Born to Run

Words: Darren Jacobs

Rickie Jones never had a chance—a chance, that is, to be anything other than a drag racer.

The Galesburg, Ill., native and driver of the Mopar® HEMI®-powered Quarter-Max Dodge Stratus R/T Pro Stock car was born with the go-fast gene in his blood. Son of Rick Jones, a renowned Pro Stock chassis builder and a former Pro Stock racer himself, Rickie was weaned in the world of drag racing.

“I always knew I wanted to drive. It’s always been my dream,” said Rickie. “I’ve grown up around racing. I would come to my dad’s shop everyday after school. I went to work at his shop when I was around seven-years-old, just sweeping up or picking up the trash.”

Rickie, at age 21 the youngest driver on the NHRA Pro Stock circuit, has come a long way from sweeping up trash. The young hotshoe drew rave reviews in 2008, his NHRA Pro Stock rookie season, qualifying ninth in his very first event and earning a nomination for the NHRA Auto Club Road to the Future award, given to the series’ top rookie.

It was the culmination of a dream that began years ago. As a teenager Rickie eagerly soaked up knowledge and experience from his father Rick, who competed in Pro Stock trucks in 1999 and then in IHRA Pro Stock cars from 2002–2006. Rickie began working on his dad’s race team at age 13, changing tires, keeping the car clean and, most importantly, constantly learning each day about racing and race cars. It was like a private school for drag racers, with a class size of one.

“There’s not really a college for what we do,” explained Rickie. “I thought there wasn’t any better training or experience that I could get than being here with my dad and working with him. I learned so much about the cars and how to tune them. I was so young, but I was kind of a co-crew chief. My dad would always talk to me about how to tune the cars, what he was doing and why he was doing it. Just watching him race and being around him at the track I was able to learn from him.”

“He’s been around it his whole life,” said Rick Jones about his son. “He’s been schooled to drive a car since he was a little kid. He’s heard me talk about other drivers, if they over steer a car, or if they do this or that wrong. I never had to push him. It’s what he likes to do. He lives, breathes and eats racing.”

Soon, Rickie began to get the itch to jump in the driver’s seat himself and hit the quarter-mile. He cut his teeth on a Pro Stock Dodge Dakota his father had sitting around the shop, getting his first runs under his belt. Then in 2007, Rick Jones fielded two IHRA Pro Stock cars as a team owner. One of the cars went down, and Rickie took the opportunity to put a motor in the defunct car and use it for practice. Rickie would haul the car out any chance he got to practice the skills he would need as a Pro Stock driver—how to do burnouts, how to stage, how to drive with a clutch.

“Burnouts are difficult, because there are so many ways that you can mess up,” said Rickie. “If you’re too low in the burnout the tire can grab as you come out of the water, and the clutch gets hot, which can affect your setting. And if you over rev the car, you can put stress on your engine parts. You have to learn the sweet spot.”

Said Rickie of his early passes, “It was sort of a crawl, walk, run thing. I’d get the car out and run it as much as I could. The only time I ran it was when we could squeeze it in-between test sessions for our primary Pro Stock car. I would tune the main car with my dad, and in between runs I would make passes in my car, trying to get as much seat time as I could.”

The following year, Rick Jones decided to move to NHRA Pro Stock competition—with his son Rickie as the driver. The younger Jones would be thrown into the fire, making his pro debut at the prestigious NHRA Gatornationals in March 2008. Rickie tested a bit before the Gainesville event in his Dodge Stratus R/T with Mopar HEMI power provided by Larry Morgan, receiving his NHRA Pro Stock license just in time for Gainesville.

Rickie admitted he felt some butterflies in his tummy as he pulled up to the line for his first career pass during Gainesville qualifying.

“I was very nervous,” remembered Rickie. “I was almost shaking, trying to take it all in. It hit me, ‘I’m at Gainesville, racing NHRA Pro Stock, pulling into the water box.’ You see all the fans in the stands and think, ‘Wow, this is my dream.’ But once you stage, though, everything goes away.”

And indeed it did. Unfazed by the pressure, Rickie calmly laid down a pass that was the fifth best in his qualifying session—in his first career run at a national event! He wrapped up qualifying in the No. 9 spot at his very first NHRA Pro Stock race.

“That was pretty cool,” said Rickie in a whopper of an understatement. “We we’re just expecting to attempt to qualify. To perform as we did out of the box, we were very proud and thankful for all the help from those who helped us get there.”

The gravity of the accomplishment wasn’t lost on his owner and crew chief—his dad, Rick.

“He was better than I thought he could be. He surprised me,” said Rick. “It usually takes years of experience to drive one of these things as good as he has. He’s done a remarkable job. I’m certainly proud of him.”

Rickie went on to post a more than solid rookie season. He scored his first round win at the NHRA St. Louis event, advanced to the semifinals at Dallas and qualified for the field in 15 out of the 18 races he attended—an outstanding achievement for a rookie in the cutthroat Pro Stock class, where a mere hundredth of a second can mean the difference between qualifying or not qualifying.

Young Rickie has displayed a crucial strength that will serve him well throughout his Pro Stock career—a tendency to leave first off the starting line. In his rookie season, Rickie left first off the line at a higher percentage rate than any Pro Stock driver, posting a better reaction time in 68 percent of his matchups.

“I try to get pumped up and chop the [starting] tree,” offered Rickie.

Some might think that the young Pro Stocker would be in awe of star veterans like Team Mopar driver Allen Johnson, Greg Anderson, and Jeg Coughlin, but it’s not so. Rickie has known most of his fellow competitors since he was a child, talking with them when they would visit his dad’s RJ Race Cars chassis shop. In fact, they also played a role in his education as a Pro Stock driver.

“We build about half the Pro Stock cars, so I’ve been around guys like Allen Johnson, Warren Johnson my whole life,” said Rickie. “I learned a lot from just being around them, at our shop and being at the track and visiting in their pits. To hear great drivers talk about racing and to be able to soak everything in was a big advantage for me, to help me learn. Now I’m pulling up next to them in the next lane. It pumps you up. It puts you on the top of your game. I dreamed about this and mentally prepared for it.”

“His confidence keeps growing,” said Allen Johnson. “He’s a real fundamentally sound driver for someone his age. It seems like every race he gets more and more confident.”

Pursuing his racing career has come with some sacrifices for Rickie. His high school experience was atypical, as he was often absent for long stretches at a time while working as a crew member on his dad’s racing team. Returning home would mean long hours catching up on homework as well as long hours in his father’s shop. Rickie graduated early in 2005 in order to get to the track and help his dad.

“I didn’t have many friends because I was traveling so much,” said Rickie. “It was always racing and working at the shop. Most of my friends were at the track, or they were our customers. I grew up kind of fast because I was 13 years old, and most of my friends were thirty or forty-years-old. But I wouldn’t change anything. The experiences I have gained from being around the shop and the drag strip, you can’t replace.”

“Some people might have normal jobs, but we do this seven days a week,” said Rick Jones of the racing lifestyle he and his son have chosen. “That’s all we do.”

Working so close together, sometimes father and son do clash; however, the very infrequent battles are short-lived and quickly forgotten.

“He gets on me when I deserve it,” said Rickie. “When I make the same mistake twice, he gets on me. He’s just trying to make me better. If we do have a problem, we might talk very heatedly about it, but then move on. We’re like best friends. We just throw it out there, get it out in the open and move on.

Any minor disagreements can’t disguise one very evident fact—Rickie has nothing but love and respect for his father and mentor.

“He’s raced cars, so when it comes to certain issues he is very understanding and able to talk me through it,” said Rickie of his dad. “He taught me not to drive over my head. My dad was a driver who could get a car from A to B, even if the run wasn’t pretty. Being able to know the difference between on the edge and when you’re over your head is something that he helped me understand. He did a good job of keeping me calm and smooth. To be a part of the car, to be one with the car, to know what is happening with the car and be able to react to it.”

With his dad returning as his Zen philosopher/crew chief, Rickie has picked up in the 2009 NHRA Pro Stock season right where he left off last year. He did even better at his most recent stop at the NHRA Gatornationals than he did in his pro debut, advancing to the semifinals. The outing left Rickie eighth in points and well on his way to one of his self-professed goals for his sophomore year.

“We want to win a race this year and we want to get in the top ten in points,” said a determined-sounding Rickie. “We feel like we’ve got a handle on things and we should be able to qualify for most races. I want to show up and I want to win. I don’t want to go out there and be a first-round duck. I’m a very competitive person. Once the motors fire, we’re there to win.”