Master tuner Rahn Tobler has had an exceptional career, and in the last couple of seasons had Doug Kalitta in the championship hunt until the last rounds of the last races. But, circumstances change, and Tobler departed the Kalitta Racing operation after the Gatornationals, only to land a short time later (just in time for the Las Vegas race) at Morgan Lucas Racing. However, mere weeks after joining the team he moved on, a decision made by the team owner.

We caught up with him in the pits at SREMP for a few questions.

Master tuner Rahn Tobler has had an exceptional career, and in the last couple of seasons had Doug Kalitta in the championship hunt until the last rounds of the last races. But, circumstances change, and Tobler departed the Kalitta Racing operation after the Gatornationals, only to land a short time later (just in time for the Las Vegas race) at Morgan Lucas Racing. However, mere weeks after joining the team he moved on, a decision made by the team owner.

We caught up with him in the pits at SREMP for a few questions.

COMPPLUS: Rahn, do you have any job opportunities on the line right now?

TOBLER: No, I don’t have anything firm at all right now. I’m probably going to sit back a little bit, certainly through the swing races, and take it easy. Whatever I do this time I’m going to try and make a better decision about where I go and what I do.


COMPPLUS: Have you had serious conversations with any team about a
future job?

TOBLER:  I have had some serious conversations with a couple of teams, but again I’m just not ready to make a decision about that right now. I don’t think this is something I’d want to jump into right in the middle of this six race swing. I’d rather come in and maybe have a weekend off or something to get acclimated to what the team wants to do.


COMPPLUS: Care to mention the teams you’re talking to?

TOBLER:  No, thank you!


COMPPLUS: Are you going to keep going to the races, like Denver, Seattle or Sonoma?

TOBLER:  No, I’m not going to Bristol or Denver. I came to Norwalk because it’s close to home, and Englishtown I already had tickets for, and I had tickets to a Broadway show that I wanted to see, so I wanted to go and do all of those things. So, I’m not going to come out and just sit around. I’m going to come out and talk to some people, and I’ve even had some offers for next year, but whether or not I could sit out until then, I’m just not sure.

COMPPLUS: When you say you’re not sure about sitting out until next year, is that a financial situation, or something else?

TOBLER:  It’s purely from the financial standpoint.

COMPPLUS: Looing back on the Morgan Lucas situation, do you have any regrets about your involvement there?

TOLBER:  Well, most of the things I tried to do I couldn’t do, and that’s kinda where we didn’t see eye to eye on things. They wanted the car to be a duplicate of Melanie (Troxel’s) car and they asked me when I went there if I was willing to do that, and I said sure, I’ll try whatever, it doesn’t matter to me. But, I saw some things that I thought needed some attention and things needed to be different, and they obviously had an opinion that things needed to remain the same regardless of the results, so that’s where the dilemma came from.


COMPPLUS: When you say there was conflict, did that come from Forrest Lucas, Morgan Lucas or somewhere else?

TOBLER:  Looking back on it, and knowing how everyone felt, they feel that you can take two cars and prepare them identically and they’re going to run the same, and I worked with a three-car team, and I know we couldn’t duplicate the results with the three cars we had at Kalitta Motorsports. We all did things a little differently (at Kalitta’s), and that’s why you bring crew chiefs in, to make some decisions that have to be made, and that might mean, perhaps, going down a slightly different road than the rest of the team. You’re doing that for the betterment of your particular car. You know, you bring a guy in who’s had a fairly good track record for the last three years, someone who’s won some races and fought for some championships… I thought you brought someone like that in to make some changes and bring the team up to a performance level they were hoping to achieve.


COMPPLUS: Do you think the sport is facing a crisis of sorts in that there’s a shortage of quality tuners?

TOBLER:  I do, and I also sometimes think the sport is suffering from there being a shortage of quality teams, and I’m not really sure how I want to rate what a quality team is, but there are a lot of teams out here that, on the surface, appear to be one thing (in terms of funding), when you get inside, they’re really not that great. I really haven’t ever had to pay attention to those kinds of things before. When I was with Kalitta it ws obviously one of the finest teams in the sport. What you see on the outside with that team is what’s on the inside, too. It’s all very good. But, there’s a lot of teams out here that kind of hang on and want to be out here, but underneath there’s not really a lot of (financial) depth.


COMPPLUS: Where are we going to look to find more quality tuners?

TOBLER:  Well, if you look, there are guys coming along. Look at Snake’s car and Donnie Bender. They went a long time without winning a race and now they’ve won two in a row. People have to have the opportunity, the chances because some day the Tim Richards and Alan Johnsons of the world aren’t going to be here, and the sport will have no choice but to find people to take their places.


COMPPLUS: In earlier days a lot of the tuners came out of the driver’s seat. They were guys that drove and then became tuners, guys like Frank Bradley, Dick LaHaie and Ed McCulloch. Do you think having been a driver is going to be important in making someone a tuner, or will they just start on the mechanical side and work their way up from there?

TOBLER:  Most of our drivers out here today don’t have a lot of mechaical experience. The people you mentioned were owner/drivers, so they did it all, including driving the rig to the track. Those type of situations really don’t exist any more. I know there are some people out here who want to learn these things, but whether or not it comes from drivers, I just don’t know. If you look at the Top 10 in Top Fuel or Funny Car points I don’t think you’ll find a lot of
tune candidates in that group.

COMPPLUS: What kind of money does a top crew chief command today?

TOBLER:  Well, to be honest, I haven’t been out here in this market very much, so I just don’t know. I’ve only really had three jobs in drag racing, counting Morgan’s. I would say anywhere from a low of $125,000 to a high of, well, I’m not really sure. I’d say maybe from $250,000 to $300,000 per year including bonus and incentive programs. I could imagine that someone like an Austin Coil pretty much writes his own ticket.

COMPPLUS: What do you think it takes, financially, to be competitive out here for a season?

TOBLER:  I would say, right off the top of my head, somewhere close to $2 million dollars at the very least because you have to spend the money on the people. You have to have the right people working on the car or you’re not going to get anywhere. A crew chief is nothing without a good quality crew. To keep good quality people on these teams you have to pay them good money, because they really sacrifice. They spend a lot of time away from their families. The hours are ungodly, as everyone knows who understands this sport. You have to spend a lot on labor costs, to say nothing the parts for the car. There’s far more people who work on these teams than just the
people who go up to the starting line. I think you’ve got to have a minimum of six people working during the week and maybe another two to four at the track. When I first started two or three guys could run one of these cars, but those days are long gone.

COMPPLUS: One more thing. Would you be interested I a consultancy where someone might say, “Come with us to Denver and help out,” something like that?

TOBLER:  It would all depend on what the deal would be. If it was something that might lead to a full time position down the road, I would certainly consider that, but right now I haven’t been offered anything like that.