Drag Illustrated Issue 131, April 2018 | Page 72

SHANE STACK Take It to the Bank A verified threat in Limited Drag Radial this season, Stack kicked off his championship defense season with a big win at Lights Out 9: No Escape, bagging the $5,000 prize presented by Strange Engineering, UPR Products and Mac Fab Beadlocks. 72 | D r a g asserts Stack of his commitment to the category. To ready his 25.2 SFI-certified Monte Carlo for LDR duty, Stack swapped over to a set of smaller 88mm turbochargers. The car had been back-halved by Chris Terry Racing since its rebuild in 2009, and CTR also upgraded the stock- style suspension to a four-link setup instead, featuring Menscer Motorsports shocks in the rear and Santhuff shocks in the front. A set of Mickey Thompson 275 drag radial tires were bolted on, and he was set to rock. Stack started his 2017 season in February with a short trip across the state line to Georgia for Lights Out 8 at SGMP. “I was deter- mined to figure something out last year. In 2016, I had lots of motor trouble and didn’t race much – it was about as bad as much 2010 season, short of sticking it in the wall,” he confesses. Joined by Chris Terry, Stack devoted a sig- nificant amount of time to testing and suspension adjustments at the race, and changed up the four-link settings on practically every pass. He qualified nineteenth in Ra- dial vs the World and double-en- I l l u s t r a t e d | DragIllustrated.com T hat feeling was fleeting, though, and Stack inevitably got the car back together in time to run at Donald “Duck” Long’s No Mercy race at South Georgia Motor- sports Park in Val- dosta, Georgia, by October of that year. “Since then, I’ve just kind of been there… racing every year, the setup hasn’t changed much, but never really any standout perfor- mances,” Stack comments. When the newly created Limited Drag Radial (LDR) class was conceived in January 2016, by Tyler Crossnoe and Jason “Pooch” Rueckert, Stack’s interest was piqued. The goal of LDR, the newest radial class, was to give stock-appearing cars with big horsepower a place to race fairly with competitive rules and limited power adders – it seemed as if the class had been tailor-made for Stack. “I can’t run Radial vs the World; that class is just ridiculous. I really like Tyler and Pooch, they’re good dudes, and it seemed like a good series for me,” Issue 131