Editor’s note: Mike Neff is a native of Hemet and serves as crew chief for Robert Hight, who drives the Auto Club-sponsored John Force Racing Chevrolet Camaro.
The off season wasn’t really too bad this year. Last winter was a lot, getting the new Camaro body ready. We built a couple of new cars this year and we went through the inventory and freshened everything up.
We tried to make a few things nicer here and there, so the offseason wasn’t too bad.
We had some extra time now that winter testing isn’t until Phoenix, the week before Pomona, and that gives us more time at the shop in Brownsburg, Indiana. It’s kind of nice to have a little extra time.
We had some new clutch discs and different stuff that we needed to try and we did. Our consistency wasn’t as good as we would’ve like, but the number of times we did go down the track, the car did go really well. We still have a couple of tweaks to make here and there, but overall we’re excited about where we’re at.
It’s nice having Jon (Schaffer) back over here with me. He had been with me for a lot of years before he went to John (Force’s) team. He’s definitely an asset; and Jason (McCullough) is as well. We made a couple changes to the crew and brought some of their guys over from John’s team, so I feel we have a great team. The attitude has been really good and I’m looking forward to getting started.
I’m from California, so I grew up seeing CHP cars my whole life, so I think it’s really cool having that paint scheme on our Auto Club car.
The last couple of years, we haven’t done as well as we usually do and we’re definitely not happy with the way we’ve done. I feel our team is stronger now this year with having Jon and Jason over here, and having (Force’s crew chief) Jimmy (Prock) lightens up the load and will help all the Funny Car teams.
John made some good moves in the offseason, getting Jimmy back and restructuring some things. I feel good about it. I really feel like we’ve got some positive things we’re working on, and I’ve got high expectations for this year.
Our editors found this article on this site using Google and regenerated it for our readers.
