NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

When it comes to nitro crew chiefs, Brian Corradi’s stats compare favorably alongside anyone else in the industry as he’s been a key component in each of Antron Brown’s Top Fuel world titles.

Now, Corradi is expanding his resumé to include driver as he entered his first NHRA national event in Norwalk behind the wheel of a 9-second COPO Camaro.

“I bought this car because I wanted to get some seat time for the Pro Mod car,” said Corradi, referring to the supercharged Gotham City Camaro that he runs in the Pro Mod class. “My ultimately goal is to drive that thing but even if I don’t, this is a fun car.”

Before becoming one of NHRA’s most successful nitro tuners, Corradi raced a 10-second Mustang, competing at local tracks in his native Ohio, including Summit Motorsports Park. It was always part of his plan to resume driving, but it goes without saying that being a Top Fuel crew chief is a time-consuming endeavor.

Not long after he celebrated a nitro win at the Super Grip NHRA Thunder Valley Nationals in Bristol, Corradi ventured to Norwalk where he entered the Division 3 Lucas Oil Series double header. Corradi’s mission was two-fold. First, he wanted to gain some valuable seat time, and he also was looking to collect the necessary two grade points he’d likely to enter this week’s Summit Racing Equipment NHRA Nationals. To suggest the weekend was a success would be an understatement as Corradi reached the semifinals against a stacked field of nearly 100 entries.

“Yeah, that ain’t too bad,” Corradi laughed. “That’s the first time I’ve driven since last year, and I really just wanted to get used to the car and dial the shifter in. So, yeah, it was a really good weekend.

“I really didn’t even know how the whole grading point thing works but I’ve got two now, so I should be able to go to a few more events.”

Racing at his first national event, Corradi qualified a very respectable No. 14, but that meant a very difficult match-up against reigning world champ Russ “Bubba” Linke. Corradi held his own on the starting line, but an electrical issue prevented any chance of an upset.

“The power shut off at half track,” Corradi said. “I was trucking along and I thought, ‘Okay, I think I can catch him,’ and it just shut off. It was more like a miss, but the [digital] dash went blank, and that was the end of it. I’m really not sure what happened but n the future, I guess I need to make sure the battery is fully charged and all the connections are secure.”

Corradi also admits that while tuning a Top Fuel dragster and racing a Stocker are totally different exercises, there are similarities.

“You always learn something, right?” he says.

One thing that potentially threw a monkey wrench into Corradi’s plans was the weather-related schedule change that move the start of professional qualifying from 6 p.m. on Friday to 11:45 a.m. That could have caused an issue, with the first rounds of Stock scheduled for Friday morning, but it ultimately worked out.

“I wouldn’t do anything to interfere with this [Top Fuel] car and Antron knows that,” Corradi said. “He races [a sportsman car] with his kid so he knows the drill. If we ever get to the point where we’re both in late on Sunday, we’ll find a way to make it work.

“When I signed up for this, I didn’t even realize that we raced on Thursday. I didn’t know we got our two qualifying runs, but that was no big deal.”

Encouraged by his early success, Corradi is anxious to get more seat time. He could ultimately wind up in the Pro Mod car, or perhaps something else.

“I’ve got a [FlexJet Factory Stock] Showdown car and I work pretty closely with Scott Libersher, and he want’s me to come out and drive one of his cars, so we’ll see,” Corradi said. “I definitely want to race a bit more. There are a couple more divisional races coming up and I want to hit at least one or two. I’d really like to be able to run Indy, so we’ll see where that goes.”

In addition to Libersher, Corradi also gets help from Kyle Pawuk, and Factory Stock Showdown champ David Barton, who builds his engines.