There’s very little in the world of drag racing crew chief Rahn Tobler hasn’t accomplished.

Last Saturday, he was honored as the Grand Marshal of the 40th annual Kelly Services Night Under Fire in Norwalk, Ohio.

An honor that caught him completely off-guard.

“I knew nothing about it,” Tobler said. “They do a big driver intro and all these things and I was told they thought they were going to do some crew chief interviews possibly, and they told me I needed to be up there and I said sure.”

Tobler, however, didn’t see any reason to have a sense of urgency.

“It’s was a 7 p.m. show, and at 6:15 p.m., I’m still sitting in my trailer watching golf,” Tobler said. “I was told again they may want to do crew chief interviews so I went up there. Then, when I got up there, I noticed I didn’t have my radio with me. So, I went back to my trailer on my scooter and I when I got back to my trailer, I no sooner got off my scooter and one of my crew guys was right behind me on another scooter. He was like they may want to interview you and I told him I was getting my radio.

“Apparently, everybody else knew about this. I came back up to the starting line and I was sitting on the wall with my crew guys. When they got done introducing the drivers they brought me up to the starting line and Bill Bader Jr. was talking on the PA and that’s when I realized he was talking about me. It was a total surprise. It was a great honor. I’ve never been singled out like that.”

Despite the accolade, Tobler was quick to share his grand marshal recognition.

“It’s really not about me so much, but about me having great opportunities over the years working with good drivers and most of all the people who have worked with me are most of the reason I was standing up there,” Tobler said. I also got an engraved plaque, and it was just a nice day.”

Tobler is deserving of high praise. He helped guide legendary Shirley Muldowney to three NHRA world championships in 1977, 1980 and 1982. He then switched over to nitro Funny Car ranks and led Cruz Pedregon to the 2008 NHRA Funny world championship. He added another title when he helped Ron Capps claim a nitro Funny world championship in 2016 in the Don Schumacher Racing NAPA Auto Parts Dodge Charger.

Tobler has guided drivers to 60 NHRA national event victories – 30 in Top Fuel and 30 in Funny Car.

This season Tobler and Capps are in a better groove. Capps has been to the final round in eight of this season’s 16 races, and he has six wins.

Capps heads to the Lucas Oil Nationals Aug. 18-20 at Brainerd, Minn., in the points lead – 158 points in front of his DSR teammate Matt Hagan.

“All of last year was a great year,” Tobler said. “We won five races last year, and really the last 1½ years has been crazy. I step back and think of the things we have achieved as a team with Ron. We have won 23 races in just a little over five years. That’s almost half the total races I’ve won in my 40-plus year career. Certainly, the time we have spent with Ron has been very productive and very fruitful. It’s been a great 1½ years. Now, it’s getting down to crunch time and we probably haven’t done as well at the last three races prior to that. There were some reasons for those things and we felt very optimistic leaving Seattle (Aug. 6), and we look forward to Brainerd this weekend. Our first goal is to maintain our first-place finish to be able to get the extra points going into the Countdown, and also get the No. 1 seed in the Traxxas Shootout.”

The NHRA regular season concludes with races in Brainerd and the U.S. Nationals in Indianapolis (Aug. 30-Sept. 4) and then the six-race Countdown to the Championship begins with the NHRA Carolina Nationals Sept. 15-17 in Charlotte.

“Our focus when we go to the races is Sunday,” Tobler said. “Our goal throughout qualifying is not be No. 1 qualifier, not necessarily be the quickest guy in every session, although we did very well in the bonus points last year. We haven’t done so well on those bonus points this year, but we have won more races at this point in time. Our focus is always on Sunday and I think gathering enough data through Friday and Saturday qualifying, no matter where we qualify, we feel that we have a chance to win on Sunday. We didn’t change anything physically with the race car or our approach over the winter. We came out this year and we started strong and then went on a four-race win streak. Sometimes you take what you can get. Winning races like Bristol and Chicago, which were hot, and we won with a bunch of 4.0s and that’s really all it took.

”We realize now that we get towards the end of the year, the performance in the class as a whole is going to step back up to the really quick numbers. We realize that’s where we need to get back to being and that’s certainly going to be our goal in the next couple of months.”

Tobler did take time to address the massive success he’s had in his career.

“The years I raced with Shirley I had three championships, starting in the late 70s, so I achieved those championship goals,” Tobler said. “The thing that’s most amazing to me is that when Shirley retired and I went to work for Doug Kalitta in 2004, I have won 44 (of his 60 races) since 2004 and to me that’s a phenomenal number. The fact that Cruz Pedregon called me to come run his Funny Car and I said I don’t know anything about Funny Cars. He said you can do this, I know you can, and I had a lot of help from Dickie Venables because Dickie was at the Pedregons with Tony. Everybody knows the story that Dickie and I are lifelong friends and he said come on, I will help you and we can do this and we won a championship in our first year.

To think I have won 30 Funny Car races since 2007, you set back and you just think ‘wow.’ Thanks for Cruz for giving me the opportunity and having faith in me to do this and obviously the opportunities I’ve had at DSR, I’m in my eighth year here, have just been unreal. I’m not saying that I could not have had success with any other driver here, but since that faithful day in Vegas in April of 2012 when Don came over and said you’re going to run the NAPA team, things have exploded since then.”