The progress of nitro Funny Car driver Bobby Bode was clear in 2021.

Bob Bode, his father/team owner and fellow driver, liked what he saw.

Bobby, 19, competed in nine races, qualified third in St. Louis with a 3.891-second elapsed time at 322.04 mph, and got his first career round win, defeating Terry Haddock in round one.

“We had a really good car in St. Louis and it was really good for him to get that round win,” Bob said. “That was very exciting for me to watch, and it was something he was waiting to accomplish.”

Bob competed in race last season in Brainerd, Minn., because Bobby was starting school at Arizona State University in Tempe.

“(In 2022), I think we have on our list 11 (races),” Bob said. “Bobby is going to 10 (races) and I’m probably going to do Brainerd again. It just depends on what weekend he starts school. Bobby is midway through his sophomore year right now and majoring in business.”

From Bobby’s first race in 2021 in Gainesville, Fla., in March to his last event in Pomona, Calif., in November, Bob was glad to see his son move up the learning curve.

“From the beginning of the season to the end of the season he matured in the drag racing world immensely,” Bob said. “He qualified for every race he went to and early on a lot of things were still new to him. In the nine races he drove he figured out a lot of stuff. By the end of the year our car was qualifying a little better and he was driving way better. Everything he did during the season grew him up in the drag racing world quite a bit.”

One of Bobby’s best qualities so far in his nitro Funny Car career has been his reaction times.

“His 10 years he ran his Jr. Dragsters early on he was mediocre, and he got so good at his lights over there,” Bobby said. “He probably had a couple thousand passes (in Jr. Dragsters) which doesn’t translate to the quickness of the nitro car, but the continuing staging the car helped him. He doesn’t even think about staging the (nitro Funny Car) because he has done so much in a (Jr. Dragster) and the big car stages the same. 

“The rest of it is his reflexes and he’s a teen-ager and his reflexes are really, really good. He’s always mad at himself if he has a light during the weekend that’s not up to what he thinks he should be doing. He works at it and he takes his practice tree with him to school and in his free time he’s always practicing.”

Bob believes with Bobby driving his team is on the cusp of even bigger things in next season.

“If he keeps driving the way he is, it becomes getting the car to come around and be a little more consistent on race day,” Bob said. “We have been pretty good in qualifying and we want to get that a little better, but race day we have to get it running better. For him personally, he looks at the data and does the changing in the tune-up from one round to the next. He’s learned so much in the last 10 races and I think that is what is going to come around for him next. The more we get to run the car, the better he understands the data coming out of the last run to move into the next run and I think that will help if he keeps driving better it will be a good combination through the season.”

Bob said he still leans on veteran standout driver/team owner Tim Wilkerson for advice.

“He’s the guy who keeps us out of trouble,” Bob said. “From race to race, Bobby is doing most of the adjusting now because we have two years’ worth of data on the car. When we run into a brick wall with it, Tim will look at it and tell us where we are missing the boat. Bobby is a funny kid because he will go up to the starting line when we are ready for the next round, and he sits over the control box in the race car, and he will be turning on the knobs.

“St. Louis the joke was why did it run so good? Most guys when they go in there, they turn the knob a little bit and Bobby doesn’t know how to turn it a little bit. He turned it a lot and it liked it. That’s what he’s the learning, the intricacies, the ups and downs of those numbers going in and out of that little box and making sure the track will hold what he’s throwing at it.”

Bob said Bobby will begin his 2022 campaign at the season-opening Lucas Oil NHRA Winternationals Presented By ProtectTheHarvest.com in Pomona, Calif., Feb. 17-20, and he will follow that up with the NHRA Arizona Nationals, Feb. 25-27 in Phoenix.

“He told me I don’t care what we do next year as long as we go to Phoenix,” Bob said. “He said he goes to school 10 miles from there.”

Bob said having Bobby replace him the cockpit has not been as hard as he thought it would be.

“I thought I would miss it more,” Bob said. “I think it is 50-50 this year whether I’m going to re-license or not. I might be done. The one race a year is good, but it is kind of anticlimactic after 20 years of driving the car. It’s OK and I still like it, but I would like it if it was Bobby’s 10th or 11th race of the year and not my first. For me, I work harder on the car than I did when I drove it. I have more time to do it because I’m not in the seat. We like getting it fast and running it well for him.”

Bob said it is easier to end his driving career – if that’s what happens – because he won a coveted Wally in Brainerd in 2010.

“That put a cap on all my effort in drag racing,” Bob said. “Getting that just makes everything so much easier. We laughed and joked when we won that, I remember it being late at night we had gone out to the zoo, and we came back and we were standing there and the Wally was sitting on the counter on the trailer and all of us looked at each other and I said, ‘We should probably quit right now because it is not going to ever get any better than this moment.’ We laughed and 11 years later we are still doing it, chasing it, and working hard at it and the only thing better now is being able to watch Bobby do it.”