Canada’s most prolific Top Alcohol Dragster class racing team have raised their own bar for the 2017 season….

Surrey British Columbia’s Shawn Cowie, who has flirted with winning the NHRA Lucas Oil World Championship title on occasion during the past, may very well be more serious about that goal then ever before in his career.

During the past off season his racing team undertook some significant new strategy to enhance their future racing fortunes – the most impactful being the signing of leading edge TAD class tuner Norm Grimes as their race team’s new crew chief.

That manoeuvre appeared to pay almost immediate dividends with Shawn qualifying #1 and running a career best ET during the season opening NHRA event at Pomona – before going on to a “four finish” in the category – first race out together.

Shawn and Ron Cowie

That season start has further energized Shawn who along with his father Ron are optimistic for the possibilities for this season in the Mundies Towing-sponsored dragster.

“Having the quickest pass of my career (5.241 secs) was a good way to open up our season,” Shawn affirmed. “Those performance mini-milestones are rewarding – because this is such a tough category. That being said – it was just one run and we won’t to get too excited just yet. But it’s certainly a great point for us to start and learn from.”

“Having Norm Grimes now on board with us is huge,” Shawn continued. “We do have one of his complete total motor combinations now in our car (a 465 CID BA program) and that available horsepower is a big change. We also made a number of other changes to handle that and improve our race car. Pretty much everything on it was touched or rubbed.”

The new Cowie Racing crew chief – Norm Grimes

Shawn and Ron also confirmed that their season schedule is firmly orientated towards the ultimate goal – winning the NHRA Lucas Oil World Championship title.

“Regional racing will be less of a priority for us this year,” Shawn added. “We are adjusting our schedule to chase the NHRA World title – which we’ve come close to winning before. We will pattern our event schedule (national and regional) to try to give us the best chance to accomplish that.”

To date in his career Shawn has amassed six career wins at the NHRA national event level (including 2X last year) and few would argue that they are not well positioned to add to that total this season.

Post and photos by Bruce Biegler