The Familiar Yellow Jeg’s Colors Flying High In 2012

by Motor Sports Unplugged | January 6, 2012 at 09:14 am

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You’ve heard it numerous times on the track’s PA system…”You want performance parts…J-E-G-S!”

In 2012, the familiar yellow of Jeg’s Mail Order and four-time Full Throttle Pro Stock championship driver Jeg Coughlin is coming back to the Factory Hot Rod ranks. You would think taking a year off, he would be laid back with his feet up on the ottoman and just chillin’ out.

“No, that’s not the case,” said the spirited Coughlin. “I’ve been able to spend a lot of time in Delaware, Ohio, with our business. I’ve been to quite a few golf tournaments that my son, Jeggie, now 14, played throughout the spring and summer.

“Samantha and I, my new wife, got married back in August and somewhere in between all that stuff we fit in probably around 15 bracket races with my dragster, my Chevy II and Samantha races too, so we hit a couple of NHRA events along the way. I had a great year of racing, had a great year at home and had a great year in the business. So, life is good.”

When we last saw Jeg on the track he was in his seventh final round of 2010 at the Pomona finals against Shane Gray, narrowly losing the race by a mere two feet. After the event, the 52-time Pro Stock winner Coughlin walked away from the cockpit, but his name was never far from the sport of drag racing.

“When I stepped away at the end of 2010, I honestly didn’t have immediate plans to re-enter the fray, so to speak,” said Coughlin. “I had fielded several opportunities maybe to join some nitro teams as a driver, both in the long and skinny and the funny cars. I decided to steer away from that direction.

“It’s always been a curiosity of mine, you know, nitro is in the blood. I was ready to go on and field a couple of cars to go Pro Stock racing with different current teams and to start a team with a prominent NASCAR team owner.

“You know, that’s what I think got me ‘rehooked’ back into it, with the conversation we were having. When the smoke all cleared, if we’re going to put that kind of effort into it, we wanted to have our namesake on top of the whole thing and start a whole team of our own again.

“We started that in late January and as they say, the rest is history. We started putting things together with an engine program that is very important in Pro Stock with Roy Simmons and Nick Ferri, two of the guys we worked with in our Pro Stock efforts since 2004. They’ve been itching to get back together with us and communicated they would like to do that when the time was right. It just seemed like the right time.

“I’ll tell ya, it’s been ‘Mach2 with your hair on fire’ every since mid-July and it is still going to be coming down to the wire for us getting the car ready, the transporters ready, three or four race-ready engines to go testing and to Pomona. Everything is coming together as most race programs do, just in the nick of time.

“We formed a new engine shop, JNR Racing, which is located in Mooresville, N.C. The writing was on the wall and we spent the next couple of months working with different opportunities as far as what cars to build and what brand. It landed on the new Dodge Avenger with great support from Mopar and the Chrysler Tech Center.”

KB Racing has dominated the last two years with Greg Anderson and Jason Line winning back-to-back championships. After a year away, Coughlin sees some changes, but it’s more about personnel rather than the car themselves.

“Visibly, not a whole lot as far as the cars go,” said Coughlin. “I think we’ve seen a couple of new faces come on board, some teams getting back together. Vincent Nobile is certainly one of the new faces that joined in with the Mountain View Race team with Allen Johnson horsepower. His Dodge ran extremely well and won three races. It looked at one point he would challenge for the Full Throttle Championship.

“Really, I thought we saw more dominance out of the KB Racing Team (Anderson and Line) than I thought you would see, as well as Mike Edwards and Ron Krisher, who was running well, as Cagnazzi Racing was running.

“When I left that team, we were running extremely well and certainly thought they would challenge for some wins and possibly for a championship. I also thought Allen Johnson would throw his hat into the ring for several wins.

“I think we’re going to see some exciting Pro Stock racing this year. Line pretty much stole the show when it came time for the Countdown. Rightfully so, they did a heck of a job and we’re looking to mix it up with them in ’12. Only this time, it’s a changed result.”

Pro Stock racing has long been known as a driver’s race where a hundredth of a second advantage on the starting line could mean the difference between winning and losing.

Coughlin has always been known as a good leaver. The many Lucas Oil Sportsman events he races every year keep his starting line prowess razor sharp, but driver comfort is also important, as a confident driver is aggressive and can get up on the wheel when it counts.

“I know of teams that have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars for a hundredth of a second,” laughed Coughlin. “When you think about it, sometimes it’s right behind the wheel. That’s always been our goal to make the driver as comfortable as possible, let’s do whatever we can to accommodate there, because that hundredths of a second or more is such an advantage off the starting line. It certainly can make up for any tuning mishaps or lack of power.

“In my career, we never really had the fastest car, but we’ve always been very, very close, but never that dominant car, so to speak. We’re looking to change that. We want an extremely powerful car and I think Nick and Roy will provide the horsepower under the hood and collaborating with some new folks on the team side.

“Tomi Laine will head up the crew chief efforts. He’s the European champion Pro Stock crew chief a couple of times over. He’s savvy as a crew chief. I’m looking forward to working with Tommy. It’s going to be exciting. We’ve done everything we can so far except light up the scoreboards and we’re set to do that real soon.”

Coughlin, while driving for Don Schumacher Racing, last won in a Dodge in 2005 defeating Tom Martino, ironically also in a Dodge, at the Auto Club NHRA Finals. Coughlin is a two-time winner of the upcoming Winternationals and the last Dodge to win season-opening race came from Darrell Alderman, who won it in 1991 and 1995.

The ponies under hood are the key ingredients in Pro Stock racing. Will the Mopar Hemi engine live up to its reputation?

“We’ll see,” said Coughlin. “This is our first opportunity to work with the parts and pieces from the Dodge side of things. Nick and Roy have predominately had more knowledge with the GM side. Everything they have worked on mathematically and physically, they see this as an opportunity in the Dodge program and they have had some very fast Chevrolets from where they came from.

“They won a couple of championships and I think that is very promising, but until we hit the track, it’s hard to say. I’m eagerly optimistic from an aerodynamic side of the Dodge Avenger. It’s very clean and very good through the wind and from a horsepower standpoint, based on what we’ve seen from Allen Johnson, Nobile and even V. Gaines’ deal with their Dodge power plant, it shows a lot of prospects. They have had numerous top speeds over the year. “

So as good elapsed times go there come wins - and those wins lead to championships. Coughlin, who won titles in 2000, 2002, 2007-08, wants to add a fifth ring to his collection.

“It’s definitely at the top of list right now,” he said. “That’s our goal for 2012. We’ve had many milestone goals in the last six months and I think a lofty goal for ’12 is to win the Full Throttle Championship in Pro Stock.

“We’ve put together a great group of people on the car side and put a great group of people together on the engine side, all capable of winning a championship. That’s definitely our goal.

“It’s going to be extremely exciting to get the car on the race track and see how we fare with the rest of the pack. We think the competition is as strong as it’s going to be. We plan on challenging right from Pomona.”

As driven as Coughlin is to win, he still has a solid foundation that gives him a good base and allows him to focus on the task at hand. His 52-professional win total puts him in tie for eighth on the all-time NHRA wins list with Top Fuel ace Joe Amato.

“There’s not a whole lot of reason to dwell on the negative or the things you can’t accomplish,” Coughlin said. “I suppose, if you spend time on that, you’ve missed what your goals are. There’s no turning back.

“We try to stay focused and grounded on what’s ahead. You have to be nimble and agile to think on your feet and surround yourself with good people to attain your goals. I think we’ve been successful at doing that. It’s a team effort.”

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