Canada’s Shawn Cowie tacks on another accolade to his thriving drag racing career….

…..and it’s something that the annuls for drag racing will forever show….

During NHRA’s Denso Four Wide Nationals at Las Vegas last weekend – the NHRA tried for the very first time racing it’s Top Alcohol classes (TAD and TAFC) on a “4-wide” format. Emerging on top for the TAD side of things was Langley’s BC’s Shawn Cowie – making history again with the Mundie’s Towing & Recovery dragster.

For Shawn, who has finished 2nd in the final NHRA Lucas Oil World Championship points tally (the last three years in a row !) he thus collected his 21st career NHRA national event title in a very special way.

The TAD final round was in fact arguably the best “quad” of the entire Las Vegas event — with all four participants pretty much glued together all the way down track and all running in the 5.2 secs zone.

Shawn Cowie (far lane) prevailed in NHRA’s first ever 4-Wide TA event affair. The final round was super competitive!

Shawn’s run of 5.214 secs placed gave him the winners placing over runner-up Jackie Fricke’s 5.229 secs. Casey Grisel and Julie Nataas ran 5.263 secs and 5.297 secs respectively. Shawn’s machine was the only supercharged alcohol car in the championship round.

“It felt pretty awesome,” said Shawn. “I didn’t really know what it was going to be like (driving) going into Las Vegas. But we had a driver’s meeting beforehand where everything was explained to us so we knew what to expect. All the class drivers did a great job adjusting to the staging procedures — and I was pleased at how smooth it went.”

As so many of his previous wins have been, Shawn’s victory was another dominating display, including winning from the event pole and setting both low ET and top speed (5.208 secs 277.37 mph) along the way.

“We didn’t test this year due to the pandemic — so the only runs I had going into the 4-wides was at the regional in Vegas a couple weeks earlier,” he revealed (Shawn placed R/UP at that event). “It was very neat to come out on top for the first ever 4 wide for alcohol. I hope it’s a good sign of things to come this year — but we will take it race by race.”

Shawn Cowie celebrates his 21st career NHRA event win with his talented “international” crew assembled for Las Vegas.

This win for Shawn’s team did include a guest crew (US-based) of sorts. Because of the pandemic border related issues his regular cast of Canadian players crew guys were absent.

Posted by Bruce Biegler
Photos by Bob Johnson