Duane Shields Feature‏

Duane Shields Feature‏

by Todd Veney

Reigning Top Alcohol Dragster world champ Duane Shields heads to the Gatornationals, an event he has owned the past few years, anxious to put behind him a disastrous start to his title defense. He hasn't made it to the Tree under power in eliminations yet this year, but, as he says, it's early.

"I've got to stop doing that, obviously," Shields says, "but it's only two races. It's not the end of the world. If I wasn't running decent in general, I'd be a lot more concerned. We're a little off in the clutch department, but in qualifying we're running with everybody – not ahead of them, but at least with them. And that's without trying very hard to hop it up. The car's not smoking the tires much in qualifying – it waits until the first round to do it."

It started at the Winternationals, where Shields became embroiled in a burndown with 1993 event winner Brooks Brown, one of the original stars of A/Fuel. Brown was determined not to roll in first and forced Shields' hand. "I've been screwed around by enough guys over the years that I usually go in second – that's no secret," Shields says. "Lately, I haven't been too worried about it, so after we'd been sitting there for awhile, I just put it on the high side. Nothing was happening, and I started thinking, 'I don't know about this…' "

Brown, with nothing to lose, wouldn't budge. "If I hadn't been on the high side the whole time, I would've been fine," Shields says. "I can sit there all day, and I thought about pulling it back, but you never know when the other guy's going to go in. Too much fuel comes out of the headers when you sit there that long, and my tires got all wet."

Shields went up in smoke instantly, recovered, and made a futile chase with a 6.68 at 264 mph. Brown was long gone and won by more than a full second with a 5.65, 249. "It's my own fault," says Shields, who inadvertently sprayed nitro on his tires for about 25 seconds. "I played right into their game, and I won't let it happen again."

No starting line gamesmanship undermined Shields' efforts a week later at the East Region opener in Gainesville, but the outcome was the same: up in smoke right off the line in round one. After qualifying with a strong 5.37, he coasted across the finish line at 59 mph while Sidnei Frigo sailed into the semifinals with a 5.35, 265.

"It's my car, my money, and if I screw up a call, I take responsibility, same as always," says Shields, who has brought on friend Mike Johnson, a former national event winner and Division 6 champion with son Brandon driving, to replace Dana Hopewell, who left for Rick Henkelman's new HipLink Software team. "I've been trying to play it safe, and traditionally I've had a wide enough

window to avoid something this kind of thing, but not lately. I'm just glad it's one national event and one regional – with the new points structure this year, I'd be a lot more worried if it was two of the same kind of race. I've struggled at the beginning of the season and come back to run strong in the past, so I should be able to do it again. I'll have to."

Gainesville is the perfect place to get back on track. Shields won the Gatornationals in 2009 and 2010 and qualified No. 1 there last year. It's probably his best track on the tour, now that Englishtown, where he has never been beaten in four starts, including last year's SuperNationals, has been dropped from both the national and regional schedules.

"I love Gainesville," Shields says. "Our combination just seems to work at that track, and it would be a great place to get this thing going again. I told a few people that if I ever won the championship I might not come back the next year, but after we finally did it, I thought, 'Why quit now?' I've been number 2 before, and there's a big difference between number 2 and number 1. I'm really trying to avoid getting bogged down this year with all the pressure to repeat. I just want to have fun, but I still have goals. I've been runner-up at Indy three times. It doesn't seem like I can ever win that thing, but it used to seem like I could never win the championship, either."

Photo By: David Smith