Two-time tour champion Larry Dixon has admittedly struggled since master tuner Dick LaHaie retired and his assistant, Donnie Bender, took over.  But, taking the realistic view, Dixon (and team owner Don Prudhomme) realized that there’s going to be a transition period while Bender got a handle on things.  Not on the tune-up, but rather on how to not only make the tuning calls on his own, but to handle team personnel management at the same time.

For Dixon things are definitely good.  After a couple of hard-earned victories he acknowledges that what’s new is “Winning again.  The team’s really coming together now.  We have half a new 
crew since the beginning of the season, and Donnie’s coming into his own as a tuner.  It’s cool to be a part of this.

“I don’t think this is as much a situation of Donnie getting things the way he wanted them, it’s just going into a new position.  I try to compare it to an offensive coordinator going into the head coaching position.  He’s going to still be walking the sidelines, but now he’s making the final play calls.  It just took a little bit of time for him to get comfortable in the position.

Two-time tour champion Larry Dixon has admittedly struggled since master tuner Dick LaHaie retired and his assistant, Donnie Bender, took over.  But, taking the realistic view, Dixon (and team owner Don Prudhomme) realized that there’s going to be a transition period while Bender got a handle on things.  Not on the tune-up, but rather on how to not only make the tuning calls on his own, but to handle team personnel management at the same time.

For Dixon things are definitely good.  After a couple of hard-earned victories he acknowledges that what’s new is “Winning again.  The team’s really coming together now.  We have half a new 
crew since the beginning of the season, and Donnie’s coming into his own as a tuner.  It’s cool to be a part of this.

“I don’t think this is as much a situation of Donnie getting things the way he wanted them, it’s just going into a new position.  I try to compare it to an offensive coordinator going into the head coaching position.  He’s going to still be walking the sidelines, but now he’s making the final play calls.  It just took a little bit of time for him to get comfortable in the position.

“Things never really got tense around here because Snake’s got a really clear picture of how things work.  He’s driven and tuned the cars, so he knows what it takes.  He really thought Donnie had what it took to get the job done, so he stuck with him. Snake really had a lot of patience, and you hope that your sponsors will feel the same way when things like this happen, but that’s part of Snake’s job, to convince them that we’ve got all the players in place to make things happen.  With us winning now it shows that Snake knows what he’s talking about.”

When we asked Dixon his thoughts on the pending sale of NHRA, he said, “It’ll be interesting to see how it all plays out. It’s been on-profit forever and now you take a section of it and make 
it for-profit, they can do anything they want with it.  Anything, from blowin’ it up to making it the biggest thing next to sliced bread,  And if (NHRA’s) for sale now, it could be sold again (in the 
future).”

Dixon was also succinct in his evaluation of the recently visited Summit Motorsports Park.  “I love this place,” he said.  “I wish Bader owned more tracks, because a lot of owners could learn from the family. From a nostalgia standpoint I miss Columbus because it’s been on the tour since I was born, but at the same time to trade a Columbus facility for a place like this is a no-brainer.”