Ford dealer balancing family business and NHRA race team while waiting out COVID-19.
BY MIKE PRYSON APR 27, 2020
This is part of a feature we call Autoweek Breaks Down, where we bring you a smattering of stories tied to a weekly theme. The aim is to deliver automotive content that entertains and enlightens but that doesn’t necessarily follow the news cycle. This week Autoweek Breaks Down Horses.
Veteran NHRA Funny Car driver Bob Tasca III of Cranston, RI isn’t just sitting at home waiting out the COVID-19 pandemic and watching his cellphone for back-to-work orders to pop up in his messages.
The 44-year-old driver of the world’s fastest Mustang is moving at the speed of a Funny Car, juggling 12 car dealerships, dealing with the heartbreak of having to lay off and furlough employees, and itching to find out when his Motorcraft/Quick Lane Ford Mustang Funny Car team can get back to the track.
It’s all heady stuff for the current leader of the Tasca Automotive Group that was started by his grandfather, Bob Tasca Sr., in 1953.
“It’s unimaginable times, to say the least,” Tasca, a six-time NHRA Funny Car winner, said when we reached him at his office while he was practicing social distancing at one of his Ford dealerships in Rhode Island.
We got Tasca’s takes on COVID-19, the car business at this unprecedented time, what the NHRA might look like on the other side and what the Ford Mustang means to him:
Autoweek: What’s a day in the life of Bob Tasca III like today? Sounds like you’re putting in some long hours.
Bob Tasca III: The way I describe it to people, the first two weeks of this, every day was like living a month. Things were changing so fast and things were happening that we’ve never experienced before. We’ve had to take drastic measures at our dealerships. We have 12 franchises, located in several different states, all with different laws in each state with what each governor was doing.
That was all-encompassing. That consumed all of my time for the first two weeks, and then we were in restructuring mode. It’s been quite an undertaking, to say the least. It’s been really, really challenging.
Our stores are in Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and we have one store in Florida. The Florida store has done the best. Rhode Island has been a stay-at-home state, Connecticut was a shelter-in-place state, as is Massachusetts. Fortunately, the car business was deemed essential on service and appointment-only sales. So, we’ve been able to maintain a skeleton crew. But we had to take drastic measures to furlough and lay off hundreds of people to get ourselves in a position to live to fight another day.
You only have X amount in the checking account. We can’t print money and we can’t go to Wall Street for help because we’re a private business. You just want to make sure financially you’re in a position to get to the other side of this.
AW: And what does that other side look like for the car business?
BT: I don’t think anyone knows, but I think for the auto business I feel confident that we’ll be one of the industries that bounces back, maybe sooner and stronger than other industries. We’re starting to prepare for that now.
We’re starting to see light at the end of the tunnel. Rhode Island opens up on May 8, and Massachusetts and Connecticut are in a similar time frame. We’re starting to rebuild and restructure for what the new normal will be.
I think you’re going to see some incentive wars. We’re already seeing deals now that we’ve never seen—0% financing for 84 months, 0% for 72 months. There’s terms out there that are really pretty extraordinary. The used car market is changing rapidly. I think there’s huge unknowns on the late-model stuff, what the rental car companies will do. It’s interesting. You had better pay attention because it’s going to move fast on you.
AW: Speaking of fast, we got a chance to check out the World’s Fastest Mustang video featuring you and your Funny Car team that your friends at Ford Performance put together. How cool was that?
BT: That definitely puts a smile on my face. Some of my darkest days, I’ll sit in the office and watch that video they put together. It’s something that I love doing and I know it’s something that Ford loves.
All those Ford fans have been hanging in there, waiting for us to come back. I’ve been doing weekly messages on my social media, giving everyone an update on what we’re doing, on what Ford’s doing to help so many people. That’s really been a bright spot on the racing side.Related StoryNHRA Legend Force ‘Worried Sick’ about COVID-19
We haven’t been racing, but just to be associated with Ford and look at all the things they’re doing to help their customers, whether it’s to make payments, help their new customers defer payments, what they’re doing with ventilators and protective gear. It’s been really good for us, I know for all the Ford drivers, to kind of talk about that over the next several weeks as we all navigate these pretty challenging times.
AW: On the racing side, you’re coming off a really nice year—two wins, finished fifth in the points in 2019. What’s it like not to be out there?
BT: We had the perfect year planned. We came off one of the best years of my career, multiple wins, many final-round appearances. We had everything planned perfectly, and then the end of the world as we know it happened, and we put everything on hold.
Definitely, the first couple of weeks of this shutdown, racing was on the back burner. We were just focused on keeping our dealerships alive and keeping the race team together. Having sponsors that stick with you during these very challenging times makes the difference. And Ford has been rock solid with us. They know that we’ll get back to racing.Advertisement – Continue Reading Below
Now, to be honest, racing is coming more to the forefront. I’m talking to the crew chiefs a lot. We’re trying to figure out what type of inventory we have with parts and what vendors we could be short on. We’re expecting a very rapid return to racing. Where it will be, when it will be exactly, there’s a lot of unknowns, but getting back to racing is a definite.
And having the parts inventory that you need to go, I don’t know, maybe 15 straight races. Who knows what it’s going to look like. We’ve got to be ready for it.
AW: How will you know when it’s ready, when it’s time to go back to the racetrack?
BT: I’m not NHRA, so I can’t speak for them. But reading the tea leaves and looking at what IndyCar’s talking about, what NASCAR is talking about, I think at some point, we’ve got to get back to racing soon. Just to be able to go back to our sponsors, to go back on TV.
We have a great TV show on Fox. We had a lot of live events that drew huge audiences. I think to some extent, we’ve got to prepare to go back without fans and then be able to pivot to go to races around the country with fans when it’s safe. I think you’ll start to see more of that.
I think the government, whether you’re a Republican or Democrat, at the end of the day, you really have to admire what the governors and states and federal government have done, being put in a situation that we’ve never been put in before. Anyone can be a Monday morning quarterback, but I think they’ve set a pretty good cadence with how to open phase one, phase two, phase three as that transpires over the next couple of months.
I think it’s going to be safe to get back racing here pretty soon, hopefully in May. And then we’ll expand on that. Where we go, and what the NHRA’s plans are, I have not been privy to, but my race team, we’re ready to go.
Our parts, are cars are serviced. If NHRA wanted to go back racing this weekend, we’d be ready. On that side of the fence, we’re good to go. On the other side of the fence, where we’ll go back, when fans will come back, how that whole thing will work, I think there’s a lot of unknowns. I’m pretty sure you’re going to see some clarity in the next couple of weeks.
AW: Have you thought about what the new normal could mean to an NHRA weekend?
BT: I think people will be very understanding about what’s taken place. It’s such a historic turn of events, and what we’re all being faced with are things we’ve never faced before. I’m sure the NHRA fans will be understanding of that.
I think we’ll be back to normal. People use the term ‘new normal.’ I think we’ll be back to normal. I don’t know if it will be this year, but I do believe life is going to return to normal normal and we’re going to put this pandemic behind us.Advertisement – Continue Reading Below
AW: What do you feel about what’s going on outside your office these days?
BT: I sit in my office, I feel real lonely—it’s not who I am. I love to be up and about and interacting with the team, whether it’s at the racetrack or back at the dealerships, but we are taking all the precautions to stem the curve of this terrible virus.
I think it’s all paying off. It’s a tribute to all the American men and women—some have the most challenging task at all, and that’s just staying home. I’ve had the ability to go to work and work with our teams. And then we all get to admire the real heroes out there, these health care workers on the front lines. It’s just absolutely incredible.
I know our dealerships are doing our small parts. We can’t make masks, we can’t make ventilators, but we’ve been buying lunches and coffee and donuts for the ICUs around our businesses, the National Guard setting up at the testing center, the state police. We’ve been doing our small role to say thanks to all the front-line workers in this really challenging time.
AW: How often do you think about getting back in that world’s fastest Mustang for the first time after all this?
BT: I think we’ll all appreciate a lot of the little things we took for granted in our day-to-day routines after this is over.
“We’re all anxious to get back, and I know that we will.”
I tweeted a picture on my social media last week, it was something (fellow NHRA Funny Car driver) Ron Capps sent to me. It’s that view looking over the injector of a Funny Car. For me, it’s doing the burnout in that Mustang and looking up in the crowd and just seeing thousands and thousands of people standing on their feet and getting ready for one of these cars to go.
And then it’s going down and hitting the throttle on this Motorcraft Mustang. It’s a feeling that you can’t describe. You just have to experience it, whether you’re a spectator or a driver or a crew member.
We’re all anxious to get back, and I know that we will. I’m just blessed to have such and incredible group of sponsors with Motorcraft, Quick Lane, Ford, Line-X, PPG, BG, all these sponsors that support us and allow us to get up there and do what we do, what we love to do and to put on a show for so many millions of fans across the country.
So, we’ll be back at it, and we’ll appreciate it just a little bit more because of this.