Dirt
that I’ve always enjoyed doing. After 20 years of
finding yourself in a hotel every weekend, it was
getting to be a little much.
How did your plan to go alcohol racing again
coincide with the decision to sell the business?
It actually started basically two years ago.
We were in Indy and I was BS’ing with (Frank)
Manzo. I was always focused on putting the busi-
ness first and the business was doing well. Frank
and I have always been good friends and he was
like, “Listen, before you convince yourself that
you’re too old to continue doing this, you should
probably consider getting back into racing and
enjoying yourself and having fun.” There was
some previous thought process behind it: Should
I be doing this? What class? Obviously, I’ve always
been a dragster guy. Top Alcohol Dragster was the
most obvious choice. I think Frank’s suggestion
pushed me over the edge to go ahead and do it.
Flash-forward to earlier this year when you
rolled into your first race at Virginia. What
kind of performance did you expect to see?
I went there assuming we would qualify, then
we’d let the chips fall where they may. Of course,
I was never under the impression it would be
the quickest field ever. That was not part of my
thought process.
We rented the track on Tuesday and Wednes-
day prior to the race. The temperature and the
wind was so unusual that we were fighting a battle.
I think the high on Tuesday was 48 degrees. On
Wednesday, we went out and made a couple laps
and just really looked at all the items we still had
to work on as a team and as a car. I think we
made two laps on Thursday during the track’s
test session. Come Thursday night, we agreed
as a team that we had some things on the car
that weren’t working properly and we probably
shouldn’t be going out and making laps just for
the sake of making laps.
We regrouped and said maybe we’ll run the
race, maybe we won’t, but we’re going to spend
all day Friday trying to repair the things that
need to be in place for us to properly tune and
run this car. That’s what we did on Friday. We did
nothing else but that, to the point that Tim Lewis,
my partner, actually went home because we felt
so strongly that we wouldn’t make a qualifying
and the team?
It was a real big deal. We put together this
team over the course of a year: bought the car
from Anthony and hired the crew4. I don’t think
I’d met Shane (Conway) prior to him showing up
in Virginia. I know for a fact I’d never met Ricky,
my clutch guy, prior to that. So there were a lot of
pieces that you put together that you hope you’ve
made good decisions. With it coming together
that quickly, we had to sit there and realize we
put together something we can be proud of.
Can you tell me a little more about who you
have working on the car?
Shane Conway is our crew chief. Ricky How-
ell is my clutch guy. He also does the clutch on
Shane’s car when he’s competing. We brought
Cam Brady on board at Maple Grove. One of
the things we learned at Virginia is that we just
didn’t have enough people out there working on
the car to be able to give Shane a couple minutes
in the trailer to peck out his plan for the next run.
There was no time for that at Virginia and zMAX.
They were always constantly working on the car.
The addition of Cam made it possible for Shane
to get that five minutes to work on the tuneup. I
think that’s what really helped us gel as a team
better at Maple Grove.
Looking ahead, what does the rest of your
schedule look like for this season?
As of now, we’re not taking that success and
changing our schedule. We only scheduled eight
races. That’s where we plan to continue. Atco
will be our next race in August, so we’re taking
eight weeks off and we’ll continue working on the
program and seeing what we can do to make it
better, whether it’s parts or whatever we can do
to improve and grow. We’ll do Cecil County, then
we’ll go to Indy for the U.S. Nationals, which will
always tell us where we stand because the best of
the best are there. We’ll do the national events at
Maple Grove and zMAX.
At this point, we don’t see any reason to change
our schedule. We’re just going to continue learn-
ing and getting better. This is always a prepara-
tion year for next year. Hopefully we can collect a
Wally or two this year. We were just about there
at Maple Grove. I really think we have the parts,
pieces and people we need to be a quality team.
DI DI DI
pass. We basically threw in the towel.
We found ourselves around 5:30, just prior to
the last qualifying session, thinking we may have
made enough changes to make the last session.
So we went into the lanes with all intentions of
making a 300-400-foot run and nothing more.
First pair out, we went out there and the car was
literally hauling ass. I’m an old-time time racer
and I can’t lift. I just can’t. I’m not that smart
(laughs). It felt good and I promised myself I
wasn’t going to lift if it was pinning me to the
seat. It ended up running 5.26. As ridiculous as
it sounds, 5.26 was only good enough to get us on
the bump spot at the end of qualifying.
To finish qualifying with such a strong run
but on the bump spot facing the No. 1 quali-
fier in the first round of eliminations, how
exciting was it to move past first round in a
wild pedalfest?
It was fun. You always look for rounds that
the driver can do his job. I actually pedaled in
the first half of the track terribly, then realized if
I don’t let this thing settle down and slowly get
back into it, I’ll never have a shot at winning it.
You have to realize I hadn’t been in the seat in
one of these cars in a pedalfest in years. It just
took a couple seconds for me to gather myself up.
Fortunately, we won the round. It was cool to go
to the semis at our first race.
Moving on to your next divisional race at
Maple Grove, you qualified No. 1 and went
to the final round. How big was that for you
DI DI DI DI
Pro Stock to Pro Street
DI DI DI
shifting gears is just more fun!
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Trevor Eman - pro stock
Issue 134
DOUG FOLEY