Patons Prime to Pick up Pace
Canada’s Paton Racing has positioned itself rather nicely for potentially vastly improved Top Fuel class performances in 2013….
Lead by “the Captain” himself (Barry Paton) the long time Canadian-based team (Paris Ontario) will make it’s season racing debut during next month’s Tire Kingdom NHRA Nationals at Gainesville Raceway. This year will see the team fielding a much newer chassis and in fact racing fans got a first and close up look at exactly that during the recent Canadian Motorsports Expo held recently in Toronto.
The upgrade project, which was tasked to Barry’s valued right hand man, Mark Morris, has come along very nicely according to Mark.
“At the end of last year Barry made his decision to step up the car,” Mark revealed. “Then there were some discussions with Don Schumacher and Tommy Johnson Jr. and a deal was worked out. We then picked up the car during the IMIS show at Indy last December along with some other bits and pieces.”
Mark confirmed that this 300 inch DSR Chassis is in fact the very same one which Tony Schumacher drove on the NHRA Full Throttle tour for the first five events in 2012. This car was then replaced when NHRA approved the first “cockpit” car for Tony Schumacher and thus became available.
Mark along with fellow crewmember Aaron Grant spent many man hours over the winter converting their existing drive train and components to the newer chassis. It’s safe to say that he is very impressed by what he has seen.
“The cockpit layout is a huge difference from our older car,” he continued. “There is a ton more room for the driver. The motor location is different too – the bottom line is that everything is just more efficient.”
Morris also reveled that the car’s purchase does include some tuning advice from within the highly reputed and multi NHRA championship winning DSR racing camp.
“They are going to mentor us a bit with our engine program and tuning,” he confirmed.
The Paton team (which is owned by Barry and Todd Paton) is highly motivated because of very valued support received from Tim Horton’s (John Hoey) and associate sponsors, Environmental Services Inc. (Todd & Diane), Ground Force Industrial Inc. (Dan & Brenda), Gates Canada (Scott Taylor), Payne MacTools, Tuffs Powder Coating & Nick’s No Frills.
While their entire 2013 racing scheduled is still TBA, DragRaceCanada can confirm that Euro import Stig Neergaard (from Denmark) will wheel the new car at Gainesville. The team will then target and announce additional NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series event appearances after that.
Photo and Posting by Bruce Biegler