Pro Sportsman Association
Lucas Oil Adds $10,000 Low Qualifier Awards to PRO Superstar Shootout
BRADENTON, FL – More than just bragging rights are on the line for the No. 1 qualifiers in Top Fuel, Funny Car, and Pro Stock at the 
inaugural SCAG Power Equipment PRO Superstar Shootout presented by Johnson’s Horsepowered Garage. Lucas Oil, a leading manufacturer of high-performance engine oils and lubricants, has signed on to provide $10,000 bonuses to the low qualifiers in the $250,000-to-win nitro classes and $125,000-to-win Pro Stock category at the invitation-only event, Feb. 8-10, at Bradenton Motorsports Park.
“We wanted serious No. 1 qualifier awards to go with the headline-grabbing payouts, and Lucas Oil shared our vision,” said Alan Johnson, president, Professional Racers Owners Organization (PRO). “Lucas Oil and the Lucas family have been incredible supporters of drag racing and motorsports in general over the years. We’re proud that they were so eager to be a part of what we’re doing with the first-ever PRO Superstar Shootout. These $10,000 awards will give teams another incentive to throw down big numbers in qualifying.”
The No. 1 qualifiers will also receive a Low Qualifier trophy built by uber-talented metal artist and fabricator Tom Patsis of Cold Hard Art.
Meet TA/D Racer Duane Shields
by Todd Veney/Pro Sportsman Association
You know you’ve had a good career when you win four times and it’s almost an off year.
Duane Shields went winless over a dozen mid-season races in 2014 – a full season for most people – but still ended up sixth in the Top Alcohol Dragster national standings with what turned out to be another solid season: five final-round appearances and four wins – two at national events and two at regionals.
Mark Billington: executive/racer (mostly executive)
by Todd Veney/Pro Sportsman Association
To other top Frito-Lay executives, Mark Billington isn’t one of the better Top Alcohol Funny Car racers of the last 20 years – he’s the Senior 
Director of Growth and Commercialization. Balancing racing with everyday real-world responsibilities is hard on everybody, but for Billington, getting time off from work is really hard – just about impossible, actually.
It’s a choice Billington made long ago and one he doesn’t regret – except when everybody else is heading to Florida, where he used to live, for the Gatornationals and he’s stuck in an executive meeting in Dallas. “If an executive meeting runs late, I can’t just say, ‘Sorry guys, I have to go work on my car now,’ and walk out,” Billington says. “If something gets rescheduled on top of a race I was already planning to run, it’s not like everybody else can just change their schedule so I can go. I handle a billion dollars of this company’s sales a year – I have to be there.”
Demke Locks Up TAD Title, Battle Now Is For 2nd Place
by Todd Veney/Pro Sportsman Association
Like 2014 Top Alcohol Funny Car world champ Steve Harker, Top Alcohol Dragster champion Chris Demke was a multi-time championship 
runner-up who finally won it all with an unbelievable second-half run. Like Harker, he swept Charlotte and Reading in one unforgettable weekend, walking away with three Wallys and turning the 2014 points race into a race for second place.
Demke, who finished second to Bill Reichert in the 2010 standings and to nemesis Jim Whiteley in 2012 and 2013, won a career-high nine races in 2014 – five national events and four regionals. He began the season with a barrage of 5.20s in a Winternationals rout, was gone by the second round at the next five in a row, then raced just once in a three-month span from March to June as rival Joey Severance took control of the class.
TAFC Title Decided But Top 10 Still Wide Open
by Todd Veney/Pro Sportsman Association
With a Manzo-like late-season charge, Steve Harker clinched the 2014 Top Alcohol Funny Car championship with a month left in the season 
and became the first driver from outside North American ever to win an NHRA championship in any category.
The Australian veteran, who barely raced last year, didn’t race at all the two years before that, and insisted all along that 2014 was just a “test year,” got faster and faster as the year wore on and claimed a championship that once seemed destined to go to Dale Brand. A Top 5 driver in each of his last three full seasons (2008-10), and the number 2 driver of 2008 and 2009, Harker reached the final at six of his last seven starts (all but the U.S. Nationals) and won all six – Norwalk, St. Louis, Bowling Green, Dallas, Charlotte, and Reading.
Brown Coming Off “Injured Reserve” to Race at Dallas
by Todd Veney/Pro Sportsman Association
Second-generation Top Alcohol Funny Car racer Bryan Brown had to miss the first race of the season because of a stomach ache that turned out to be a lot more than that, and it’s pretty much been all downhill from there.
It isn’t that Brown hasn’t gotten his car to run or hasn’t been able to cut a light – he has, every time. It’s his health, or lack thereof, that’s kept him on the sidelines almost all year. It all started right before the first race of his season, the Central Regional at Houston, a race he’d been looking forward to all winter, which he had to skip to have his appendix removed.
TA/D Racer Dubbin Can’t Get a Break
by Todd Veney/Pro Sportsman Association
If it isn’t one thing it’s another this year for Alcohol Dragster racer Dean Dubbin. He’s reached the semifinals somewhere at least once in each of 
his first three seasons in Top Alcohol Dragster, but 2014 has only grown more frustrating as it’s dragged on, topped (he hopes) by a first-round foul last weekend at the Central Regional at Tri-State Raceway in Earlville, Iowa.
Opponent Randy Meyer had dominated all weekend and eventually won, but in the first round against Dubbin, he was, for once, vulnerable. “I knew I was going to smoke the tires,” he told Dubbin later. “You know what’s sad?” Dubbin said. “I did too.”
Meyer did went up in smoke right off the line – right after Dubbin left before the Tree came on. It’s not like Dubbin, up against the No. 1 qualifier, got the yips, completely lost his concentration, and took off – a solenoid failed, and as soon as he went up against the converter, the car left. “I was probably 50 feet out before I even knew what was going on,” he said. “The solenoid shook itself loose. You have to use it for the burnout, and to back up from the burnout, and to go up to the starting line, and it activated all three times, but for whatever reason, when I went to bring the motor up to leave, it didn’t, and the car just left.”
Whiteley Out in Round Two at Brainerd
After running not just low e.t. of the meet but low e.t. of all three qualifying sessions at the Lucas Oil Nationals in Brainerd, Annie 
Whiteley was upset in the second round of eliminations when her car got loose and drifted over the centerline. It was the fifth time in her career that she’s qualified No. 1 at a national event and the third time already this season.
“Somewhere before half-track, the car decided to make a left turn,” said Whiteley, who reached the first national final event of her career at this event in 2012, her rookie season in Top Alcohol Funny Car. “I have no idea why – it left hard and until that point was running just like it had all weekend.”
Resurfaced Earlville Track Primed For Lucas Oil Event
by Todd Veney/Pro Sportsman Association
Reid Kuhlman doesn’t mess around. When he built Tri-State Raceway, he didn’t just put in a concrete launch pad or lay concrete to the 330-foot mark or to half-track or even for the entire quarter-mile – he did it from behind the water box to the last turnoff.
When Kuhlman recently had the surface ground and polished, he started at the 150-foot-mark and went all the way to the finish line. “Diamond grinding leaves longitudinal ridges,” he explained. “Those can take a while to fill in with rubber, so after we had the track ground, we had it polished for eight days until everything was perfectly smooth.”
Germain Perseveres in the Face of Adversity
by Todd Veney/Pro Sportsman Association
If Dave Germain were most people, he would have quit a long time ago.
“We keep thinking we have it figured out, and we keep finding out we don’t,” says Germain, veteran driver of the Tigercat Top Alcohol Funny Car and a retired firefighter with the patience of Job. “You drive away from the race track Sunday and ask yourself, ‘What the hell did we do wrong?’ ”
Germain has two DNQs and a first-round loss so far this year. Last year, it was four DNQs, a first-round loss, and a second-round loss. The year before that, it was two first-round losses and two DNQs, and the year before that, three first-round losses and a second-round loss. In 2010, he had two first-round losses and a DNQ, in ’09 it was three first-round losses and two DNQs, and in ’08 he DNQed in his only appearance. That’s two round-wins in seven years. A lesser man would’ve given up.
