Oh, what Ed “Ace” McCulloch would give for access to one of those miracle weight-loss products.  You know the ones.  Their commercials proliferate late-night television:  “Lose 60 pounds in 60 Days, the Easy Way” or “I lost (pick a number) pounds on the so-and-so weight-loss plan and so did my wife.”

But alas, none is applicable for McCulloch because the extra baggage isn’t around his hips.  It belongs to the NAPA Auto Parts Dodge Charger that he tunes and Ron Capps drives.

New Funny Car rules legislated this year piled on 100 extra pounds raising the minimum weight to 2,555 pounds, a number the former Funny Car and Top Fuel driver finds overwhelming.  His gripe, he points out, isn’t with the safety aspect.

“I’m all for safety,” said McCulloch.  “I’m all for making these cars safer. If we have to have a stronger car – which we do – I’m all for what we have to do.”

McCulloch, a drag racing veteran who began his successful driving career at the wheel of a late 1960s push-started, front-motored Top Fuel dragster like everyone else drove at the time, does have a few suggestions.

Oh, what Ed “Ace” McCulloch would give for access to one of those miracle weight-loss products.  You know the ones.  Their commercials proliferate late-night television:  “Lose 60 pounds in 60 Days, the Easy Way” or “I lost (pick a number) pounds on the so-and-so weight-loss plan and so did my wife.”

But alas, none is applicable for McCulloch because the extra baggage isn’t around his hips.  It belongs to the NAPA Auto Parts Dodge Charger that he tunes and Ron Capps drives.

New Funny Car rules legislated this year piled on 100 extra pounds raising the minimum weight to 2,555 pounds, a number the former Funny Car and Top Fuel driver finds overwhelming.  His gripe, he points out, isn’t with the safety aspect.

“I’m all for safety,” said McCulloch.  “I’m all for making these cars safer. If we have to have a stronger car – which we do – I’m all for what we have to do.”

McCulloch, a drag racing veteran who began his successful driving career at the wheel of a late 1960s push-started, front-motored Top Fuel dragster like everyone else drove at the time, does have a few suggestions.

A lot of drivers walking around in preseason testing at Phoenix were asking if anybody else was having a little bit harder time slowing the cars down.  It’s very noticeable to me.  I’ve had to go from pulling one parachute at a lot of tracks, especially Phoenix, to always pulling two chutes and getting on the brakes hard. - Ron Capps

“I think there are two options for the Funny Car chassis, and the heavier of the two options would be to add 30 pounds.  With the rest of the safety things that they’ve implemented, we already are looking at about 40 pounds of increased weight. If they’d put 50 or 60 pounds on us, I would have been okay with that.  But to put [a total of] 100 pounds on us?”

Moreover, McCulloch says his car made weight last year, thanks to the fact Capps is one of the lightest drivers in the class. “We are being penalized big time.  I have 110 pounds of ballast on our car (including the 10 to make sure the car isn’t light). Does it make a safer race car?  Absolutely not.”

What it does do, however, is require a different tune-up to move the bulked-up racecar off the starting line with the same gusto it had a year ago. And, in McCulloch’s situation, he needed to find the right places to hang the weight.  Other tuners, meanwhile, who already were dealing with an overweight car – 40 to 50 pounds in some cases – found that amount to be more manageable. 

“Ace has been trying to figure out how to get the car going quicker earlier in the run,” Capps said.  “The extra weight we have bolted on it now makes it a completely different car.  It’s much heavier. We’ve had our work cut out for us.”

McCulloch did regroup at last Monday’s Phoenix test session and his revamped tune-up provided the best results of the young season.  But there is another issue to be addressed, too.

While many crew chiefs fought the battle of the bulge, drivers, meanwhile, were facing a totally different dilemma at the other end of the track – getting their cars stopped before reaching the sand box.

“I noticed how hard it was to slow the cars down right away in testing,” Capps said. “We have that extra 100 pounds of ballast and there were a lot of teams that didn’t have to add any weight.

“A lot of drivers walking around in preseason testing at Phoenix were asking if anybody else was having a little bit harder time slowing the cars down.  It’s very noticeable to me.  I’ve had to go from pulling one parachute at a lot of tracks, especially Phoenix, to always pulling two chutes and getting on the brakes hard.

“As we saw in Pomona, there were a lot of guys that went off (into the sand). And once again, we saw the same thing at Phoenix with a lot of guys having to take the toll road, if you will, at the end of the track because their speed was too fast for them to make the turn (off the track).

“Another thing you have to remember is we are running speeds less than we were last year . . . 318-319 (mph) at Phoenix, and I’m having to get on the brakes with both chutes out just to make a safe turn at the end.  I’m going to talk with Bill Simpson at Impact about it.  He has some ideas about improving the parachutes.  The weight has definitely affected not only the way you drive the car, but even more so slowing them down.”

Melanie Troxel, new driver of Mike Ashley’s Funny Car this year, says Brian Corradi and Mark Oswald, co-crew chiefs on the Pro Care RX Dodge Charger, have had to overcome not only the extra 100 pounds, but, “we had to add another 30-to-40 pounds in the weight difference between Mike and I,” she said.  “It made it hard on us just to find places to hang that much weight on the car.

“And then to get that much extra weight moving on the track, I think, is something a lot of teams have struggled with. That’s one of the things we’ve been working on.”

“At Pomona, I really didn’t have a hard time, but then again, this year I have three passes to my name to the finish line so I haven’t had enough experience with it.”

Her husband, Tommy Johnson Jr., a veteran Funny Car chauffeur now driving Kenny Bernstein’s Monster Energy Drink Dodge, was able to provide more insight.

“Obviously, I think the weight has changed the way the car performs and reacts a little bit,” he said.  “They definitely don’t leave the line as hard as they used to.  It’s hard to get that extra weight going. 

And once you do get it going, it seems harder to slow it down. 

“I’d say, on average, the cars are 50 pounds heavier because most everybody was a little over (the limit).  But just that extra little big of weight has really affected the way they stop.  I’ve been so many more guys than normal go off the track.  I haven’t had any problems but I have noticed I’ve had to use the brakes more in the shutdown area than I used to. It definitely changed it. I always use both chutes but I’ve had to get on the brake a little harder to stop.

“I really didn’t think I’d notice a difference but as time’s gone on and I’m making more full runs and better runs, the faster you go it seems it is a little harder to stop.”

At the starting line, however, “the cars don’t leave as well, either,” Johnson continued. “We’ve really had to work to get the car to leave the starting line.

“I believe the reason Tim Wilkerson (No. 1 qualifier at Pomona, 4.790 seconds at 325.22 mph and Phoenix, 4.775 at 327.03) is running like he is right now is because his car was heavy last year.  A driver who had a heavy car last year would have an advantage because he has all the data to draw from previous years. 

“Our car is a lot heavier than it’s ever been so now we are trying to figure out how to make this heavy weight go and Wilkerson has already figured it out.  I know Jimmy (Walsh, team crew chief) had to change some things and we worked at it quite a while to get the 60-foot times better . . . and they still aren’t where they were in the past. But they are back to where they are competitive.”

A new wrinkle awaits Johnson and the Monster team.  They have a new Brad Hadman chassis they plan to test soon. 

“Now we have to figure out what to do with the new one,” added Johnson.  “This is a different car -- bigger tubing and we will have to change a lot of things again.  We are going to do a lot of testing, I think, before we actually switch to the Hadman chassis.  We plan to test it before Gainesville.”

Johnson, who joined Bernstein’s team in the off-season, was fitted for the Murf McKinney cars and he spent three hours last week getting fitted for his new “office chair.” 

“We’ll probably run the McKinney chassis until Jimmy feels he has enough data to run the Hadman car competitively,” Johnson predicted. 

Elsewhere, the John Force Racing team – the 14-time champion and 125-race winner, his daughter Ashley, Robert Height and Mike Neff – has not experienced problems slowing their cars, said Dave Densmore, the team’s award-winning publicist. 

“My guys haven't had any trouble stopping except when they don't pull the chutes.  Pulling the chutes, apparently, is important.  Force just missed them on two test runs at Phoenix and then at Pomona, he just forgot while he was watching Tony (Pedregon) blow up.”

These perplexing problems – much like the 85-and 90-percent nitromethane edicts of the past – will soon prove to be mere distractions as the team crew chiefs work diligently to eradicate them.  There are, after all, 22 races to go – plenty of time for permanent fixes.