Shields Looks Back on 2014 Season

Courtesy of Todd Veney/Pro Sportsman Association
Photo courtesy of David Smith/PSA

You know you've had a good career when you win four times and it's almost an off year.

Duane Shields went winless over a dozen mid-season races in 2014 – a full season for most people – but still ended up sixth in the Top Alcohol Dragster national standings with what turned out to be another solid season: five final-round appearances and four wins – two at national events and two at regionals.

"The beginning of the year and the end were good, but the middle took me right out of the championship," says Shields, who topped the national standings at times this season and is in title contention year after year. "We ran out of clutch discs, had to replace them with a different kind, and went into smoke-the-tires mode. We kept backing the car down, thinking we were overpowering the track, and in the end, smoking the tires had nothing to do with the tune-up – it was the discs all along. That's why we went to so many extra races this year – to figure out what the problem was."

No TAD or TAFC team ran more races in 2014 than Shields' 20. He doubled up at Gainesville in in March, taking the rain-delayed Houston regional that was completed Saturday during Gainesville qualifying and the Gatornationals on Sunday. He then went seven months and 12 straight races without getting to a final, low-lighted by a dismal stretch of just two round-wins in eight races, and completely turned it around with four semifinal appearances in the next five races, including back-to-back finals and a third Gainesville win at the East Region closer.

"Drag racing is all about highs and lows, and if the lows weren't so low, the highs wouldn't be so high," says Shields, a former sand-drag racer who's pretty much seen it all in 17 years on the quarter-mile. "I've been humbled a few times over the years, believe me. I went from winning the championship [in 2011] to not hitting my ass the next year or the year after that. I kinda got used to winning at least a couple of races every year, but the problem with winning is that it just makes you want to win more."

For such an up-and-down season, Shields' overall win-loss mark was a more than respectable 26-14. "[Crew chief] Dana [Hopewell] has a tune-up that's easy on parts, and we have a tight maintenance schedule and not much parts destruction," says Shields, who finished in the Top 10 for the eighth time in the past nine years. "You have to have the right parts and the right people or you're never going to get anywhere. It's a team sport, and it takes time to develop a great group of people like this that can win races and give you a car that's always put together right and safe to drive. They're supportive, and you really need that during the down times, which there were plenty of this year. I didn't have any luck at all until I got to Pomona."

At the season-ending NHRA Finals, Shields had, as he puts it, "nothing but luck." He qualified in the bottom half of the field and drew the second-ranked driver in the country, Joey Severance, who had just swept both the regional and national events at Las Vegas, in the first round. "It wasn't looking too good, and you always know Joey's probably going to cut a light on you, but he red-lighted that time [barely, a with -.004 reaction time]," says Shields, who won all four rounds without ever having lane choice.

"The only thing we did at Pomona was go down the track, but sometimes just doing that every time is more important than anything, and when you win that last race of the year, it stays with you and really keeps you going," says Shields, who lives in Las Vegas but regularly competes thousands of miles from home in the East Region. "Drag racing really takes a lot weeks out of your year. Time just goes flying by. Sometimes, I wonder why I ever even got into it in the first place – I'd have tons more money, that's for sure, if I hadn't. I used to go to the lake, go ATVing, do all kinds of stuff. You start racing ... that's over. Sometimes, you sit back and ask yourself, 'I'm spending how much money to run 5.3 seconds?' It's hard to justify the expense, but in racing, running my convenience stores – anything I do, really – I want to win. I'm competitive. I won my first national event [Sonoma in 1999] pretty early in my career, but it took me years to win another one, and every time you win you wonder if it'll ever happen again."

Shields typically doesn't have to wait too long. He was the only driver to win a national event every year from 2002 to 2012, including multiple titles in 2002, when he was runner-up for the national championship, and 2006, 2009, 2010, and 2011. And he's won big both ways: in both blown-alcohol and A/Fuel dragsters. He set the national record at 5.26 more than a dozen years ago with a blown alcohol car, but won Indy and a championship on nitro.

"The blown-alcohol car was way more fun to drive, but the expense factor was getting out of control, even 10 years ago," he says. "I was looking at if I was going to even continue racing or not. The A/Fuel combination was out there, but I didn't know much about it. We'd already run 5.20s on alcohol, but everybody kept telling me how much cheaper A/Fuel is once you got it figured out, and they were right. I'd never go back."

So how many years does he have left? "I don't know," Shields says. "It's still fun. I know I'm out here for at least a couple more years with Peak. I keep thinking I'm getting toward the end, but I'm still out here. I know one thing: I wouldn't go to a race if I didn't think I could win. Never have, never will."

Mark Billington: Racer/Executive (Mostly Executive)

Courtesy of Todd Veney/Pro Sportsman Association
Photo courtesy of David Smith

To other top Frito-Lay executives, Mark Billington isn't one of the better Top Alcohol Funny Car racers of the last 20 years – he's the Senior Director of Growth and Commercialization. Balancing racing with everyday real-world responsibilities is hard on everybody, but for Billington, getting time off from work is really hard – just about impossible, actually.

It's a choice Billington made long ago and one he doesn't regret – except when everybody else is heading to Florida, where he used to live, for the Gatornationals and he's stuck in an executive meeting in Dallas. "If an executive meeting runs late, I can't just say, 'Sorry guys, I have to go work on my car now,' and walk out," Billington says. "If something gets rescheduled on top of a race I was already planning to run, it's not like everybody else can just change their schedule so I can go. I handle a billion dollars of this company's sales a year – I have to be there."

Race cars have run on money for as long as there have been race cars, but instead of paying for it the way most do – by owning a successful business – Billington has been entrenched in the corporate world since he was in his early 20s. He's not just an Ivy Leaguer or a top executive for a Fortune 500 company – he's both…not that he'd ever bring it up.

"I have a couple pictures in my office, but I really don't talk about racing much at work," Billington says. "People have Googled me and walked into my office and said, 'Is that really you?' A few of them even showed up at Dallas, and there I was, wearing shorts, clutch dust on the end of my nose. They'd only ever seen me in an office environment. They couldn't believe it."

Billington has been with Frito-Lay for 28 years now, ever since he graduated from Cornell University with business management and finance degrees and headed south with everything he owned in the back of a Chevy Monza. He's moved wherever he had to to further his career, from upstate New York, where he grew up, to Orlando, to Atlanta, and now to company headquarters in Dallas, working a lot and racing whenever he had the time.

The last few years, he hasn't had much time. Billington raced just four times this year. Last year, it was six. The year before that, five. Not unexpectedly, his success on the quarter-mile is inversely proportional to the trajectory of his career.

"Less and less of my time is my own," Billington says. "And when you're going to four or five races a year and racing against people who are going to 15 or 20, what chance do you really have? You start falling behind – the knowledge base just isn't there. I drive my truck to the races myself, and my wife and I do all the maintenance at home. The class has moved beyond that. Alcohol Funny Car has gotten away from the guy who does it for fun, as a hobby, and tunes his own car. When I was in my prime, from say 2005 to 2008, I could unload my car, run between 5.65 and 5.75, and start from there. Now people are running 5.50s at regional events. I'm struggling just to get down the track. Trying to run .50s at Noble, Oklahoma, using the same methods that worked for me five years ago ... it doesn't work."

Billington, who did a lot with a little for a long, long time, has destroyed more parts since 2012 than he had in his entire career before then. "These last three years have been probably the three toughest years I've ever been through," he says. "It's been three years of just kicking the rods out every weekend. No kidding, Dallas and Noble were the first two races in two years where I didn't."

And It's not just parts attrition and advancing technology that work against the little-guy racer. Moving from state to state to climb the corporate ladder creates its own complications. "You almost never have the same crew every time, and if you do, it's because you flew in the guys from where you used to live," Billington says. "I'll tell you one thing: Trying to race like this sure does teach you the real value of teamwork. I tried going to races with just one guy [Shawn Tuttle], and really I appreciated all his help, but it’s tough to be successful that way. It’s difficult do what I'm trying to do and have a job like my job. I'm in work mode at 7 in the morning and usually still there at 7 at night, and there's just no time during the week to look at the RacePak. All my racing is done from Friday afternoon to Sunday night."

With a job like Billington's, even when you do get away from it all to race, you still don't really get away – part of you is always still back at the office. "I try not to look at my phone too much at the track," he says. "That can really take the fun out of racing. You're sitting there, thinking, 'Hmmmm … .075 jet? .080? .090?' Then you look at your phone, and there are 100 or 125 e-mails to attend to.

"From 35 to 45, I didn't give a second thought to spending every extra dollar I had on racing," says Billington, who turned 50 this year. "Now I have a daughter in college, maybe another 10 years before I have to retire. Is another set of heads really what I should be spending my money on? Do I really want to blow 50 or 100 grand to go to a bunch more races next year? Could I if I even wanted to? I've always put my work and my family first. I could've taken a lower position and raced a lot more, but these are my priorities, and they've given me a great career and afforded me a nice lifestyle. Am I the baddest ass out there? Have I ever been the world champion? No. But I'm content with the decisions I've made. I've done all right."

Billington has been a Top 10 driver (2005), a national event finalist, and a division champ. He's won six divisional events, appeared in 19 finals, runner-upped at the Gatornationals, and won the last Division 2 Top Alcohol Funny Car title ever in 2011.

These last few years ... not so much. "There've been times when I've asked myself, 'Do I really want to do this?' " he says. "The whole class moved beyond my tuneup a few years ago – I just didn't know it. I bought a tune-up from Randy Anderson a while ago that really got me going in the right direction. I called him this year and told him how I was running the car, and he said, 'What? You can't do that anymore, Mark. You can't run that amount of fuel.' The year I won the division championship, I ended the year with the same shortblock I started the year with. I ran the same oil for half the season. The last couple years, I can't even get through a race with the same engine."

Billington's not complaining, though. Nobody ever said it would be easy, and you don't make it to where he's made it in the business world without working harder than the next guy. "Racing isn't just hard for an executive for one of the biggest companies in the world [parent company: PepsiCo]," he says. "It's not easy for anyone. I was at Maple Grove the year the race got rained out until Wednesday [2006], and on Monday I was still there, wondering when I was going to have to go home, and Frank Manzo walks over. 'So how long are you going to stay?' he said. I told him I didn't know, and he said, 'Me either. I have to get to the tower to fax all this stuff so I can be here for one more day, but I don't know how long I can hold out.' I think It's like that for all of us."

TAD Racer Dubbin Can't Get a Break

Courtesy of Todd Veney/Pro Sportsman Association

If it isn't one thing it's another this year for Alcohol Dragster racer Dean Dubbin. He's reached the semifinals somewhere at least once in each of his first three seasons in Top Alcohol Dragster, but 2014 has only grown more frustrating as it's dragged on, topped (he hopes) by a first-round foul last weekend at the Central Regional at Tri-State Raceway in Earlville, Iowa.

Opponent Randy Meyer had dominated all weekend and eventually won, but in the first round against Dubbin, he was, for once, vulnerable. "I knew I was going to smoke the tires," he told Dubbin later. "You know what's sad?" Dubbin said. "I did too."

Meyer did went up in smoke right off the line – right after Dubbin left before the Tree came on. It's not like Dubbin, up against the No. 1 qualifier, got the yips, completely lost his concentration, and took off – a solenoid failed, and as soon as he went up against the converter, the car left. "I was probably 50 feet out before I even knew what was going on," he said. "The solenoid shook itself loose. You have to use it for the burnout, and to back up from the burnout, and to go up to the starting line, and it activated all three times, but for whatever reason, when I went to bring the motor up to leave, it didn't, and the car just left."

Dubbin's frustration was further compounded when he realized, somewhere around half-track, that Meyer hadn't blasted past him with another great run that would have beat him anyway. Instead, Meyer coasted across the finish line about five seconds behind him with a 15.80 at 53 mph.

"I was idling down there, and Randy was nowhere to be seen," Dubbin said. 'I knew it,' I said to myself when he didn't come around me. 'He did smoke the tires.' That was the time to get him, right there – first round, when he had to run a whole different motor than he'd been running all weekend. The starting line was great, the track was super smooth, and I really thought the conditions were going to play right into our hands. Out in the middle – where an A/Fueler really needs the track to be good – it wasn't quite as good as it was down low, where our kind of car needs traction. That's where we really have to perform, because at the other end the other end, the converter is going to be slipping. My little 464 cubic inch motor is all out of torque by half-track."

Torque converter setups like Dubbin's leave just as hard as A/Fuelers and blown-alcohol/pedal-clutch cars, and he had .900 and .901 60-foot times at his first race of the season, Tulsa – and that was at a corrected altitude of nearly 5,000 feet. "This whole thing started right after that race, when we had to switch to another motor that we thought was identical to the first one," said Dubbin, an awning manufacturer from Royalton, Minn. "The car started shaking and smoking the tires, and that's something it never used to do. The power level is different, obviously. The car will shake, I'll click it off, we'll come back and give it a bunch more power, it will smoke the tires, and we'll think, 'OK, just back it down a little from here, and we should be good.' But it's not happening. The car shook so hard in Brainerd that it took all the teeth off the ring and pinion."

Dubbin was gone after one round at the Topeka and Brainerd national events and at the Denver and Earlville regionals. The other two times he's raced this year, at the regional events at Tulsa and Topeka, he didn't qualify. "We really thought 2014 was going to be a big year, and it's been the exact opposite," he said. "I've never not qualified at two races in the same year – ever. We really wanted to run hard for the regional championship this year, so we rented the track for two days before the first race, Tulsa, and thought we had something to work with for the rest of the season. Didn't even qualify. At Denver, the car usually runs pretty good – we're always right there with the all clutch cars except Taliaferro's and Whiteley's. I was No. 2 going into the last qualifying session there and ended up third. 'This is looking pretty good,' we thought. Out first round. We've just been plagued with little issues all year, and it's driving me nuts."

As the season winds down, Dubbin, who's already entered more events this year than in any of the three previous years of his Top Alcohol Dragster career, will head back out to Oklahoma for the Central Region closer in Noble, and there's an outside chance that he will still, as originally planned, hit Las Vegas after that.

"It depends," he said. "I have to see how things go in Noble. If the littlest thing that you'd never think of doesn't bite us there, we just might be at Vegas. I thought about Earlville all the way home: 'What could I have done?' In hindsight, I guess we could've checked that solenoid before we went up there for first round, but why would we? It's never been a problem before. We'll be looking at it from now on, trust me. We'll be looking at everything. The only good that's come out of all this is that we're learning to check every unexpected piece for something wrong – that, and the fact that this has really taught the whole team [Mike Moran, Neil Hinman, Bob Lair, and Dubbin's wife, Karen] to persevere. This isn't like when I used to run Top Dragster – it's more like running Top Dragster now that that whole deal has stepped up – and you have to be 100 percent on top of everything all the time. I can tell you this: We'll be testing before we start racing next year, and we're going to figure this thing out. This car should be running in the low 5.40s and high 5.30s and going rounds, and next year, I really think it will be. I don't know what I did to piss off the luck gods this year, but we're going to get this deal figured out."

Resurfaced Earlville Track Primed for Lucas Oil Event

Courtesy of Todd Veney/Pro Sportsman Association

Reid Kuhlman doesn't mess around. When he built Tri-State Raceway, he didn't just put in a concrete launch pad or lay concrete to the 330-foot mark or to half-track or even for the entire quarter-mile – he did it from behind the water box to the last turnoff.

When Kuhlman recently had the surface ground and polished, he started at the 150-foot-mark and went all the way to the finish line. "Diamond grinding leaves longitudinal ridges," he explained. "Those can take a while to fill in with rubber, so after we had the track ground, we had it polished for eight days until everything was perfectly smooth."

Now the groove is wider, longer, flatter, and smoother than it's ever been. "The Top Dragsters have already been in the low 6s at more than 220 mph, the Top Sportsman cars are flying, everybody's computers are showing how smooth the surface is, and everybody's saying they can't feel even a little bump anywhere in either lane," said Kuhlman, who's gearing up for a record-breaking event when Tri-State hosts its Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series Central Regional the week after the U.S. Nationals.

"The Alcohol Dragster track record is 5.32, and the Alcohol Funny Car record is 5.62, and we don't expect either one of them to last past that weekend," said Kuhlman, whose facility holds the Division 5 car-count record (more than 600) and once held nearly 20 cars just in Top Alcohol Funny Car. "We pick up a lot of teams that stop here on their way back to the West Coast after Indy and a lot of top cars from all around the country, and we're hoping a bunch of them will be back again this year with all the guys from Division 5 and Division 3."

For some reason, alcohol racing's biggest stars typically don't shine when the Lucas Oil tour hits the tiny town of Earlville, Iowa (population: 800), a half-hour west of Dubuque in the northeast part of the state, where Iowa, Wisconsin, and Illinois come together. Edwin Schmeeckle, Richard Putz, Dave Heitzman, Gord Gingles, and Sidnei Frigo have scored there in Top Alcohol Dragster, Schmeeckle and Putz more than once. Top Alcohol Funny Car has been dominated by Kirk Williams and Andy Bohl, who each have multiple wins, and the defending event champs are Jared Dreher, who also scored this weekend at St. Louis in Alcohol Dragster, and Williams in Alcohol Funny Car.

In addition to having the surface painstaking polished after it was reground, the 4,000-foot track, now in its 17th year, has his own tire rotator to keep the rubber in top condition. But instead of buying one for more than $50,000, Kuhlman, your typical hardworking, can-do Midwesterner, built his own.

"Our tire rotator is a little different than the other ones out there," said Kuhlman, who used to own a company that built 200,000-pound rock crushers. "The slicks aren't all in a row on this one. It's a two-axle machine and the tires are staggered. With the slicks offset like that, you can stay out of the groove you just did when you're coming back in the opposite direction, and it has its own air compressor right on it. All the tires are hooked up to a regulator and kept at the exact right pressure at all times.

"The right lane used to have a little bump just past half-track, and the left lane had one that was a little bigger, but the left was always the preferred lane," Kuhlman said. "This was never a one-lane track or anything – there's nothing worse than that – but now the whole track is smooth as glass. Running a race track is like running anything else – you're either in or you're out – so we just stepped up and said, 'OK, let's do it. Let's go all out.' Nothing in this business is cheap, so what's it going to be? In the past, people would come here and say that they had better 60-foot times than they just had at Indy, and now all the bumps are gone. This should be our best race ever – now this place really has some teeth."

Germain Perseveres in the Face of Adverstiy

Courtesy of Todd Veney/Pro Sportsman Association

If Dave Germain were most people, he would have quit a long time ago.

"We keep thinking we have it figured out, and we keep finding out we don't," says Germain, veteran driver of the Tigercat Top Alcohol Funny Car and a retired firefighter with the patience of Job. "You drive away from the race track Sunday and ask yourself, 'What the hell did we do wrong?' "

Germain has two DNQs and a first-round loss so far this year. Last year, it was four DNQs, a first-round loss, and a second-round loss. The year before that, it was two first-round losses and two DNQs, and the year before that, three first-round losses and a second-round loss. In 2010, he had two first-round losses and a DNQ, in '09 it was three first-round losses and two DNQs, and in '08 he DNQed in his only appearance. That's two round-wins in seven years. A lesser man would've given up.

"You get home from a race," Germain says, "and people will come up and ask you, 'Well, did you win?' The next race: 'Did you win this time?' Next race, same thing. Hell no I didn't win. It's kinda tough out there, you know?"

"I don't know how he's done it," says Eric Krume, Germain's partner on the car, who works about 18 hours a day at Krume Logging and in his "free time" serves as Germain's crew chief. "I don't know what keeps Dave going, but he's always smiling, always happy. I like to tune and want to drive, but I'm not going to bring out another car when we haven't been able to get this one running right."

"We hurt so many pistons, the crew's gotten to be like a NASCAR crew," Germain says. "Only instead of, 'OK, let's change the right-side rubber and gas it up,' it's, 'Let's get this thing torn apart and get some new pistons in it.' Every run it seems to get two or three pistons, and the car just eats parts like you wouldn't believe, but no matter what we do, we can't get it to run. We keep changing stuff and changing stuff and changing stuff, and it gets pretty frustrating. We've changed clutch programs, changed blowers, put a whole new ignition on it I don't know how many times. Last year, we got a whole new chassis. Same thing.

"I'm actually starting to think we're getting bum data from the computer," he says. "You have an idea of what's a lean air/fuel ratio and what's a rich one, but that's all dependent on the boost reading and the flow-meter reading being accurate. You look at the RacePak, and the car should be blubbering rich, but the spark plugs sure don't say that."

Eschewing the computer data and going off what the parts told them, Germain and Krume ran an easy 5.78 last weekend in Woodburn, Ore., that has them and their Tigercat teammates Lee Crosslin, Hal Westerlund, Matt "Ishmael" Fortin, Don Houser, Scott Armstrong, and Kim Germain feeling optimistic heading into to the biggest race of their season, this weekend's Northwest Nationals.

"We just went back to an old tune-up, and the car liked it," Germain says. But, as he knows better than anyone, 5.70s only get you so far when you compete in a part of the country that sometimes has regional events with bumps in the 5.60s.

 "There are a lot of Funny Cars out west, and a lot of big hitters from California that we're always up against," Germain says. "You scratch your head and your bottom lip is sticking out when you don't qualify or get beat first round, but there are 16 cars in the field at every national event, and 15 of them are going to be losers. There are hundreds and hundreds of cars at every race, and only eight or 10 of them are going to win. I've been around this deal for a long time, and that's just the way it is."

Krume, 46, is way into the nostalgia scene and has been involved with the sport since the old 64 Funny Car days at Seattle in the 1970s, when he helped out on Jim Green famous "Green Elephant" Vega. Germain, 56, has been hopelessly addicted to drag racing since he converted his '69 Roadrunner, a former SS/DA car, into a street machine when he was still in high school.

"I kept moving up a little, getting stuff a little nicer and a little nicer and eventually ended up building my own Super Comp car from the ground up," Germain says. "People would ask me why I ever moved up from Super Comp to Alcohol Funny Car, and I'd tell them, 'I had to. I was never any good at Super Comp.' In that class, if you're late, you can't make it up. If you don't have about a .017 light every time, there's not a snowball's chance in hell that you're going to win. You need to cut a light in Alcohol Funny Car, too, but if you don't, at least you still have a chance to drive around them."

Calling on the stick-to-itiveness that carried him through decades of risking his life fighting fires for the Tacoma Fire Department, Germain remains as undeterred as ever. "I'm a lousy quitter," he says. "I'm just not good at it. I was a firefighter/paramedic for the city of Tacoma for 30 years, 27 on the rescue/medic unit. You don't quit – someone could die. Most firefighters are adrenaline junkies. No one would ever wish anything bad on anyone, but we were always ready for something to catch on fire, something to happen.

"Drag racing is like that. It's a hell of a challenge. You keep waiting, waiting, waiting for that one exciting run. You'd be amazed at how many people want to give me advice. It's not like we haven't paid tuners. We've paid plenty. People have even told me, 'Hey, you know this guy might be a better driver than you. He's lighter. He's got more experience.' Well, as long as I'm writing the checks, I'm driving the car. Someday, I'll get this deal figured out and think, ''Why didn't I see that a long time ago?' It'll probably be some stupid little thing. But one way or another, it is going to happen."

Brand Holds the Edge in 2014 TAFC Championship Race

Courtesy of Todd Veney/Pro Sportsman Association

It was a foregone conclusion that 2014 would be wide-open when all-time Alcohol Funny Car king Frank Manzo abdicated his throne late last year, and halfway through it, it absolutely is – the number 1 driver at this point probably isn't going to win the championship. 1995 Top Alcohol Dragster champ and four-time Alcohol Funny Car runner-up Jay Payne has won more rounds than any driver in either alcohol class this year (16) but he's also lost more (9).

It's another sure Top 5 or Top 10 finish for Payne, who has more career victories than any active driver in either Top Alcohol Dragster or Funny Car, but the favorite at midseason is a driver who's never even finished in the Top 10: Dale Brand, who had never run enough races to contend for a title until this year. He's been in the late rounds everywhere he's raced all year and with a little luck could have won all six.

Brand, who once terrorized IHRA Alcohol Funny Car racing, heads for the Allstars race and the Route 66 Nationals in Chicago as the defending Allstars champ. He's as quick – and as quick on the Tree – as anyone. He won the Chicago regional last month, broke through for a long overdue first national event title in Topeka, scored again last weekend at Tulsa, and is second in the standings, just 10 points behind Payne.

Brand has a better win-loss record (16-3, .842) than anyone in either alcohol class and is riding a three-race win streak. Only a red-light in the final kept him from winning in Gainesville; a broken throttle linkage stopped him in the second round in Charlotte after he'd opened a car-length lead; and in Houston, he fell to Annie Whiteley in the semifinals by just 11-thousandths of a second.

Annie Whiteley
 

Payne won the rain-delayed Houston regional final over Shane Westerfield by just eight-thousandths of a second, was runner-up at the regional event in Phoenix and the national event in Las Vegas, and just won again last weekend at the regional in Acton, Montana.

Early season leader Brian Hough stands third, 74 points behind Brand. He's 11-4 for the year and won his first two starts of the season, the Winternationals and the Phoenix regional. Westerfield, who moved into the Top 10 for the first time in 2012 and shot all the way up to third in the national standings last year, is one point behind Hough. He's also a two-time winner this season, at the Spring Nationals in Houston and the Las Vegas regional.

Hot off back-to-back final-round appearances in regional competition, Clint Thompson anchors the Top 5. He won Denver on a slight holeshot over Whiteley, 5.78 to 5.78, and lost the Acton final to Payne the same way, 5.72 to 5.69.

With two wins and three final-round appearances in five starts, Dan Pomponio, who finished a career-high fifth in the national standings in his breakthrough 2013 campaign, is sixth in the standings despite running fewer races than anyone in the Top 10. He's won two national events already this season (Gainesville and Charlotte – same as last year) and came within inches of winning the Lebanon Valley regional.

Kris Hool, Whiteley, Nick Januik and Todd Veney round out the Top 10. Whiteley, who has yet to finish outside the Top 5 in her young Top Alcohol Funny Car career, is the only current Top 10 driver without a win, but she has three final-round appearances in her last four outings, qualified No. 1 at all four, set low e.t. at three of the four, and just missed winning each time.

Under the radar and just outside the Top 10 are perennial Top 10 drivers Steve Harker, Chris Foster, Steve Gasparrelli, John Lombardo, and Doug Gordon, all past national event champs. Foster is 12th and has a win and a runner-up in just four starts. Gasparrelli and Lombardo have finished as high as second in the standings, Lombardo just last year. Gordon is 19th, but he's raced just three times this season and has advanced to at least the semifinals at all three.

The dark horse is Tony Bartone, the only active Top Alcohol Funny Car driver ever to have won a championship. He makes his 2014 debut this weekend with a new Murf McKinney-built Camaro tuned by Steve Boggs, and with a late-season push could still win it all. It would take a winning streak of epic proportions, but if he pulls it off, it won't be the first time: the year he won the championship, 1996, he won 37 rounds in a row.

Severance a Slight Favorite for TAD Title at Midseason

Courtesy of Todd Veney/Pro Sportsman Association

Joey Severance is the leader at the clubhouse in Top Alcohol Dragster this year, the top-ranked driver halfway through the season. Severance, who was in the title hunt right down to the final day of the 2011 season, has three wins in just six starts – back to back to back at the Phoenix regional, Las Vegas regional, and Las Vegas national. The three times he has lost – at the Winternationals, Kansas Nationals, and last week's Acton, Montana regional – he was off the starting line first, twice with reaction times in the teens.

With his nemesis, 2012 and 2013 world champ Jim Whiteley, now retired, this might finally be the year for Chris Demke, who has finished second in the standings in three of the past four seasons. Demke grabbed the early points lead with perhaps the best performance of his career at the Winternationals, where he dominated with a barrage of 5.20s. He stumbled to a first-round loss and four second-round losses in his next five starts but rebounded with a final-round win over Severance last weekend in a battle of the class' top two drivers this year.

Chris Demke - TAN/NVW photo

Right behind them in third place is Duane Shields, who led the standings until last weekend, when Severance appeared in his fourth final of the season and took over the top spot. Shields, who has finished in the Top 5 six times, including 2011, when he won the championship, has two wins but also six first-and second-round losses that could come back to haunt him. He won the rain-delayed Houston regional final and the Gatornationals on the same weekend, but he's been out after the second round in his last four races.

Hovering in fourth place is Bill Reichert, who has finished not just in the Top 10 but in the Top 5 for 10 years in a row and almost certainly will again in 2014. By his lofty standards, it's been a quiet season so far (no national event victories yet), but he's amassed an enviable 11-4 record, back-to-back national event semifinals to open the season, and a pair of regional wins. He reached the semifinals at the Gatornationals and 4-Wide Nationals and won the regionals at Indianapolis and Chicago.

Without attracting much attention, Mike Strasburg has put together a solid season, his first in an alcohol car in more than a dozen years. Driving the dragster Whiteley wheeled to the championship last year, the part-time Top Fuel racer has put up a 9-4 win-loss mark, reached two regional event finals, and won one, two weeks ago in Denver. He's yet to be beaten in the first round and despite not running as many races as other title contenders, still has a solid shot at the title.

Back east, Jackie Fricke is having the finest season of her career. She's a career-high sixth in the national rankings, has two final-round appearances to her credit, and broke through at Lebanon Valley Dragway for her first NHRA win.

Jackie Fricke - David Smith/PSA photo

Seventh-place Mark Taliaferro surprisingly has yet to win a race with championship-winning crew chief Norm Grimes, but it's hardly been a disaster. In just five starts so far in 2014, he's been to the final round three times – at the Las Vegas regional, where he fell to Severance; at the Houston national, where he lost to Randy Meyer; and at the Denver regional, where he lost a close one to Strasburg.

Meyer is in eighth place, but his car is in first. If you add the points from Shayne Lawson's back-to-back wins at the wheel of Meyer's A/Fueler at the Kansas Nationals and the Tulsa regional to Meyer's total of 265, it comes to 435, enough for what would be a 32-point "lead" over Severance. The car is on a three-race win streak, including Meyer's Spring Nationals victory, and Lawson's recent Tulsa win came in an all-Randy Meyer Racing final over Chase Copeland.

Tied for ninth and rounding out the Top 10 are Brandon Booher and Canadian Jeff Veale, who each have a win in five starts this year. Booher, who won four races and the North Central Region championship in his breakout 2013 season, took the Norwalk regional this year and was runner-up at the 4-Wide Nationals. Veale earned his first career NHRA title at the Richmond regional and was runner-up to Fricke at Lebanon Valley.

 

Brandon Booher - TAN/NVW photo

 

Pierce Back in the Game with Gene Snow's A/FD

Courtesy of Todd Veney/Pro Sportsman Association

Brandon Pierce still can't believe he got the call. Drag racing legend Gene Snow could have picked anyone to drive his A/Fuel Dragster, but he called Pierce, who had been on the sidelines for a year and a half and was starting to think he might be stuck there forever.

"I was driving home from work one day and the phone rang," Pierce said. "Gene said he wanted me to drive for him, and I said, 'Are you sure you know who you're talking to?' I guess he thought I could cut the kind of lights he wants, and he sure has had some good people driving for him – Spencer [Massey] and Chase [Copeland.] I hadn't run my car in a year and half, and I figured everybody had already forgotten all about me."

Before taking what he knew could turn into a permanent vacation, Pierce accomplished both of the goals he and his father set when they started in A/Fuel 11 years ago: make the Top 10 and crack 280 mph. "We knew we didn't have the funds to win a national championship, but we thought we could make the Top 10 and we really wanted that 280," he said. "The car was running so well that weekend – 275-277 mph – but I had no idea I'd gone 280. It just felt like another good run, definitely a 5.20-something, but 280? You know how hard that is to do? To see that number on paper, to have that time slip in your hand, is unbelievable. There's only a handful of us who have ever done it, and when Bill Reichert comes over to say congratulations, you know you've really done something."

By then, Pierce had already racked up three victories and six final-round appearances in divisional competition. He upset Randy Meyer in the final round of the 2006 Division 4 race at Noble, Okla., his home track, backed it up the next year with a final-round decision over Darvin Martinets there, and also won the 2007 Division 5 race at Great Bend, Kan., over two-time Division 5 champ Richard Putz. Pierce followed with runner-up finishes at Dallas and Memphis in 2007, the year he nearly won the Division 4 title, and also runner-upped at the Jeg's Allstars race in 2008 in Chicago, where a third straight 5.47 and a .022 light left him just short of Tom Bayer in the final.

"Until last year, my last ride had been at Noble in 2011, the only race we ran that whole year," said Pierce, 37, who started racing 20 years ago and worked his way up from an 11-second Chevelle to Pro, Super Pro, Quick 16, Super Gas, Super Comp, and finally Top Alcohol Dragster. "It was our home track and we figured we'd go out there and have a little fun and ended up making it all the way to the final."

Then … nothing.

"It's no fun sitting there, watching everybody else race, I can tell you that," Pierce said. "I'll admit it: it sucked. I really thought I was done. 'Who's gonna call me?' I thought. 'I'm not even out there anymore.' I'm pretty low-key; I never thought anybody paid any attention to me. I've always tried to cut good lights – I knew the only way I could win was on the Tree – and I guess Gene noticed. Driving for him, you'd better be good on the lights. Look at how well Spencer and Chase did for him."

Snow's team has a full schedule planned for 2014, including a full slate of Central Region events and national event stops in Topeka, where last year Pierce barely missed making his first final-round appearance, and home state events in Houston and Dallas. Pierce beat eventual winner Alan Bradshaw in the 2013 Topeka semi's but was disqualified when his nitro percentage was found to be 1 percent too high. "I don't know what happened there – it's not like we were trying to get away with anything," he said. "I think it's just that it's such a long haul from the pits to the staging lanes at Topeka that the alcohol had more time to evaporate."

Pierce made his first divisional final with Snow's team later in 2013 at, naturally, Noble, where he finished second to eventual world champ Jim Whiteley. His only start this year ended early when he missed the cut at the rain-shortened Central Region opener at Houston, but he has no complaints.

"It's still pretty crazy to me that I'm back out here," said Pierce, an Oklahoma native who now lives in Cypress, Texas. "I mean, I couldn't believe I got that call. Me? It's like a dream I'm still waking up from. It all came together really fast, and I still don't have the words to describe what I felt that day. There are a lot of good drivers out there – a ton of them – and I consider myself fortunate that Gene asked me. It's an honor. He's one of the guys who signed my license in 2003, and I've been friends with him and Vernon [Wilde] and Spencer forever. I really owe a lot to him, Vernon, Spencer, Lucas Oil, Dixie House Café, and my family. My goal is to eventually run Top Fuel, and I realize that that kind of thing doesn't usually happen, but hey, you never know. I never thought I'd get that call from Gene, either."

2014 Top Alcohol Season Preview

Courtesy of Todd Veney/Pro Sportsman Association

When 2013 world champs Jim Whiteley and Frank Manzo peeled off their firesuits for the last time late last year at Pomona, the clouds parted for other Top Alcohol Dragster and Top Alcohol Funny Car racers. Whiteley walked away from Top Alcohol Dragster racing after winning back-to-back championships in 2012 and 2013, and Manzo retired from Top Alcohol Funny Car competition as the hands-down greatest driver in class history with eight straight championships and 17 in all, a record for any driver in any category.

So who'll win it all in 2014, the most wide-open season in years? The consensus picks are Chris Demke in Top Alcohol Dragster and Annie Whiteley in Top Alcohol Funny Car.

Demke, who finished second in both of Whiteley's championship years, likely would have been the favorite regardless of what happened at the 2014 season opener, but he dominated the Winternationals as much as anyone ever dominated any event, pounding out one 5.2 after another for a wire-to-wire victory and the early points lead. Demke, who earned his first Top 10 finish in 2004, has carried the number 2 in three of the past four years and has won at least one national event every year since his long overdue breakthrough at the 2010 Winternationals – two or more every year until last year, when only Whiteley scored more than once.

It's been four years since Bill Reichert, tied with Rick Santos for the most championships in Top Alcohol Dragster history (five), last won a title, but the class' most prolific active driver can never be counted out – especially now that NHRA decreed that A/Fuel teams are allowed an extra percent of nitro. He's been a Top 5 driver for 10 straight years and put up multiple national event victories every year from 2005 to 2012, so nothing he accomplishes this year could come as a surprise.

Joey Severance, who had a shot at what would have been his first championship right down to the final day of the 2011 season, is poised to have the best season of his career this year. Long established as one of the top leavers in the country, now he and father Joe Sr. have power from Whiteley's YNot Racing stable.

Mark Taliaferro has retained the services of master crew chief Norm Grimes, who led both Santos and Whiteley to multiple titles. The 1997 Mile-High Nationals champ, who has been competitive with both A/Fuel and blown-alcohol combinations since his return to racing in 2010, earned a pair of final-round appearances in 2011, and everything is in place for a career year in 2014.

Also expected to mix it up with the top cars in the country this year are Shawn Cowie, who came back from devastating injuries in a 2011 motorcycle accident to take storybook wins at Woodburn and Seattle, perennial contender Randy Meyer, and the converter car of third-ranked Brandon Booher, by far the class' most improved driver in 2013.

Top Alcohol Funny Car is even more wide-open than Top Alcohol Dragster. Just one active driver – Tony Bartone – has ever won the championship. Every other champion in the class' 34-year history has retired since winning the title: Manzo (1981, 1986, 1997-2003, 2006-2013), Bob Gottschalk (1982), Fred Mandoline (1983), Brad Anderson (1984-85, 1989), Pat Austin (1987-88, 1990-91), Bob Newberry (1992, 2005), Randy Anderson (1993-94), Joe Penland (1995), and Cy Chesterman (2004). Bartone, who won it in 1996, when he famously won 37 rounds in a row, since has finished second four times (1997, 1999, 2011, and 2012). He and crew chief Steve Boggs will miss the first few races of the season and start this spring with a new Murf McKinney-built Monte Carlo that will be replaced by a Camaro body as soon as one becomes available.

Another top contender does have championship experience – just not in Top Alcohol Funny Car. Jay Payne, the 1995 Top Alcohol Dragster champ, has made the Top 10 in each of the past 14 years – every year since he switched from dragsters to Funny Cars in 1999. He's come closer to a championship than anyone who hasn't won it, with second-place finishes in 2001, 2004, 2006, and 2007.

Annie Whiteley and crew chief Roger Bateman are considered by many – including Manzo himself – to be the title favorites for 2014. The wife of outgoing TA/D champ Jim Whiteley has put up back-to-back Top 5 finishes in her only two years in the class, claimed her first national event title last summer in Chicago, appeared in multiple national event finals in both 2012 and 2013, and in just 13 career starts in regional competition has made eight final-round appearances and won all eight.

Second-generation driver John Lombardo finished a career-high second last season and topped the standings as late as September. Now teamed with Rick Jackson, whose car, with Bartone at the wheel, finished second to Manzo the previous two years, Lombardo will be a factor right down to the end. Lombardo's crew chief, Jeff Lirones, recently joined forces with Steve Gasparrelli, a Top 10 player year after year and another who has finished as high as second in the national standings.

With five of 2013's top 12 drivers now tuned by a new crew chief, and now that Manzo has finally, mercifully, abdicated the throne, it could be Top Alcohol Funny Car's most interesting season in years.

Ahten Back at Pomona, Ready for More

Courtesy of Todd Veney/Pro Sportsman Association
Photo courtesy of Mike Cornelius

Off the radar just a year ago, alcohol racing's newest champion, Johnny Ahten, is one of the favorites to win Top Alcohol Dragster at the Winternationals after putting his name in the record books forever with an emotional victory at the 2013 World Finals, his first NHRA win anywhere.

"I got to savor that longer than anybody who won last year, and we're right back at the same track," says Ahten, a 42-year-old fireman from Santa Clarita, Calif. "I would have been thrilled to win even if there was an asterisk next to it, if all four guys red-lighted against me, but the way it happened really made it special."

All Ahten did was trailer some of the biggest names ever: many-time national event winners Shawn Cowie and Joey Severance in the early rounds, Mark Taliaferro in the semifinals, and the man himself, outgoing world champ Jim Whiteley, in the final. "Cowie's a pretty tough draw for a first-round race, and everybody knows Severance is one of the best drivers out there," Ahten says. "Norm Grimes was already tuning Taliaferro's car by then, and they're probably the favorites to win the championship this year. And Whiteley … what can you say? We were in the lanes before the final, and there's Whiteley standing at my tailgate, there's Manzo, and there I was, part of the conversation. I was in awe. I told Jim I was about to have the best seat in the house when he ran another 5-teen, but by the time I got belted in the car, I was thinking, 'This is it. I'm gonna do it.' "

He did, with an outstanding .016 reaction time and another steady run, while Whiteley, on what he knew would be his last run in a Top Alcohol Dragster, lost traction trying to match his landmark 5.17 at the 2012 Finals. "You couldn't have written it any better – our first national event win, first NHRA win, and right there at Pomona," Ahten says. "My family, my friends, and a bunch of off-duty firemen were there to see it. As great as it would have been to win at Seattle or Topeka or anywhere, it happened at Pomona. I took that Wally with me to the fire station and everywhere I went for a while. It was like my own Stanley Cup – 'Hey, look everybody.' "

Ahten's not just another firefighter – he's a captain for one of the biggest fire departments in the world, the Los Angeles County Fire Dept., a 22-year-veteran at just 42. His father, Al, worked out of the same station as drag racing's most famous fireman, "Big Jim" Dunn, and young Johnny literally wore hand-me-downs from Mike Dunn. (Ahten also has another connection to drag racing history: He lives five doors down from "Lil John" Lombardo.)

Dunn won the 1981 World Finals at Orange County International Raceway, and Lombardo won there in 1983. "I still can't believe I won the same race," Ahten says. "I grew up going to Orange County and dreaming of winning the World Finals someday, and it was just like I always thought it would be – better. All those old tracks are gone now – Orange County, Irwindale, Lions, Fontana – and that day took me right back to Orange County. Where else could I have won and had everybody there with me? The alcohol cars don't run at Sonoma or Bakersfield anymore, so Pomona is the only place in the whole state of California to race your car."

Ahten has been getting faster every year and nearly won his first NHRA title last year at the Seattle regional, where he set low e.t. in the semifinals and was runner-up to Chris Demke. "We've been working on our consistency, and it's the reason we won Pomona," says Ahten, who raced A/Fuel for 10 years before his Pomona breakthrough. "That's what we're trying to focus on this year with this old car."

Ahten's dragster is one of Shelly Anderson's Top Fuel cars, a Dave Uyehara-built piece from 1996 and the only A/Fueler he's ever driven. "I think Bill Reichert's car is the only one out there that's older than ours," he says. "My dad and I have been drawn to A/Fuel since we used to watch Chess Bushey, 'Junkyard Ed,' David Baca, Rick Henkelman, all those guys. The procedure inside the car is the same as it is in a Top Fuel car, and this is the closest you're ever going to get to Top Fuel without running one." Like everyone who ever raced a Top Alcohol Dragster, Ahten dreams of one day competing in Top Fuel, but for now he's content to be a legitimate contender to win anywhere in A/Fuel.

"Working on the car this off-season was no different than it ever was," he says. "The stress of waiting for something to be delivered at the last minute so you can run your car, all the time and all the work – that's all been the same. But I feel a little different than I used to. We've achieved something. We really can play this game. We're not just on the roster anymore – we're in the game. Confidence – I wouldn't call it that. But it's a different feeling. We know we can win Pomona this weekend because we've already done it."

Page Wins East Title in Just Third Season in TAD

Courtesy of Todd Veney/Pro Sportsman Association
Photos courtesy of David Smith

 

In just his third year in Top Alcohol Dragster, Dan Page topped the wide-open East Region, where six different drivers have won the championship in the past six years (including the Division 1 era) and everybody was in it to the end again.

"People race for years and never win a championship, and we got one," said Page, who built the chassis, the same A/Fueler team owner Arthur Gallant drove to the national championship in 2002. "A lot of people would love to drive this car. Arthur knows what he's doing, and the potential is there to win any race you go to. It's unbelievable to get into something that's run this good for this long with a team that's this good at what they're doing."

Page, whose previous best was in the 5.80s in a blown dragster in New England Dragway's Pro Comp series, got up to speed immediately as an A/Fuel driver, winning the New England Dragway divisional in 2011, his rookie season. He's remained one of the top drivers on the East Coast throughout his three-year career, especially this year, when he emerged from a yearlong battle with John Finke, Rich McPhillips, and Richard Bourke that in the end came down to a single one round.

"The whole year was a blur," Page said of the rugged East Region, where enough cars to fill two Top Alcohol Dragster fields regularly show up for events. "After a while, the races all start to run together. I have to think about it to remember which one we won [Maple Grove] and which one we didn't qualify at [Lebanon Valley]."

Page won Maple Grove on Memorial Day weekend, missed the cut at Lebanon Valley, then rallied for back-to-back final-round appearances at the last two Eastern events, at New England and Cecil County. "We're there to win – that's what it's all about – but any time you get to the final it's a good thing, and we got to three," Page said. "We just struggled with consistency."

Everybody did. A different driver won each of the first four races, and each of them also had at least one DNQ somewhere among those first four. By the end of the year, in what has to be a first, the top nine drivers in the standings all failed to qualify at least once.

"It bounced back and forth so much that we really weren't thinking about winning the championship – at least I wasn't – until the end of the year," said Page, who qualified No. 1 in Richmond but got beat first round, then went to the final at New England despite starting from the bottom half of the field. "Everybody loves to be No. 1 and it's cool to say you did it, but how often does the No. 1 qualifier actually end up winning? We were No. 1 in Virginia this year. Last year, we didn't even qualify there, but when you've got this many cars showing up every time, some really good ones are going to be on the way home before first round. Since they went to the regional format, this is a way tougher deal. I wasn't that surprised that we DNQed once – it could have happened more."

Finke did it twice (Gainesville and Maple Grove) but also won twice (Lebanon Valley and New England) to finish in second place. Seventy points back, in third, fourth, fifth, and six place, respectively, Jackie Fricke, McPhillips, Bourke, and Karen Stalba all were within one point of one another.

Bourke won the Gainesville opener over McPhillips, and Randy Meyer won Richmond over Dan Mercier. At Maple Grove, Page set low e.t. of eliminations (5.32) in the semi's and ran about as quick, 5.34, in the final against Bill Reichert, who had dominated that track for years. Page set low e.t. by a tenth with a 5.42 in the first round at New England Dragway but dropped the final when Finke retook it with a 5.41. At the pivotal Cecil County closer, where Nos. 1 and 2 qualifiers Finke and McPhillips both went out first round, Page took command with his third final-round appearance of the year, setting low e.t. of eliminations (5.43) but slipping to a 5.70 in the final to lose to the No. 8 qualifier, Stalba.

Still eligible for one more regional start, Page and the Gallant team headed to Bowling Green, where they set top speed during qualifying but went out in the first round. The title went back to Massachusetts with Gallant and Page when Finke, racing the same weekend in Topeka, lost in the semi's, but Page isn't sure if he'll be back in the seat next year.

"Somebody else is supposed to be driving," said Page, who's not at liberty to divulge her name. "Either way, I hope it works out for Arthur because he funds this thing himself. Anybody could've driven that car this year. It's not like I saved all these runs, and when it goes down the track all by itself like that, the guy turning the screws is the one who's really making it all happen."

If Page isn't driving next year, he'll be tuning a Pro Mod, possibly one on the NHRA circuit. "One way or another, I'll be out there," he said. "To me, tuning and driving are just as satisfying. I'm not done – just maybe for now. I'm never going away."

 

Pro Sportsman Assoc. Progressing in Second Year

Courtesy of Todd Veney/Pro Sportsman Association

Opening the Lucas Oil Drag Racing season with a new president, Alcohol Funny car racer and former track owner Ray Drew, the Pro Sportsman Association moved forward with attainable, measureable goals for 2013: connect with the fans in the stands, continue providing race reports from every regional event and expand into national event coverage, and work more closely with NHRA and track operators.

"NHRA is on board with what we're doing, and is looking to do more in 2014," Drew said. "PSA representatives were at the off-season meetings with NHRA Division Directors and track operators in almost all of the divisions, and I think that the tracks that worked with us the closest this year – Chicago, Earlville, and Norwalk – are the ones that had the best results."

The restructured organization created a fan-awareness program and implemented it with autograph sessions on prime real estate behind the main grandstands at a majority of national and regional events that put the stars of Top Alcohol Dragster and Top Alcohol Funny Car up close and personal with fans. Also new for 2013 were a series of double-sided full-color hero cards, customized for different regions and distributed in the pits and at autograph sessions.

"We're showing our series sponsor that we appreciate their involvement and are helping to drive traffic to their midway displays with the autograph sessions," Drew said. "Forrest Lucas and his staff have really noticed, and the NHRA staff has too. Forrest showed up at several of the autograph sessions, he supports us, and I think he really understands what we we're trying to do. It wasn't just a slam-dunk deal – it took a couple of months of back-and-forth with NHRA to put a package deal together that they liked and wanted to work with. The people at Lucas Oil have noticed, NHRA has noticed, and with more members, we can do a lot more in 2014."