Bob Bode knows when he shows up at NHRA races, the odds are not in his favor. Yet, those odd don't deter the veteran racer from competing.

Bode will be back in 2013 and plans to compete on a limited 10-race NHRA schedule.

“Running a race car is the fun part for me,” said Bode, who has been racing a nitro Funny Car on a part-time basis on NHRA’s circuit since 2001. “When we go race, we line up against the toughest racers in the country. When you win like we did in Brainerd (in 2010) it is the biggest high you can get. We love dragging the car to the races and see if we can make it run as good as the big dogs.”

The Brainerd (Minn.) win is the highlight of Bode’s career and came on Aug. 15, 2010. Bode stunned the racing community by capturing an improbable victory at the Lucas Oil NHRA Nationals by defeating Jack Beckman, out of the Don Schumacher Racing stable, in the finals.

Bode would like to be just as competitive in 2013.

“We are probably going to do our normal 10-race deal like we did a couple of years ago,” Bode said. “I have four guys I’m working with right now for sponsorship to do that number (of races).”

Bode is the president of AR-BEE Transparent Products, Inc. AR-BEE, located in Elk Grove, Illinois, manufactures plastic bags for all types of retail, industrial and commercial packaging.

While Bode believes he will run 10 races, it is unclear when his 2013 race schedule will start.

“We are kind of up in the air over that,” Bode said. “We want to start at Pomona (Winternationals, Feb. 14-17) and typically that is what we have done, but we have not come to any conclusion yet. That is probably where it will start, but it could start at Gainesville (Gatornationals, March 14-17). We would like to start at Pomona and get all of our stuff in order and get it going right away. Plus, we only qualified 19th there (at the NHRA Finals at Pomona) in November, and I call that my testing. We had four good runs of testing, and I hate to waste that since we didn’t make the program.”

Bode’s not positive what other races he will attend, but he does have a good idea.

“We do Chicago every year because it is a hometown race and Brainerd and Indy,” Bode said. “We also do the spring Las Vegas race. We have not been to St. Louis yet, and we might do that one because it is so close. We also do Norwalk and we will just have to see what other ones we will do.”

Last season, Bode finished 17th in the point standings, competing in 15 races. Stupid Fast Racing was Bode’s primary sponsor for 2012, until he and the company parted ways after the national event in Chicago June 28-July 1.

“When we had that Stupid Fast Racing deal we didn’t change anything because we were making the show,” said Bode, who ran in a career-high 19 races in 2002. “Everybody else kept changing parts and they all got faster and we stayed the same. We had a race car that would run in the 20s all day long, but you need to run in the low teens or a high 0 to get in the show these days. We started at Pomona (in November) with some upgrades to try and get our MPH up and we are going to try some other new things because we need to pick up our performance. If we do not qualify we hate it, but we do not feel guilty about hurting the sponsor. It just makes it a little bit simpler for us to make our moves.”

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