Veteran Top Fuel driver T.J. Zizzo is going to make his 2017 debut at the 20th annual NHRA Route 66 Nationals July 6-9 in Chicago.

“The first run will absolutely be getting my feet back wet,” Zizzo said. “I’m excited and apprehensive all at the same time. It’s our hometown track and it’s cool to race at Chicago. I’ve been helping the track promote this event for the past several months, which has been great. I do things here and there for them, like go to downtown Joliet, talk with the mayor, appear on the radio in Joliet and in Chicago. All that kind of stuff, which has been cool.”

Zizzo, who made his Top Fuel debut in September of 2003 competed in four races a year ago – Chicago, Sonoma, Seattle and Indianapolis.

“Our team goal (at Chicago) is to set the car up to run career-best numbers, but take baby steps going to the finish line,” Zizzo said. “It seemed like every race we went to last year, we got better and better and better. We had a decent running race car at Indy last year. We didn’t change much over the offseason. Last year we made wholesale changes and this year we just polished what we had at Indy with probably five or six minor changes. By E1 on Sunday, we want to have a great race car and have a decent driver.”

Zizzo said Rust-Oleum will be sponsoring his dragster. In qualifying at the 2016 U.S. Nationals, Zizzo clocked a career-best 3.77-second elapsed time.

“We worked all winter long and this race car is never lacking attention, but there’s a difference between working on it and actually going down the race track,” he said.

After Chicago, Zizzo said his team will take an extended break from racing.

“At this point, we are going to try and all enjoy our summer for the first time in history,” Zizzo said. “We have always been out there racing in the summer and now we’re not going to race again until September or October. I want to give these guys a break. All these guys are volunteers. I want to give them a break and let them go out with their families to picnics they’ve missed or go out boating and whatever they like doing.”