Wed, 27 Apr 2011, 09:44 PM Horsepower Happy

By Kelly Wade

Owens was No. 1 qualifier at the Fall Classic in Indy in 2010. The famed dragstrip is considered his home track

Stock Eliminator competitor Wade Owens would like to win an NHRA national event, but if we're going to be totally honest, what he really wants is to continue unearthing little gems of horsepower to make his '66 Chevelle run at the top of the class. That's no easy task within the confines of his category of choice, but the challenge is what makes it so much darn fun.

"There isn't a lot of stuff that we can do to these engines," said Owens, a service manager for two Dodge dealerships. "This is Stock Eliminator, so every little thing you know about what your engine is going to want - or not want - gives you the potential to go faster."

To that point, Cape Girardeau, Missouri-based Owens has a log book that is bursting with information to draw from, and in the past three years, he has recorded everything that has been changed or tweaked on the car. He isn't alone in the quest for digging up as much horsepower as possible for his sleek '66 Chevelle; he wisely enlisted the help of engine guru Tony Bischoff of BES Racing Engines when he returned to racing after taking several years off to focus on his family.

Owens also competed in this Super Street nitrous-infused Camaro in 1998

"I first started hearing about Tony probably 16 years ago," recalled Owens. "I had a nitrous car that we were running in NMCA events, and we were racing against some of Tony's customers. When I found out that Tony had won the Popular Hot Rodding Engine Masters Challenge three times and was runner-up two or three more times, I thought that he would be a good guy to call on.

"He said that he had never done an engine like that before but that he'd be glad to try, so we took my old engine up and dyno'd it, and he built a brand new engine that was right at 30-horsepower more. He's a very, very smart fella. I give him a lot of credit."

Owens is another one of those racers who really didn't have a chance at not being involved in the sport somehow and at some point. He started going to weekly races at an abandoned airbase in Malden, Mo., with his dad, Terry Owens, and his Uncle, Lex Horner, when he was just a toddler.

Owens in 1971 at three years old working the jack on his Uncle Lex's car.

When he was 15 and it was time to look for a daily driver, his dad took him out to look at a '68 Road Runner. Liking what they saw, they purchased the car and put wheels and tires on it to tow it home and begin putting it together.

"We didn't even know at the time that this was a rare car," said Owens. "It's an original Hemi car. Well, Sikeston Drag Strip was getting ready to open back up, and my dad said, why don't we race this car and find you something else to drive? I wasn't 16 yet, so I was good with it, and I was thinking I would race it, too."

They dropped a 440 in it and the elder Owens raced it to his heart's contentment, and his son ended up with his first '66 Chevelle - a convertible. The car served him well, and he drove it back and forth to high school and even drove it when he dated the gal he would later marry, Joyce. Owens still owns the convertible and plans to restore it one day, but his race cars varied through the years until he landed on the gorgeous '66 Chevelle he drives today.

Bracket racing the freshly restored convertible Chevelle in 1986 at Sikeston Dragstrip. The new bumper had yet to be installed.

With the family growing up and finances improved, Owens was looking to get back to class racing right about 2006, when good friends Jeff Dona and his wife, Charlotte, invited him to the strip.

"I went to the Fall Classic, and that's all it took," recalled Owens. "I knew I was ready to get back into it. I originally thought I'd race the Road Runner, but when I started pricing things and trying to figure out how much it would take to run it, I realized it would probably be less expensive to do a Chevelle. I liked the '66 and still had plenty of parts from when I built the convertible, so that's what we did. We bought another '66 and started on it in January of 2007. That October, we ran it at Kansas City."

The 10 month build was basically a ground up project. The Chevelle had been raced on the oval dirt track, so Owens and his son Alex, along with friend and paint magician Danny Eaker, took everything apart, down to the bare frame that they cleaned up and painted with a layer of clear coat, and then began assembly. The entire build was done in their garage at home, and Eaker managed the incredibly clean body work and paint that Owens describes as "flawless" in his own shop nearby. Steve Decker tuned their suspension parts and got things going.

Owens drove the quick '66 Chevelle to the No. 1 spot in Belle Rose in 2010. Photo credit Alkey Alex Photos

In their first full season back on the track, Owens raced on a dozen occasions, but this year, he'll be able to extend his schedule with regular Stock/Super Stock Combo races that have been announced for his area. He'll be attending eight NHRA events, including three nationals, and Owens is also hoping that the recent purchase of Memphis Motorsports Park by the IHRA will mean even more outings.

So far, with the help of Bischoff, horsepower has been pleasingly evident. Last season, Owens was No. 1 qualifier five times, including at the Cajun SPORTSnationals in Belle Rose and the points meet at Lucas Oil Raceway in Indianapolis. In 2009, Owens shared a proud moment with his family when he won the national open at Gateway Int'l Raceway in St. Louis after he was runner-up at the divisional event in Memphis the weekend prior.

Having his family, including granddaughter Myra with whom he shares a birthday, there to celebrate in St. Louis was something very special for Owens. Their support has been a big part of his racing, and he thanked wife Joyce, son Alex, dad Terry, and friends Danny Byrd and Dean Oliver.

Family, including granddaughter Myra, and friends in the winner's circle at the 2009 St. Louis national open. Photo credit Bret Kepner

He also acknowledged the Justice Brothers, Australia's ICE Ignition systems, transmission mastermind Jack Sepanek, and Tony Bischoff.

The performance aspect of drag racing is where it's at for Owens. He is proud to state that last season on Nitro Joe's Drag Racing Stats his was listed as the fastest car in three different classes: K/SA, L/SA and M/SA. The quickest the car has gone is 11.46 in K/SA.

Winning the national open gave him a taste of what it might be like to celebrate in the winner's circle on a grander scale, and sure, that would be nice, but Owens is willing to hand over the driving to Alex (the guy generally behind the camera at the races), who recently turned 16, when the time is right, and he claims he will be completely content to allow that to happen and happily settle into a role of Papa Tuner, still aiming to find little bits of horsepower here and there while staying within the strict boundaries of the Stock Eliminator category.

Holding the trophy from another class win, this time at the Cajun SPORTSnationals earlier this year. Photo credit Auto Imagery

"I get most of my enjoyment just seeing how fast I can make the car go. It takes a lot of hard work, and we test a lot," said Owens. "But I'm not scared to try anything. I don't really consider myself a mad scientist, but I might be a little bit. I have stuff on the car that works, and I have a shelf of stuff that doesn't, and that's really the only way you can do it. For the car to run to its potential, you have to know what it wants and what it will respond to. I like that somebody says, 'Here are the rules that you have to stay within, let's see what you've got.' "