out!<\/p>\n
\u201cBut, winning aside,\u201d Tobler revealed, \u201cwhat I\u2019ve enjoyed the most and also what I\u2019ll miss the most is the people. I\u2019ve made so many great friends along the way, but I\u2019m especially going to miss my crew guys. They\u2019ve become family. We would do things away from the track together, fun things on the road and back at home. I got to know their families. Without a crew, a crew chief is nothing. If you don\u2019t have that strong group behind you, you won\u2019t be successful.\u201d<\/p>\n
In all forms of racing, keeping a crew together and content is part and parcel of the crew chief\u2019s mantra for success. There\u2019s been very little turnover in the NAPA team since Tobler arrived and their pits are one of the most welcoming in NHRA\u2019s vast pit area. \u201cI\u2019m very fortunate to have worked in an industry that I\u2019ve enjoyed every single day, but now I\u2019m looking forward to this next chapter in my life.\u201d<\/p>\n
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As they originally intended, Tobler and his wife Ellen will be moving to Huntington Beach, Calif. \u201cThat\u2019s been our plan all along. She\u2019s a Southern California girl, and when we first got together, I promised her we\u2019d go back to Huntington Beach when it was time to retire. Let\u2019s be honest,\u201d he said, \u201cit\u2019s not a bad place to retire.\u201d<\/p>\n
During his career as crew chief, Tobler has shepherded the careers of tuners looking to move up the ranks. He\u2019s had a veritable star collection of assistants that have gone on to crew chief his competition in Funny Car, including his first boss\u2019 son Dickie Venables, who in 2020 helped DSR\u2019s Matt Hagan achieve his third Funny Car title. John Collins, last year with Tommy Johnson Jr., has moved to Cruz Pedregon\u2019s team for 2021, and the late Eric Lane was one of Tobler\u2019s proteges, as well. It\u2019s unknown if current assistant Dustin Heim, who has worked with Tobler since his days at Pedregon\u2019s team, will take over the NAPA car, as Don Schumacher has yet to make that decision.<\/p>\n
For his part, Capps is \u201cheartbroken that our time racing together has come to an end. We\u2019ve had such a great amount of fun, and became such great friends away from the race track. In the eight-plus years, the amount of races we\u2019ve won, and great moments we\u2019ve spent together is just really incredible,\u201d Capps said. \u201cWe set the national record within a first few races together (Englishtown 2012), won the championship in 2016, and then to run that 339-mph pass in Reading in 2019 was awesome. There have just been so many great moments.<\/p>\n
\u201cVery happy that Rahn will be able to go off and enjoy his retirement and spend time with his lovely wife Ellen. He deserves it. He\u2019s been involved in the sport of drag racing since his teenage years,\u201d Capps reminded, \u201cso this chapter closes and a new one opens for him.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rahn Tobler has been contemplating retirement for a while. After all, he\u2019s spent nearly 50 years working in the sport of drag racing.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":77616,"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":[3465,17,3470,5029,3399],"tags":[5614,8288,2,2200,38,4008,41,7,1632,8287],"class_list":["post-77612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-drag-racing","category-guest-column","category-news","category-racing","category-nhra","tag-anne-proffit","tag-crew-chief","tag-drag-racing","tag-dsr","tag-funny-car","tag-guest-column","tag-news","tag-nhra","tag-racing","tag-rahn-tobler"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/01\/Ron-Capps-min-e1611261223878.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-kbO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77612","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=77612"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77619,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77612\/revisions\/77619"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}