Being a full-time NHRA Top Fuel competitor once again is Bob Vandergriff Jr.’s objective.

Vandergriff, a successful businessman, is taking steps toward reaching that goal.

Vandergriff made his 2010 season debut at the NHRA Southern Nationals in Commerce, Ga., and now he says he’s going to expand on that schedule.

“We’re going to run at least seven more races this year and maybe 10 more,” Vandergriff said.  

Top Fuel Racer Could Race As Many As Ten Times In 2010

Being a full-time NHRA Top Fuel competitor once again is Bob Vandergriff Jr.’s objective.

Vandergriff, a successful businessman, is taking steps toward reaching that goal.

Vandergriff made his 2010 season debut at the NHRA Southern Nationals in Commerce, Ga., and now he says he’s going to expand on that schedule.

“We’re going to run at least seven more races this year and maybe 10 more,” Vandergriff said.

According to Vandergriff, he’s for sure going to run at Chicago (June 3-6), which is the next event, Bristol, Tenn., (June 18-20), Norwalk, Ohio (June 24-27), Indianapolis (Sept. 1-6), Charlotte, N.C., (Sept. 16-19), Dallas (Sept. 23-26), and Reading, Pa., (Oct. 7-10). Vandergriff says his team may also add the races at Brainerd, Minn., (Aug. 12-15), Las Vegas (Oct. 28-31) and the season finale at Pomona, Calif., (Nov. 11-14) to its schedule.

C&J Energy Services, which is based in Corpus Christi, Texas, and sponsored Vandergriff’s dragster in Commerce, Ga., will remain as his primary sponsor for his upcoming races.

“I raced like five or six races last year, so it had only been a few months and we only missed the first five races this year,” Vandergriff said. “As far as getting back in the car it was just about normal; nothing to out of control. It was very impressive for our team and my guys to go to Atlanta and make it down the track five times.”

Vandergriff qualified eighth at Atlanta with a 3.961-second run, but was upended in the first round by T.J. Zizzo. Zizzo clocked a 3.903-second elapsed time, just edging Vandergriff who came in at 3.952 seconds.

Jim Dupuy is Vandergriff’s crew chief.

“We obviously need to pick up the performance of the car at Chicago,” Vandergriff said. “We just dragged it out (at Atlanta) and made some changes and we had some problems with dropping cylinders, and we’re working on that, and we just need to make more runs. The first round (at Atlanta) we made a pretty good run on all eight cylinders. We’re just going to use that as a baseline and tune it up from there. It needs to pick up somewhere between five hundredths and a tenth of second to be competitive with the other guys out there, depending on the conditions. That’s our goal; we’re just going to keep trying to step up the performance.”

From 2006-2008, Vandergriff ran Top Fuel full-time in the NHRA, finishing a career-best fifth in the points chase in 2007.

“We’re consistently working on running a full schedule in 2011,” Vandergriff said. “Our plan is to run full-time in 2011 and we’re just knocking on doors trying to put together sponsorship programs. C&J will be involved next year, and they could either be a full-time sponsor or sponsor us for half of the season, and we will try and pick up sponsorship for the other half. We’re just going to see what kind of sponsorship develops and that will kind of dictate how our plans go. We run this thing like a business. We’re not going to spend too much of our own money to do this. I also think that I have enough of a track record and I have enough experience as a driver and team owner that when we go in to make presentations to sponsors, the fact that I’m not racing, I do not think really is a significant detriment by any means. The economy is tough, but here’s what we have, and here’s what we can do. We’ve had great success on the business side of generating business for sponsorships and our programs and making them successful as well. I think we have a great package, we just have to find the right company to present it to.”

For now, the right company for Vandergriff is C&J, a leading provider of coiled tubing and pressure pumping services and recently fracturing services, to the oil and gas industry in Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma.

“The CEO, Josh Comstock and I have become great friends,” said Vandergriff. “He is truly a racer at heart and I have great admiration for what he has done in building his company. He started in 1997 with 200 bucks and a dream and projected revenues for 2011 are in the 500 million plus range, that is truly amazing and I look forward to working with him to build and develop our programs together.”