Quain Stott is teaching lessons to the Bush Motorsports team from top to bottom. From the driver down to the guy adjusting the valves on the engine.

“Everybody’s got their own way of doing it so I have a system to where you can’t forget,” said Stott, prior to Friday’s qualifying at the ADRL U.S. Drags in Richmond, Va., of his valve adjusting methods.

Stott, the new tuner for the Mel Bush-owned car driven by Tommy D’Aprile, is busy putting his stamp on the team.

Quain Stott is teaching lessons to the Bush Motorsports team from top to bottom. From the driver down to the guy adjusting the valves on the engine.

“Everybody’s got their own way of doing it so I have a system to where you can’t forget,” said Stott, prior to Friday’s qualifying at the ADRL U.S. Drags in Richmond, Va., of his valve adjusting methods.

Stott, the new tuner for the Mel Bush-owned car driven by Tommy D’Aprile, is busy putting his stamp on the team.

“You know us old country boys are kind of dumb and didn’t learn much in school so our memories aren’t as good. So my way is about as foolproof as you can get, at least for me. Where a lot of people would put it on a mark and do this valve, this valve, this valve, this valve, and jump all over the place if I did that my memory isn’t good enough I would forget one of them. So I want my crew members to do it the same way so they can’t forget one of them.”

In addition, Stott is schooling D'Aprile on how he likes the car to be driven.

Stott and D’Aprile last raced together in 2006 as a two-car team with sponsorship for the latter’s car coming from Evan Knoll. When Knoll’s sponsorship money dried up in 2007 Stott was forced to park the second car denying him the opportunity to continue working with D'Aprile, a driver whom he categorizes as one of the best in the class.

The reunited tuner and driver combination put in a few test runs at Carolina Dragway in Jackson, SC., prior to this weekend’s Richmond event. An electrical issue impeded their efforts on the track but didn't slow Stott's mentoring of D'Aprile.

 The first lesson?

“Shut up and drive,” admitted D’Aprile, jokingly. “And if he does say anything, I just listen to what he says. It’s a really good relationship because there’s one boss here [Mel Bush] and everybody knows it and we just do our job. And I hope to do a good job inside of the cockpit because I know he’ll do a good job on the outside.”

There’s a good reason why Bush, D’Aprile and the team are high on enthusiasm for the potential Stott brings to the team. In simple terms, Stott makes stuff happen.

“I told Mel the other day you know we’ve done in two weeks what most people do during the winter,” said Stott. “We’re not expecting miracles or anything like that but we’re going to give it our best shot at this race, we’ve only made four passes on the car and three of those were without a computer.”

The quick results in such short order has Stott convinced the ADRL’s Pro Extreme division had better not take this team lightly.

“I’m not going to run this team any different than how I run mine. The big difference is this team has a bigger budget. I shouldn’t say big budget but Mel Bush will do whatever needs to be done to win. We don’t lean on the motor and I’m not going to tear Mel’s stuff up on purpose. This is a team you had better look out for later in the season.”

After the first two sessions, D’Aprile was the twelfth quickest with a 3.874, 197.77.