Jimmy Prock quietly has emerged as the best crew chief who’s never won an NHRA Powerade drag racing championship.

The 41-year-old has put four different drivers into position to win it all but has yet to get the hardware accrued by his crew chief contemporaries at John Force Racing Inc., Austin Coil, Bernie Fedderly and John Medlen, who, between them, have claimed 18 series championships.

However, coming off a second consecutive runner-up finish with driver Robert Top Gun Hight, Prock this year is poised once more to win it all.

His current power platform is a blue-and-white Automobile Club of Southern California Ford Mustang fondly designated the Prock Rocket, one that has rung up the two quickest quarter mile times in Funny Car history: 4.646 seconds at Pomona, Calif., and 4.636 seconds Chandler, Ariz.

With Hight, the 2005 NHRA Rookie-of-the-Year, Prock believes he has his best title shot since he finished second with Top Fuel driver Cory McClenathan in 1992. He was second that year by nine points. Last year, he and Hight lost the championship by 19 points, less than one round.

Ironically, Prock missed races in two of those runner-up seasons. With McClenathan who, as an independent, was operating on a strict budget, he did not send a car to the ‘92 Grandnational at Montreal, Canada. With Hight, he missed the ‘07 O’Reilly Spring Nationals at Houston, out of respect for the late Eric Medlen, a rising star at JFR who succumbed to injuries suffered in a testing accident.

Had he earned points at both those races, he likely would have entered the ‘08 season as a two-time champion. Instead, he has to be content with knowing that he is considered one of the most talented of the current crop of fuel racing crew chiefs.

Despite his go for the throat mentality, Prock has demonstrated remarkable consistency since he got his first crew chief job in 1991. In fact, during the last 17 years, the talented tuner never has he failed to put his driver in the Top 10.

Furthermore, he has won multiple tour events for 12 consecutive seasons during which he finished third in world championship points three times with Joe Amato (1997-99) in Top Fuel, fourth twice with Gary Densham and second twice Hight.

Since he arrived at JFR in ‘01, Prock has nursed a growing reputation as a money player based largely on his success in the Mac Tools U.S. Nationals at Clermont, Ind., drag racing’s equivalent of NASCAR’s Daytona 500.

He first won that race in ‘04 with Densham before repeating two years later with Hight in the harnesses. With Densham, he also won the $100,000 Skoal Showdown Funny Car bonus race.

However, it’s the partnership with Hight that excites him the most. It’s an alliance that works because, as a former crewman, Hight can communicate with him on a purely mechanical level better than any of his previous drivers.

The downside was supposed to have been that the 38-year-old Hight never had driven competitively, but that downside apparently was overstated.

After all, in their first three seasons together, Prock and Hight won six races and started from the No. 1 qualifying position 23 times in 68 events. That performance and two near misses has left them hungering for the sport’s ultimate prize.

Prock’s success should have surprised no one. After all, he started going to the races with his father when he was only 11. Nevertheless, it wasn’t until the family moved to California that he decided to make his career in the sport. Before leaving his native Michigan, he seriously was into hockey. Unfortunately for those against whom he now competes, 1980s’ California didn’t offer a lot of opportunities to hone his slap shot.

So, as soon as he graduated high school, he was gone racing. Working with veteran Ronnie Swearingen, he helped put independent Funny Car driver John Martin in two finals before a ‘89 bout with diabetes almost ended his career—and his life.

Today, he manages the situation through diet and insulin shots.

Once his health stabilized, Prock went to work with Dick LaHaie, from whom he learned the dragster business, and in ‘91 he hooked up with Cory Mac.

When sponsorship became a problem for McClenathan, Prock moved to Amato’s where he remained until the veteran climbed out of the cockpit at the end of the ‘00 season. Now, he’s a Funny Car guy again, but nobody seems to be laughing—except, maybe, Force and Hight.