Sidnei Frigo has broad, sturdy shoulders. And on them he carries much responsibility.

His sprawling Artivinco campus of manufacturing plants near São Paulo, Brazil looks more like a state-of-the-art athletic training facility for the country’s Olympians rather than a nerve center of industrial innovation.

It’s a corporation with a conscience, one that produces paper and corrugated-packaging material – cardboard, if you will – with an eye on environmental sustainability. His products contain a small percentage of wood pulp and use instead a variety of components, including cane-sugar fiber and plant biomass, and his company recycles a staggering 8,000 tons of bacteria-free boxes each year. Onsite wastewater treatment units can handle 200,000 liters of water per hour to avoid pollution of nearby rivers, and five eucalyptus-tree farms in Cajuru and Santo Antonio da Alegria, Brazil, contribute to reforestation efforts over nearly 1400 acres.

Frigo’s family founded Artivinco and impressed upon him the imperatives of hard work, single-mindedness, investment in technology, respect for fellow humans and the environment, and commitment to quality. He and wife Daniela are parents to 16-year-old twins, Thiago and Isabela, and Lucas, his 12-year-old son who races a Jr. Dragster. There is no questions that this businessman-racer has far more on his mind when he comes to the dragstrip than only a tune-up.

Frigo, a former NHRA Top Alcohol Dragster and Top Fuel driver, and six-time Brazilian champion, has found a niche in American drag racing that complements his business-centric lifestyle. Better yet, he’s learning to enjoy his time away from the office, despite the learning curve of becoming a Pro Modified driver.

In his new Jerry Bickel-built, Pro Line-prepped C7 Corvette, Frigo made his Pro Mod debut at the PDRA’s July 17-18 North-South Shootout at Maryland International Raceway, competing in the Pro Boost class.

“He did really well. That was his first race in a Pro Mod, in that car. In the five laps Jerry drove there, he made tremendous improvements every single lap. He showed great promise,” said Crew Chief Anthony Lum.

His next outing was Aug. 27-29, at the Street Car Super Nationals (Anarchy at the Arch) at Gateway Motorsports Park at Madison, Illinois. There, he qualified fourth, defeated Steven Whitely, then lost in semi-final to eventual winner, Kevin Fiscus.

“He drove real well there, too,” Lum said. “He had been out of the seat for a little while between Maryland and the Street Car, and he got back in the car and did a great job. He was really comfortable.”

And, how could he not be pleased with his third Pro Mod appearance? He vaulted from the tentative 13^th spot in the qualifying order to second place at the NHRA’s fabled U.S. Nationals, just six-thousandths of a second off leader Khalid al Balooshi’s elapsed time (with a considerably faster speed). His class-rookie status showed a bit in eliminations, though – he was dead-late on the Christmas tree in the first round, as Jim Whiteley avenged his son’s loss to Frigo at St. Louis the weekend before.

Still, Frigo said he has become familiar with the 520 cubic-inch, Hemi-powered door car that runs with Precision turbochargers and a FuelTech FT500 EFI system.

“The procedure is quite different. The Pro Mod commands differ, but my first results were so encouraging, and now I feel so adapted,” he said. “I have more two races this year that will be for final adjustments.”

Frigo will be back in PDRA action this weekend at the Brian Olson Memorial World Nationals at Virginia Motorsports Park, near Richmond. He’ll wrap up his year back on the NHRA circuit at the Toyota NHRA Nationals at The Strip at Las Vegas Motor Speedway.

He characterized those races as a time of “closing up my phase of transition and adjustments.”

Frigo credited the Pro Line organization for his ability to perform so well so quickly in a wildly different style of race car.

“The efforts and the nice team job made everything easier, and I felt so confident and safe during this transition,” Frigo said. “Every transition demands a lot from the pilot as well as the team, but as I have the support of very good professionals. They are providing a calm change.”

The very pairing of Frigo and Lum makes their success even more remarkable, for drastic career changes by each brought them together at Pro Line Racing, headquartered north of Atlanta at Ball Ground, Georgia. For Frigo, the switch from drag racing’s most extreme vehicle to potentially its most ill-behaved and unpredictable was purely business-lifestyle-driven.

“The decision to leave the Top Fuel class is linked to my businesses in Brazil,” the Portuguese-speaking Frigo said, communicating in English from São Paulo. ”The fact that the category has one calendar with 24 races a year compromises my job schedule. Having the option to run in Pro Mod allows me to conciliate life on and off the track because this category has 10 races a year.

“An interesting fact is that when I started thinking about the possibility, immediately I received the support from many people of this segment, among them the FuelTech U.S. team that are now my supporters,” he said.

Lum said the Pro Mod pace suits Frigo just right. “He is so involved with his business in Brazil that he can’t really be away from it to go racing.” But, he said Frigo “works hard during the week, and then when he actually gets to a point he can go race and have some fun, he does just that — and he does a great job with it.”

He also said Frigo beams most not when he cuts a stout light or clocks a strong elapsed time, but when he sees son Lucas in his own race car, racing in America, just like him.

“We have Lucas’ Jr. Dragster here at Pro Line. Anytime we go to a PDRA race or any race that has Jr. Dragsters competing, we take the car with us and Lucas comes and he races,” Lum said. “Sidnei’s got a smile on his face like no other when he watches his son race. That’s the best. It’s a family affair. He brings his wife and kids, who have also had seat time in various race cars, and they have a good time.”

For Lum, this jump to Pro Line and Pro Mod is an opportunity to shine on his own. At the end of 2014, his third complete season at John Force Racing, he left his post as car chief for Courtney Force’s Traxxas Chevy Camaro.

“I decided to make a career change. Eric [Dillard] called me and said he needed a crew chief for Sidnei Frigo’s twin-turbo Pro Mod. It was the right time and the right opportunity, and I took advantage of it,” Lum said. “My main responsibility is as crew chief for Sidnei’s Pro Mod. I also work on all of the Pro Line customer cars that have our engine packages in them. When I’m not working with Sidnei, I work very closely with our tuners – Jamie Miller and Steve Petty – on tuning our drag radial cars and some of our outlaw cars, as well as other Pro Mods in NHRA, NMCA, PDRA, all those different series,” he said.

But the Pro Mod class isn’t as new to Lum as it is to Frigo.

“I actually worked on a few Pro Mods out on the West Coast, when I was still in school and lived in California,” Lum, a Honolulu native, said. “That’s where I got my Pro Mod experience. But they were supercharged cars and not turbo cars.” (Editor’s note: The PDRA’s Pro Boost class has both turbo and supercharged, while the Pro Nitrous class pits strictly nitrous-aided Pro Mods. The NHRA Pro Mod contingent allows all three).

“We assembled the new team and the crew for each client,” Lum said of the Artivinco Racing team. “Rob Nascimento also works on the car. My dad, Scott Lum, also works on Sidnei’s Pro Mod.”

Nascimento, who campaigns with his father, Bob, a ’32 Bantam Altered in the NHRA Super Comp class when he can, started his career as Pro Stock veteran Ron Krisher’s clutch specialist, and most recently was in charge of cylinder heads for Torrence Racing. In between, he worked on Pro Mods for Jim Bell and Roger Burgess’ R2B2 Racing.

Frigo said it’s a perfect mix for him.

He said of Lum, “Besides his young age, he already has good experience. I also count on support from the people of Pro Line Racing and FuelTech. I can say that I’m in good hands.”

Lum said he can see Frigo’s contentment.

“I don’t know if he’s a natural at Pro Mod,” the crew chief said, “but I think that his love for the sport of drag racing is so great that he practices and he really, really works hard at becoming the best driver that he can. Even in Top Fuel, I’ve heard so many things about how good his driving is. And you know what? I can believe that, because he gets in a Pro Mod car and he’s so comfortable that it’s unbelievable. He knows what he has to do, and if he does make a mistake, he fixes it and it doesn’t happen again.”

Lum said Frigo not only is in good hands but also in a top-of-the-line race car.

“Pro Line and Jerry Bickel Race Cars have worked very, very close together to develop what Sidnei has. It is what we call the best — the best NHRA or class-legal turbo Pro Mod. It’s the latest and greatest of everything that we’ve learned,” Lum said. “It’s identical to Jose Gonzalez’s ‘El General’ car, which is a Pro Extreme turbo car … and it is very similar to Troy Coughlin’s Jegs-sponsored car.”

Frigo left the door open to a return someday, perhaps, to Top Fuel.

“To be in Pro Mod, it doesn’t mean that I won’t come back to Top Fuel,” he said. “It is a question of adaptation to my professional life.” He certainly enjoys the rush of driving 320-plus-mph, 10,000-horsepower dragster, but he called racing in Pro Mod “an experience so thrilling, like the other one experienced with the elapsed times and speeds in Top Fuel.”

Frigo said he does see a distinct difference between the Pro Mod “culture” and that of Top Fuel.

“The drivers’ profiles are really different,” he said. “In Top Fuel, most of the competitors dedicate themselves to the sport. But Pro Mod gathers more drivers like me that try to conciliate the professional life with the races, making the environment more cooperative. There is a competition, of course, but in a friendly way.”

Next season will see Frigo concentrate on the NHRA-associated Pro Mod series, with no racing planned in his homeland.

“In 2016, my focus will be the 10 NHRA races, but I also intend to participate in three PDRA races to follow Lucas in the Jr. Dragster class. Brazil is not in my competition schedule for a while.”