SLAVENS’ EXPLOITS IN 2019
MADE HIM A FAN-FAVORITE, AS
HIS BLAST OF 3.621-SECONDS
AT 217.74 MPH AT LIGHTS
OUT 10 MOMENTARILY MADE
HIM THE QUICKEST MAN ON
RADIALS. IT’S A RUN THAT WILL
CONTINUE TO LIVE IN INFAMY.
move forward and advance the program from it.”
Adds Oplawski: “I think it’s ultimately a lack
of ego on everyone’s part. We just want to make
everybody happy and that’s what has helped with
these guys. It’s the common goal of going fast and
doing well, and it’s a team effort. It’s absolutely
a family type of feel. It’s been pretty bitchin’ and
there’s no two ways about it.”
B
efore Slavens-Mania took over
the radial world a year ago – a stretch that
briefly included the Wal-Mart manager
holding the RvW world record with a
monumental blast of 3.621 seconds at
217.74 mph – the Marshfield, Missouri, native
was content destroying opponents at his home
track, Ozark Raceway Park.
March 2020
He had success with an Outlaw 10.5 nitrous
car, but sold all his stuff when turbocharged cars
started to take over the class.
That’s when he met with Michael and the Zim-
mermans, who offered Slavens the opportunity
to race the Camaro. At that time, he raced Pro
Street around his hometown and then Outlaw
10.5 with a twin-turbo combination, and Slavens
had made a name for himself locally.
He won back-to-back championships, a variety
of other local events and Slavens still holds the
track records at Ozark in Pro Street (182.11 mph,
set in 2014) and Outlaw 10.5 (4.228 at 189.55, set
in 2015). It was a pretty good life, but Slavens –
and the team owners – were ready to step up the
program and go RvW racing.
“It was kind of a collective agreement that to
be able to compete at a level that we wanted to
compete at, we were going to have to step up
the program obviously,” Slavens says. “We had
some decent success but that was back when,
this sounds funny, when a solid 10.5 car was
running 4.50s.”
The 4.20s soon became the 4.10s with the
twin-turbo combination and then the conver-
sation soon moved to, “Think we can make a
3-second run?” It seemed unfathomable just a
season or two before, but the pieces started to
come together.
Slavens was initially skeptical about putting
on radials because, quite frankly, it didn’t work
at first. “We had tried it with my car, my old Out-
law 10.5 car, with zero success,” Slavens admits.
“We just didn’t have a support mechanism to be
able to go from a slick to a radial and be smart
enough to run it.”
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