Shields Loses a Close One in Opening Round at Indy

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  1. News Editor

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    Shields Loses a Close One in Opening Round at Indy

    Indianapolis - For racing fans at the Chevrolet Performance NHRA US Nationals it doesn’t get much better than the first round of Top Alcohol Dragster between the PEAK injected nitro dragster of Duane Shields and the blown alcohol dragster of Marty Thacker. Regardless of who won, it was world class drag racing competition at its finest which is what you expect at the “Big Go”.

    Duane, who qualified second with a 5.24 at 271 MPH, looked like the driver to beat after the final qualifying round. He had just posted the second best run in the last session and looked strong going into round one on Sunday where he was matched up with Midwest veteran Marty Thacker, who qualified 15th with a 5.39.

    As the cars roared off the stating line, Thacker got the reaction time advantage with a 0.050 to Duane’s 0.074. Both cars were nearly side by side down Indy’s historic quarter mile when Duane dropped a cylinder. Thacker meanwhile was able to maintain his slight lead. At the finish line it was Thacker who held on to take the win as Duane was gaining momentum but not soon enough. “It was a tough loss but Indy can be a strange race. We smoked the tires a couple of times in qualifying which we haven’t done in a long time. As a result, we were not confident going into eliminations and feared we might smoke the tires again so we took some power out of it. The dropped cylinder together with backing the car down were contributing factors of why we lost. You have to race with confidence that it won't lose traction which we didn’t do,”. Duane said.

    The PEAK team has little choice other than to put the loss behind them and move on. “Our next race is in Charlotte and I’m anxious to see how things will play out there. This was our only first round loss of the season so we’re still having a pretty good year. Indy's just not the race you want to lose in the first round,” Duane added. Duane would like to thank PEAK Antifreeze and Motor Oil, Final Charge, Blue Def, NGK, GRP and Brad Anderson Enterprises for supporting the team in 2015.
     
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