He may have once been called Australia’s fastest teenager but Western Australian Shane Weston has grown up and is now hunting down the highly respected records of the Top Alcohol Dragster class.
Weston, 21, will be competing at the first round of the ANDRA Top Alcohol championship on January 31 and February 1 at Perth Motorplex and is still the youngest competing driver in the series.
By day he works as a diesel fitter at Prompt Equipment Hire in Kelmscott but after work his real passion comes to life as he toils in the family’s workshop until all hours of the night.
After stepping up the car this season to full on Top Alcohol specifications the team and Shane have had a quick learning curive to get the car running consistent and fast times down the quarter mile.
“There have been a few problems along the way, but the team pulled together and made changes to help,” Shane said.
“Last meeting we managed to run our quickest and fastest time down the quarter mile track of 5.61 seconds at 250.69mph. The previous run was 5.69 seconds which shows we are heading in the right direction and with these times we should be able to qualify in the tough field of eastern states and local competitors.”
The times didn’t all come easy for the team when a dropped intake valve required them to pull out all stops to reassemble the motor.
“On the Friday qualifying pass the dragster left the line strong but at 3.3 seconds it seems to have dropped an intake valve,” Weston said. “It bent inside the head and hammered the valve seat out which went throughout the manifold into the other cylinders causing damage. It still ran a respectable time of 5.78 at 230mph, but the team had a lot of work ahead.
“We had to miss the second qualifying pass that night and rebuild the engine replacing rods, pistons, and get the new heads all setup to change out the damaged ones.”
The team all pulled together working through to the early hours of the morning getting the engine reapired so they could make the final qualifying pass on Saturday.
There is expected to be 12 teams trying to make the eight car field for race day at the Pro Showdown.
The Weston team is supported by Compressor Valve Services, Darling Downs Drilling, Stewarts Pest Control, The Boat Business and Pirtek Blackwater and their crew Aidan Duncan, Mark Shorto, Brad Anesty, Troy Alford, Richard and Elaine Weston, Bob Marlow, Kayla Vogel and Karen Hildebrandt.
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