With A New Race Car And Sponsor, Can Shaun Carlson Turn The Import Drag Racing World Upside Down?
Let me tell you something. The biggest thing I've learned [by being involved with sport compact drag racing] is that innovation is hard to come by. Nobody ever tries anything new. They don't look to see what F1, CART, or rally racers are doing-this includes the physical act of racing, right down to safety. For a front-wheel drag racer, we have to do the exact opposite of what a rear-wheel-drive racer would do. Before I started to build Steph's [Papadakis] race car, I went around and talked to everyone from Roger Lamb to Mark Williams, anyone I could think of when it came to standard rear-wheel-drive builders. The majority of what they told me to do was, in fact, the opposite of what we should be doing. From suspension setup to spring rates and performance-it's all a pain in the ass. Many times I've sat there and just wanted to say "screw it" and go with a rear-wheel-drive (RWD) platform. For a front-wheel-drive (FWD), parts are just not readily available. The main problem I'm dealing with is the transmission-whatever's out there just isn't worth a damn. But, the FWD market is always evolving. There's a lot more people getting involved. Essentially, it's gone corporate and the game has gotten more expensive. It's not just a hobby anymore.
The advantage of going FWD is more of a challenge to me than anything. When I talk to most of the kids out there, they already know that a RWD can go fast. What they want to see is how fast a FWD can go. For most of the people who own FWD cars, they see RWDs as old-school. Everything that's being manufactured and used in competition-like Honda, Toyota, GM, Chrysler, or Ford-they're all FWD and it doesn't help that they don't have an interest in wanting to do anything RWD. A FWD is obviously slower from the get-go and it costs more money to make them fast, but it's what's driving the market. When I talked with Chrysler about working with a RWD car, they told me, "Why would we care to do anything RWD when we have Pro RWD cars running already? What difference would one more make?" All they really care about is FWD performance, and they're proving it by sponsoring my car and the other FWD race cars that are being campaigned (by Darrel Cox and Mike Crawford). It's a market that I have to stick with. When the car runs well, it's fun and rewarding. But right now, when everything's breaking, it's hard to stick with it. There are a lot of days when I like FWD and a lot of days when I like RWD. However, if I only stuck with RWD, I would not have any of the respect or support from the people I'm getting it from now. I helped to build one of the first FWD tube-chassis race cars to break the 9- and 8-second barriers, first 150, 160, 170, and 180 mph-which are a lot of firsts. If it wasn't for that, I'd be writing for the magazines again.
When Chrysler first came to me, which was at last International Auto Salon [in April 2002], I debuted the latest version of the Focus in the Meguiar's booth. Kevin Miller from Mopar came over and asked, "What will it take to get you into a Neon next year?" I jokingly replied that it would take "a lot of money." My initial thought was Who cares about a Neon anyway? Then he told us about the new SRT-4 and how much power it could make, along with its marketing plan. That's when things started to get interesting. Ironically, I was supposed to campaign a Cavalier this year, but after talking with Kevin in greater detail and not being able to come up with a solid plan with GM, I went with the Neon.