Western Canadian TAD racers Don St. Arnaud and Shawn Cowie both made impact statements during NHRA’s season ending AAA Auto Club Finals….
Don St. Arnaud
In 2015 Edmonton’s Don St. Arnaud provided some super serious season performance bookends for the fabled Auto Club Raceway drag strip at Pomona.
The injected nitro TAD class racer, who wowed the category with a memorable NHRA national speed record (285.35 mph) setting effort during the season-opening Circle K Winternationals last February, returned to the scene last weekend and nearly duplicated all that.
At the Auto Club Finals event, Don qualified #1 over a super swift 16-car program when he ran a career quick 5.209 secs. He then bettered that personal best to an astounding 5.186 secs while winning in round #1 which was low ET of the event. Don was also credited with setting top speed of the meet overall for the TAD category when he ran a 284.99 mph. That math helped to reaffirm him as the fastest dragster driver overall in the class as he now holds three of the four all-time fastest speeds ever recorded!
Don’s objective of winning the Pomona event however did fall short. His powerful car appeared to fall victim to some vastly changed atmospheric and track conditions – a direct result of a rain delay that happened immediately prior to round #2 on Sunday. In what was considered an upset, his car went up in immediate tire smoke while racing fast emerging driver, Cameron Ferre, in that second round of competition.
Don St. Arnaud continued his propensity of performance domination for TAD class racing at Pomona’s drag strip.
Surrey BC’s Shawn Cowie who had won the NHRA Lucas Oil Divisional race at Las Vegas the weekend before, was the top finishing Canadian driver overall at the AAA Auto Club Finals.
Racing his supercharged TAD and after qualifying it #10, Shawn advanced to the semi final round of competition – losing out to newly crowned NHRA Lucas Oil World Champion Joey Severence. Cowie had beaten Michael Manners and Ross Strickler in earlier competition and while doing so ran his quickest and fastest times of the season at 5.289 secs and 272.56 mph.
Shawn Cowie closed off his 2015 season campaign with a superb semi-final finish at the AAA Auto Club Finals
Post by Bruce Biegler
Photos by Randy Anderson
