Change is never easy for some. But for Mike Thielen he's making a significant change after 25 years of following a proven path.

Thielen is going nitrous racing, and he's straightening the curve as much as it can be straightened in teaming up with iconic drag racer Rickie Smith.

"It's not necessarily going from a blower car to a nitrous car; it's just the last couple years I just kind of felt like I was in a rut," Thielen admitted. "I was on the Mike Janis team and a good group of guys, and I just felt we needed to make a change."

The new challenge for Thielen was in making a nitrous combination a consistent front-running program. When the rumors of Smith's retirement began swirling in the community, he knew he needed to decide sooner or later. Smith's retirement talk has been nothing new, but this season appeared to have more momentum than previous scuttlebutt.

"He called me about a month ago and started the procedure of us getting together," Smith confirmed. "I will be crew-chiefing his car, and basically, I'll be owning my car, and he's just going to be leasing [a car] from me and running for the championship."

While Smith only plans to run three races on the 2024 NHRA Pro Modified tour, Thielen will make the full schedule. Smith hinted that the team wouldn't run the NHRA Four-Wide Nationals, but he would compete in another class.

Thielen said he did not plan to let Smith walk away without first trying to convince him otherwise.

"I wanted to make sure he stayed in the game, and it was just a decision that my wife and I made that we wanted to change things up in a little bit different change of pace," Thielen said. "We got to talking, and one thing led to another, and here we are."

Over the course of Pro Modified's existence, the pathway has usually started with nitrous, with drivers migrating to other combinations. Thielen understands his plan is swimming upstream of sorts.

"I have a good teacher," Thielen said. "Rickie's been doing this a long time, and I've already spent a little time with him talking about the differences. I'm used to a lot of buttons and a lot of switches, flying helicopters, and once I get programmed into something, and I got that mental checklist going, I think, give me a little bit of time in the car, just a few runs and I'm going to hopefully have everything dialed in."

While training others in nitrous intricacies might be in Smith's wheelhouse, Thielen's gig is clearly teaching the art of flying the whirlybirds. He owns Glacier Aviation, which is a leading hicopter training service.

"The passion for the helicopters started when I was a real young kid," Thielen said. "We lived out here in the country, kind of where I still live now, and I was playing in my backyard as a young kid and heard a helicopter coming our way, low level, and just that sound of the rotor system buzzing just as a 12-year-old kid stopped me in my tracks, and looked up just to see this machine in the air that's making this cool noise. I basically followed that helicopter. It kept going back and forth, and it ended up being a neighbor that owned one. I went for one ride in that helicopter, and I was like, 'That's what I'm going to do for the rest of my life."

Now with this new chapter in his racing life, Thielen has lots to look forward to, especially in learning a new trick from one of doorslammer racing's most decorated soldiers. But what really gives a spark in his step is the ability to see the tree better from the left lane. In a blower car, tree vision has its challenges.

"That's going to be nice," Thielen said. "Rickie's made some mods to the scoop on that car, so you can see [the tree] better. Right now, when driving these blower cars, when you're in that left lane, depending on where you're lined up, it's pretty tough to see anything but that top bulb. And so you got to really kind of cock your head in the cockpit there to see it. But the way Ricky's got that setup, it's pretty nice. I've actually already sat in the car and stuff, and I'm like, 'Hey, you can actually see across the scoop here."

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Thielen is going to be getting used to a lot of stuff in this new chapter of his doorslammer racing career. By nature, supercharged cars make copious amounts of noise, but Thielen always countered the sound with molded earplugs.

"Some people like it kind of noisy and rowdy. I actually like it where it's really quiet in the car," Thielen admitted. "It's just you're able to really relax and just be able to communicate and stuff. I'm just big on that. And as a pilot, everything's about communication and just being able to hear things and stuff, a lot can get lost."

Smith is determined not to let Thielen get lost.

"Rickie says, 'First time you do it a burnout, you're going to want to take this thing this thing to the moon because you're not going to think that it's loud and stuff. You're not going to hear the engine come up."

"He said, 'It's really, really quiet."

Thielen will drive the Camaro previously driven by Tylor Miller, which won the 2022 NHRA Virginia Nationals Pro Modified title.

"Things happen in these cars very quickly, and I adapt to things pretty quickly on things," Thielen said. "I've got pretty good reactions with things, and I have a nice tendency of not trying to overdrive things. I got, I think, a decent finesse for these things. I think you can get away with a lot up to the 600-foot mark after that. I think you better have things dialed in and smoothed out before you want to take it all the way to the quarter mile."

Thielen admits that prior to hooking up with Smith, he was still determining if he was going to race in 2024.

"I just felt like I had to make a move and make a change," Thielen said. "I didn't want to go down; I didn't want to go lateral. I needed to go up. And just that opportunity with Rickie just felt like it was a good fit. A lot of people love multi-car teams because you can get a lot of data from each other. I like single-car teams. Mike Castellana, those guys did really good this year and hats off to those guys for what they've accomplished. But that's a tight-knit group, and they focus on one car. And so when I got together with Rickie, I said, "Hey, I want to focus on one car, and that's this car."

"I feel that it's just a gut feeling, and it's in my heart that this is the route we should be going, and so we're going to go for it and see what happens."