National Hot Rod Association

But in drag racing, a computer isn't really a computer – people just call it that. The only thing a "computer" on a Top Fuel dragster or Funny Car does is record data. Engine rpm, driveshaft rpm, oil pressure, G-force, steering input, ignition timing – almost anything a crew chief could possibly want to know – is tracked by the data recorder. But not quite everything.

"You still need input from the driver to know exactly where the car is strong and where it's weak," says Jimmy Walsh, crew chief of the Toyota-supported Geico dragster driven by Morgan Lucas. "The driver can also tell you how easy or hard the car is to drive, if it's wandering all over the place and he has to fight the car to keep it in the groove, or if it seems to want to go straight."

"A crew chief can find out just about anything by looking at the computer," says Shawn Langdon, driver of the Toyota-backed Lucas Oil Top Fueler. "There honestly isn't much you can say to those guys that they don't already know, but there are a few things.

“I can tell 'Stew' [crew chief John Stewart] what the car was doing as it went through the 'shake zone,' if it rattled a little, or if it felt like it was driving through the clutch. But with a computer, you can't get away with anything. Whatever you do, it'll show up on there. Even if I didn't know what I was doing and couldn't tell Stew one thing that happened on a run, he could look on the computer and find out exactly what the car did."

There's an old saying among drivers: The computer is the crew chief's friend – not the driver's. It's even truer in other classes, such Pro Stock, where short-shifting or over-revving the engine is right there for the team to see.

"The more experience a driver has, the easier it his for him to relate what the car does to you," Walsh says. "Kenny Bernstein is the best I've ever worked with at that – he's just made so many runs. Morgan will probably end up that way too, eventually. He's only been driving Top Fuel cars for six years now, and he's definitely moving in that direction. It's especially helpful if the driver can relay information to you on race day, because that's when you don't have much time to go over everything between runs."

Brian Corradi (pictured), co-crew chief on the Toyota-supported Matco Tools dragster piloted by Antron Brown, wants feedback from Brown in one area that isn't readily discernable from a computer graph: the smoothness of the track surface.

"Sometimes, the car shakes and the driveshaft graph on the computer doesn't it show it, and that's the kind of thing that only a driver can tell you,” Corradi says. “A lot of times, the bumps don't really show up – at least not the little ones – but they can have a huge effect on how the car accelerates. Antron's pretty good at telling us right where the bumps are."

Mark Oswald, Corradi's co-crew chief on the Matco car, concurs. "It's unbelievable how much Antron can you tell you about each run, especially for someone who's only been driving Top Fuel cars for two-and-a-half years," Oswald says. "One thing we always want to know from him is if he felt the car shake down low [early in the run]. You also want a driver to let you know if he felt it lay over on the top end or if it pulled all the way to the finish line."

Dickie Venables, tuner for the Toyota-supported Al-Anabi/Alan Johnson Racing Toyota Funny Car driven by Del Worsham and a past championship winner, wants to know one thing from his driver: How hard did he have to work to stay in the groove?

"I always want to know about the drivability of the car," Venables says. "Del has come back after a run – not very often, but a few times – and said, 'I never even had to turn the wheel.' We can look at the computer, and there will be very little steering input.

"If he has to do a lot of steering, it can put more of a load on one side of the chassis, which just screws up everything. A driver like Del, who's been doing this for 20 years, can really make your job easier by giving you good information. He knows when the chassis is set up right and when it's not."

"You can tell the crew chief a lot more about abnormal runs than you can tell him about trouble-free runs," adds Lucas, a three-time winner on tour last year. "And, needless to say, most runs aren't normal. On probably only 5 or 10 percent of all runs does everything go like it's supposed to go – there's always something to talk about."