OPLAWSKI AND WERDEHAUSEN
HAVE WORKED THEIR MAGIC
ON THE STOCK BODY CAMARO,
MAKING QUICK, CONSISTENT
AND COMPETITIVE RUNS IN
RADIAL VS. THE WORLD DESPITE
RUNNING AGAINST MUCH
LIGHTER PRO MOD-STYLE CARS.
dreamed or had an idea that I could possibly
compete at this level,” Slavens says.
It’s that humble approach that has made this
all so enjoyable. For Werdehausen, it’s a throw-
back to when he and Slavens first started racing
together. When the adulation comes and the fans
are showering them with praise, it instantly sends
Werdehausen back to the first days of racing with
Slavens’ nitrous Camaro in Outlaw 10.5.
“When they come to our pits or come over and
talk to us, they like the fact that it’s a real car, they
can relate to it. We’ve been those same people.
We’d go to a track and, this is way back, they were
real cars and this and that,” Werdehausen says.
“Just being able to connect with those kinds
of people kind of brings us back down from the
clouds to a more humbled level of this is where
we came from, those kinds of people in the cars
and this and that,” Werdehausen adds. “It’s just
crazy to think about what we used to race and
what we have the ability to race with now.”
What Slavens and his team race with now is
comprised of everything they can think of to keep
up with the high-tech, lightweight Pro Mods in
the class. If the Pro Mod cars are Ivan Drago,
taking full advantage of the body styles and tech-
nological advances, Slavens is Rocky, training in
March 2020
the snow and hopeful that old school equals an
underdog victory.
But it’s not solely the little-guy status. The car
owners provide him the necessary resources to
get the most out of the Camaro, and the trio of
main players work extremely well together.
Adding the Chance Racing Converter has paid
major dividends, while the Emtron EFI system
has been just as beneficial.
“Menscer gave us not just a good shock pack-
age, but Menscer is extremely sharp on a chassis
setup itself,” Slavens says. “And it’s one of those
deals I feel like these cars, especially the stock-
wheelbase-type cars, they’re pretty fickle and
pretty finicky. He came in and gave us some
minor suggestions for chassis and then obvi-
ously shock settings, and made a whole different
animal out of it.
“But the torque converter itself, also, it gave
us a bigger tuning window to where we didn’t
have to be just spot on every time we let go of
the button. It had enough forgiveness to it that
it will go down even a marginal setup kind of
thing, versus where we just had to hit it right
on the head before. We still firmly believe that
the torque converter was the missing link, so to
speak. Once it was in there, the numbers started
coming together kind of thing.
“And then when Joe came on board, we con-
verted over to the Emtron and from that point
forward, we’ve been able and been fortunate
enough to be able to keep him on board.”
T
here’s always the thought that
too many intelligent minds working to-
gether can cause chaos. If one mind is
the driver, three brains may be one too
much for success and, depending on who
you ask, it could be two too many. But three has
always been the perfect number for this group.
Following the record-setting performance in
Valdosta, Slavens went to the semifinals at Lights
Out for the second straight year in 2019, following
that up with a runner-up showing to Stevie “Fast”
Jackson at No Mercy later in the season.
It firmly established Slavens as a major, con-
sistent player in undoubtedly one of the most
competitive classes in the entire sport. It was
also clear what was making it work.
“Mark and Joe, it’s fun to watch them on the
laptop, in the trailer, bouncing ideas off each
other,” Slavens says. “You got two sets of eyes
looking at the data. They play off each other very,
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