The Przybyl and Antonicelli racing team is a four-man crew from the Buffalo, New York area. Walt Przybyl, from Lancaster, NY drives the 1995 Dodge Avenger Top Alcohol Funny Car (TAFC). It features a Fontana 557 cid powerplant engine in a Przybyl custom-designed and built chassis, engineered to "maximize the car's performance, reliability, and efficiency," according to Przybyl. His partner, Vito Antonicelli, also from Lancaster, is the crew manager, and Dave Kennedy and Jason Vitez complete the team.
Przybyl and Antonicelli have been racing together part-time in the TAFC class since 1989, but became financial partners in 1993, so they could race more frequently and maintain a more competitive racecar. In 1995 they recruited Dave Kennedy, from Boston, NY, and Jason Vitez, from Cheektowaga, NY, and upgraded the racecar to stay competitive in the IHRA. Przybyl is very comfortable with his team, saying, "Dave and Jay bring a higher skill level to the crew than we've had in the past. Each brings a unique skill to the team that improves our overall performance potential."
Przybyl has been involved with drag racing in its various forms and classes since he was 12 years old, and even at that age, his interest in racing came from an engineering perspective. He began by helping Lancaster racer, Gary Rohauer, with his super stock car. Przybyl learned basic tasks at first, but with his talent and Rohauer as his mentor, Przybyl learned to build racecars.
Perhaps emulating his mentor, a 14-year-old Przybyl built and raced a soapbox derby car. Not satisfied with the limitations of traditional soapbox cars, however, the young engineer made an aerodynamic, fiberglass body for his car. "I made a mold from wood, chicken wire, and plaster and laid the fiberglass in it," he says. "I guess I read it in a book or something and just did it." The only fiberglass-bodied entry finished third out of a 105-car field.
Because of these valuable early experiences with racing and building racecars, Przybyl decided to attend vocational classes which ran concurrently with his academic classes at Lancaster Central High School. He chose to focus on machine shop training and received the outstanding student of the year award in 1977 -- his senior year.
After graduating from high school, he built a 1968 Mustang street car that he raced locally for about six years. He decided to triple the 400 horsepower he had been generating with the Mustang by building an altered roadster. To learn the correct driving techniques that a more powerful car required, he attended Frank Hawley's Drag Racing School then located in Gainesville, Florida (The school has since relocated to California).
There, Przybyl drove an alcohol funny car for the first time, breaking the school track records for elapsed time and miles per hour. He and another driver were asked to stay an extra day to drive the funny cars for a Fram Autolite commercial that aired on ESPN and the Nashville Network.
Captured by the power and intrigued by the engineering concepts and possibilities that the funny car held, Przybyl returned home and converted the roadster he had been building into an alcohol funny car.
In 1989, Przybyl finished the funny car, and began match racing part-time in the Northeast. For the next three years, Przybyl gained driving experience and solidified his racing partnership with Antonicelli, but rather than simply match racing, he wanted to compete full time in national IHRA- and NHRA-sanctioned events. To do so, Przybyl took the 1992 season off, garnered partial sponsorship support from Fontana Racing Engines, and became financial partners with Antonicelli. He also updated the car with a new blower, cylinder heads, and other components, and dyno-tested the engine.
Over the next three years, Przybyl raced part-time and continued to upgrade the racecar with the latest racing technology. In 1993, Przybyl received two runner-up finishes, and the following season, he went out with a new chassis and was the number-one qualifier at the Empire Nationals in Leicester, NY and at the Summer Nationals in Morocco, IN. In 1995, Przybyl decided to race the full 11-event season in 1996, so Kennedy and Vitez joined Przybyl and Antonicelli to improve the racecar and outfit their new truck and trailer.
The changes they made gave Przybyl and Antonicelli a seventh place finish in the IHRA points race, and Przybyl ranked number three in reaction times.
After graduating from high school, Przybyl became an apprentice machinist at Richards Machine Tool -- a five-man job shop in Buffalo. In four years, Przybyl was promoted to foreman, and two years later he was named executive plant manager of what had grown to be a 31-man operation. Moreover, he was instrumental in replacing the shop's manual machines with Computerized Numerical Control (CNC) technology to increase the quality, quantity, and efficiency of the shop's production.
In 1989 he left Richards Machine Tool and went to work as an applications engineer at Osgood Machinery -- a machine tool distributer in Buffalo -- where he is still currently employed. This move gave Przybyl an opportunity to expand his technological skills, especially with CNC machines.
In 1993 Przybyl established his own business, PRZ Technologies, Inc. under which he designs and manufactures specialized machine tool components. In order to have the mobility to race full-time, he will merge his racing and his professional careers as he begins manufacturing high-performance racing parts, as well as industrial components.