On July 25, 2022, when Don Schumacher sold majority interest in the Top Fuel team he fielded for the Maynard family, it looked like the end of Don Schumacher Racing.

In truth, it was simply a case of turning the page to a new chapter.

The DSR Performance brand was now free to amp up the engineering, increase the supply chain of crucial racing parts to the drag racing community, and expand its defense and aerospace contracts. Additionally, the new DSR 1150 crate engine was pushed to the front of the company's approach.

Chad Osier, President of DSM Precision Manufacturing and DSR Performance, has risen to the challenge of building the new frontier for a team that once set the standard for multi-car nitro drag racing operations.

"I'm just a steward of the many great men and women that work for the company," Osier said. "I just provide direction and real resources to allow them to be able to do that. So DSM is our manufacturing division where we manufacture all of our race components."

It's not that the Schumacher brand wasn't already focused on these areas, but without the demand to supply its own in-house racing operations, there arose the opportunity to expand into various other high-demand markets such as Pro Modified, the alcohol market with rods and blocks, and tractor pulling.

When supply-chain issues hit these markets, Osier said DSM became proactive to ensure an adequate supply of high-demand products could hit the market in a timely fashion.

"We've been very aggressive early on in the pandemic to hedge material, both from a price standpoint and a supply standpoint, so we've done a really good job," Osier confirmed. "My team -- our production and quality team -- has done an incredible job making sure we have material that we can process to support these teams out here.

"It's a very difficult situation, especially when it comes to forecasting in the motorsports industry, but they've done a good job making sure that we have parts material ready to manufacture these blocks, cylinder heads, rods, and other engine components."

In a sense, Schumacher traded in eight nitro teams for hundreds of racing operations.

"It's been quite the journey," Osier confirmed. "Don set out in 2005 to start manufacturing his own parts so that you can achieve three things: quality; cost -- he's a businessman, making sure he can be very efficient with his cost -- and, most importantly, competitive advantage. That has not changed today.

"We continue to do these things in our shop, continue to expand, utilize technology to offer more products (and become) a one-stop shop. ... We now supply to most of the teams out there in the field."

The technology learned in decades of racing nitro goes into producing other products.

"We're just scratching the surface," Osier added. "We built a team. We doubled our size in the last two years, and we've been very careful about growth and making sure we supply and still have great customer service and quality."

The next push, Osier said, is to make the Schumacher brands household names in the drag racing industry, expanding well beyond the nitro arena. He said he wants the average drag racer aware they can have the same quality parts many nitro teams have depended on for years.

"It's almost like going to the grocery store, and you go to buy eggs, but you don't understand what goes into making a dozen eggs," Osier said. "It's hundreds of thousands of acres of land and hundreds of thousands of chickens, a process to quality control to make sure every single egg that's in that cart is just right and it does have a bad yolk, not broken, etc.

"That's no different than what goes on in the racing. Buying premium materials, converting those materials into complex machine parts, and really making sure it shows up. In fact, we want to make sure it's not even a second thought. Or, 'Hey, I don't need to worry about DSR Performance in their parts because I know they can be great.'"

That's been the plan since 2005, Osier points out. If one is talking chicken and eggs, Osier seeks to make the DSR and DSM brands as much household names as those of Tyson and Perdue in the poultry industry.

The launch of the DSR Performance 1150, an 1150-horsepower crate engine based on the 392 Hemi, was a significant step in that direction.

"That brand is really our halo product where we're going to start expanding our products underneath that for both ... blown alcohol and nitro classes, as well as into the street rod industry," Osier explained.

With Dodge's foray into the electric vehicle market with the new Charger Daytona SRT, Osier confirmed the Don Schumacher Performance brand will continue to market to the performance enthusiasts who will continue to support the traditional way of making horsepower.

"The performance enthusiast is a different customer, plain and simple," Osier said. "I can tell you right now that I've sold enough engines to people with Hellcats in one side of their garage and Teslas in the other because it's just a different category. It's a different market; it's a different customer. So for them to continue to advance, they have to. They have to abide by the EPA guidelines, and that's a direction.

"Now, that's not to say that it's going to cannibalize or take away from the performance. I believe it will actually make it stronger, the performance aftermarket, because they've got to get their fix somewhere. A lot of these OEMs are pulling back from the performance products. The aftermarkets are a place to go, and that's where we're going to be very strong and focused on with our brand and products."

Currently, the Schumacher brand is deeply rooted in the Mopar nameplate, and the crate engine is based on the Hellcat platform. Still, its work with street-legal centrifugal superchargers could enable a move across all platforms.

"Whipple is our key partner on our supercharger program or our supercharged engine platform," Osier said. "Now, that's just one of our programs we'll be offering. We're going to continue to expand our product line to offer more kits for our customers to do minor upgrades to their cars from a performance-parts perspective. But all that is the continued expansion of our brand in our technology."

The bottom line is that Osier wants to reinforce the fact that DSR has not gone away but has diversified into new arenas where, just like in nitro racing, the plan includes dominating the market soon.

"If anything, we've grown in the sense of not only being a leading parts manufacturer, but also being a platform for racers to have blower and clutch services, and a parts product mix that is turnkey for the engine and chassis," Osier concluded.