{"id":94907,"date":"2024-02-20T17:23:49","date_gmt":"2024-02-21T01:23:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/?p=94907"},"modified":"2024-02-20T17:23:49","modified_gmt":"2024-02-21T01:23:49","slug":"dave-richards-toyota-funny-car-completes-3-car-scag-racing-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/dave-richards-toyota-funny-car-completes-3-car-scag-racing-team\/","title":{"rendered":"Dave Richards’ Toyota Funny Car Completes 3-car SCAG Racing Team"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Dave Richards is the third member of the SCAG Racing team – Anne Proffit photo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

NHRA fans paying attention to pit slots at last week\u2019s PRO Superstar Shootout on the Bradenton Motorsports Park dragstrip might have noticed the SCAG Racing trucks of Daniel Wilkerson (Ford Shelby Mustang Funny Car), Justin Ashley\u2019s Top Fuel rig and Dave Richards\u2019 new full-season Toyota Funny Car were all parked together, comfortably close to the start line as the first pit slots in the long row of professional Top Fuel and Funny Car racers.<\/p>\n

Richards, who has raced part-time in NHRA over the past few years, with brother Paul at his side as the naming owner of his team – Paul Richards Racing – didn\u2019t have the best race weekend in Bradenton. Like many top-level racers, his Versatran\/BlueBird Funny Car was relegated to competing against a dragster in the dragster vs flopper competition for those that didn\u2019t qualify for one of the eight slots on the race ladder that paid $250,000 to the winners in Top Fuel and Funny Car.<\/p>\n

Richards was out after the first round of competition, but when he gets to Gainesville Raceway in just a couple of weeks for the 55th annual Amalie Motor Oil NHRA Gatornationals, he\u2019ll sport a new team name. Earlier this year, it was announced that Paul Richards Racing had signed a sponsorship agreement with Versatran, which is the parent company of SCAG Power Equipment. Now it\u2019s been announced that SCAG has acquired Paul Richards Racing, making it the third member of the 2024 SCAG Racing NHRA team.<\/p>\n

Starting at Gainesville, the first salvo in the Mission Foods NHRA Drag Racing Series, the team will race under the SCAG Racing banner. It\u2019s a best-case scenario, according to Dave Richards. \u201cWhen Randy (Gloede, president and CEO) and SCAG approached us with the deal, we knew we couldn\u2019t pass it up,\u201d Richards said. \u201cWith Versatran and BlueBird, they were already making sure we could race a full season and now there\u2019s a sense of stability. My brother Paul and I can\u2019t thank the SCAG team enough for investing in this team, trusting us to represent Versatran, BlueBird and SCAG, and believing we deserve to be out there.\u201d<\/p>\n

While he\u2019ll continue to be team manager for his brother\u2019s squad, \u201cIt has been a real journey as the owner of Paul Richards Racing since 2007,\u201d Paul Richards mused \u201cI have loved every minute of it, and this is just the next step, the next chapter in what I feel is only going to benefit the team in every aspect. I have no doubt,\u201d he said, \u201cthat Dave and this Versatran\/BlueBird Funny Car team will have success moving forward under SCAG Racing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Having teammates is something new for Dave and Paul Richards, who have gone about their racing singularly since forming their team in 2007. \u201cThat\u2019s a huge benefit, sharing information, brainstorming solutions. We\u2019re looking forward to that,\u201d Dave Richards said. While he realizes he and his team are embarking on a steep learning curve, \u201cRacing week to week will give us a chance to fix the problems, learn and grow. We\u2019ll only get better as the season goes, who knows? We might give some of the heavy hitters a run for their money!\u201d<\/p>\n

Dave Richards made his professional debut in 2013 at the NHRA New England Nationals, held at New England Dragway in Epping, N.H. In that race, he qualified 16th to make the show – unusual for a single car first-timer – yet fell to 16-time champion and Funny Car legend John Force. Since that time, Richards has competed in a total of 52 national events, qualified for 43 races and had a total of six quarterfinal results.<\/p>\n

The three-car SCAG Racing team kicks off their 2024 season at the first 2024 NHRA Mission Foods Drag Racing Series race of the year, the Amalie Motor Oil NHRA Gatornationals, held March 8-10 at Gainesville Raceway.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Richards, who has raced part-time in NHRA over the past few years, with brother Paul at his side as the naming owner of his team – Paul Richards Racing – didn\u2019t have the best race weekend in Bradenton.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":94911,"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],"tags":[10198,10197,407,10130,4563,9502,8558,10128,7,9841,9283,10195,10196],"class_list":["post-94907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-drag-racing","category-news","category-racing","tag-amalie-motor-oil-nhra-gatornationals","tag-bluebird","tag-bradenton-motorsports-park","tag-daniel-wilkerson","tag-dave-richards","tag-gainesville-raceway","tag-justin-ashley","tag-mission-foods-nhra-drag-racing-series","tag-nhra","tag-pro-superstar-shootout","tag-scag-power-equipment","tag-scag-racing-team","tag-versatran"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/02\/Dave-Richards-burnout-Bradenton-min-e1708478544726.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p42YSK-oGL","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94907","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=94907"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94907\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":94916,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94907\/revisions\/94916"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.racingjunk.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}