Shaw Shows Improvement in Second Year
ATLANTIC CITY, NJ – DJ Shaw of Conway, NH was fast in yesterday’s qualifying heats at Boardwalk Hall. This is his second year in the TQ Midgets since running Champ Karts indoors. He won at Baltimore and had several strong runs at Atlantic City and Providence. This year’s new points system awards points for time trials and heats.
“It seems to be pretty good in race trim,” Shaw said. “We ran with (Erick) Rudolph there and there’s not many that can do that. This year the way the format is it kind of killed us and I can’t say that I really like the format. So we’ll just hope that we’re good enough to get a top two in the next deal.”
Shaw is running a car of his own creation, Dale Shaw Racecars of Center Conway, NH.
“It took us a lot of phone calls with people that we knew that built ’em. It was a lot of work. It took about twice as long as building a Super Late Model, so it’s a lot of pride in it and hopefully it is all worth it.”
[Jan. 29 Photo Gallery] by Nicholas Teto
[Jan. 30 Photo Gallery] by Nicholas Teto
“We came down with it last year, and we made Friday night, and I had some trial and error of learning things and cost us qualifying Saturday night last year. We really should have made both nights … I got a little more confidence and we’re a little more familiar with it this year and it seems to be we can’t rip off that good lap. But we could race with the best of ‘em last night, so hopefully, we can do that a little later today and get it in the show.”
Shaw will continue his busy Super Late Model schedule with the Granite State Pro Stock Series and the Pro All Stars Series (PASS) and some open events. Shaw said he may run a series for points but will not commit to a full schedule because he may skip an event to attend a bigger race.
“Hopefully, we got a pretty good full schedule between a few different teams and owners, and we’ll see what we can do. Hopefully, get a bunch of wins.”
Shaw expects to compete in the 200-lap, $10,000 to win U.S. Prostock/Super Late Model National Championship Race at Seekonk (MA) Speedway on July 13. Shaw ran the $5,000 to win Pro Stock Open last October and won the last PASS North race there in 2012.
“It obviously doesn’t conflict being a midweek show, and it should be a good car count and lot of fun.”
The PASS North series veteran has run more Granite State and open competition events recently.
“It puts our product in front of different faces and hopefully, we make it look good enough to maybe sell some cars to some different people.”
“There’s not a lot of people that can do what we do in our area … It’s a tough deal when demand picks up, but it was back to just me and dad this year. So it’s been tough keeping up with it but we still sold quite a bit of cars and I think we’ll do pretty good at getting ’em done for the year.”
Last season was successful for Dale Shaw Racecars. Joey Doiron of Berwick, ME finished second in points with two wins. Bryan Kruczek scored two wins and David Oliver picked up his first win. Shaw won once and finished tenth in points last year running part-time.
“Joey’s had one for a long time so we work together really well and I think we have a unique thing. Not a lot of people believe it until they switch. But we work so closely together anyone that has our cars. We just pretty much meet after every practice and a lot of the newer customers just can’t believe that we’ll share that stuff. But it seems to work pretty good and almost every one of our cars that we had on the PASS tour last year won. … People don’t think you share. … If I’m to win everybody just thinks that I have something that nobody else has and if Bryan Kruczek wins people realize that we might be able to help and it’s a lot better for business.”
Shaw grew up around Super Late Models. His father Dale Shaw, 1994 NASCAR Busch North Series champion, raced Super Late Models and NASCAR BNS. They build more ACT cars for awhile and raced Super Late Models. Despite Doiron and Shaw’s success, once another person bought a car, they sold six or seven more. Shaw is focused on wins and hopes the business will grow as a result.
Shaw may go to Trenton, but a top five finish would help sure up plans. His focus is preparing his rebuilt Super Late Model for the Easter Bunny 150 at Hickory (NC) Motor Speedway March 26. He wants to try some “experimental stuff” at Hickory.
Brent Dragon will pilot the car much of this season. The car has a new clip, engine, powder coating, and rear end.
“When I had Denny Hamlin in it, the car went pretty good. But it’s hard to when I don’t drive it myself and there’s somebody different in it every week that’s not familiar with it. It’s hard to stay on top of it and it kind of fell behind a little bit and I just needed to take it down and start fresh.”
“…Anything that could make it go better is new, and just I want it to be good for business and be something people want to do and try to get something going in the northeast a little bit like it seems like everybody’s doing in the south.”
Shaw commented on new competition from LFR Chassis of Mooresville, NC.
“It’s tough, but you always have to evolve, especially with companies like LFR coming in. … From our standpoint, we don’t even see how they make money selling what they do sell and they had the money to start out big. … What they’re doing is unreal really. It takes a lot of money to do that and I guess they say it takes money to make money, so I don’t see us ever getting to that size, and we wouldn’t really want to be. It’s a headache to have that many employees and that much going on. So if we can just maintain or grow a little bit every year, and stay where we’re at we(‘ll) do pretty good.”
Sources: Nicholas Teto/YankeeRacer.com
http://seekonkspeedway.com/
http://www.thethirdturn.com/