Top Alcohol Dragster defending national champion Duane Shields hasn't exactly started the season in a manner that backs up the digit on his rear wing. The driver of the Shortline Express Markets A/Fueler has yet to earn a round win in three national event and one regional event starts. Many fans, competitors and members of the media have assumed that these woes are due to the change in crew chief over the offseason. Shields' tuner, Dana Hopewell, went to work for Rick Henkelman and his new Garrett Bateman-driven HipLink A/Fuel car. Duane is quick to correct those beliefs.
"The most agitating part of this all is people think 'Oh, it's because of changes in the team'. It really has nothing to do with the team, it's really parts changes that were made over the offseason that are apparently not working," said the first-time national champion.
Shields' struggles continued at the 4-Wide Nationals last weekend. His first two passes in qualifying showed signs of promise, but tire smoke presented itself once again in the third session. This continued into first round, with Duane smoking the tires at the hit, letting Sidnei Frigo sail by for the round win. According to Duane, miscommunication caused the tire smoking runs to continue. "We thought we had those clutch parts changed out before the weekend, but we had a miscommunication. We think those parts are causing the issues, but we want to be sure so we're testing on Monday."
Testing apparently paid off, as Shields posted three solid runs, including a 5.31 best, according to a post on his Facebook page. He'll next attend the packed Richmond regional then the A/Fuel-heavy Spring Nationals in Houston.
When asked about his goals for the season, Duane joked "Ever-changing. Right now, our goal is to win a round. That was our goal when we first started. You win rounds and then you win races. I would like to be competitive, you know, right now we've run well at each race, we just haven't ran at our best level. I'd like to change that and show that we still have the car to beat."
How will the new regional system play into Shields' defense of the national championship?
"Originally I thought that it would be in our favor, but now that we've had these three first round losses, that might not be too good. But with the amount of races that you can run, it might work to our advantage. I don't want to say that we can't win the championship, because it's way too early to know who will or won't, but we need to recover quickly," said the Las Vegas convenient store owner.
Duane Shields restates his belief that car issues are purely to blame for the early lack of round wins. The incorrect assumptions end here.
"I want the people to know, everyone thinking that it's a crew chief issue causing the problems, that it's really not it at all. A combination of three seperate related things that I think we would have no matter what, because it all goes back to new car issues. Our crew is doing a great job," claimed Shields.
With new crew chief Mike Johnson, Bill Jones on bottom end, Chris Zedaker on general duties, and Ralph Freeman on clutch, Duane Shields is prepared to silence the critics and prove that he can back up his championship-winning performance of 2011.
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