FIghTIng The Good FIghT
WERDEHAUSEN HAS WORKED WITH
LONGTIME FRIEND SLAVENS FOR 25
YEARS, GOING FROM STANDOUTS
AT THEIR LOCAL OZARK RACEWAY
PARK TO EMBODYING THE SOUL OF
THE CLASS IN RVW, ADDING PLENTY
OF FANS ALONG THE WAY.
very well, and it’s been a huge strength to the
program to have both of them on board.”
Slavens says it with the idea that he’s very much
interested in getting the full viewpoint from each
of them. The more ideas, the more information,
the better off everyone will be.
But it’s all meaningless if Oplawski and Werde-
hausen don’t mesh. Werdehausen has worked on
Slavens’ cars for decades, establishing a trust and
a friendship that has been there for ages. Oplawski
jumping into that mix with both feet just a few
years ago could have easily disrupted that flow.
Instead, it was like he was meant to be there.
He’s been the final link to help get Slavens from
4.00s and high 3.90s to a record-breaking
showstopper in a steel-bodied car. Combined,
it’s been a pleasure, no matter the hardships
they’ve suffered – and that’s very much been
the case in 2020.
“Nobody’s pointing any fingers like, ‘Why can’t
you figure this out?’ It’s, ‘Let’s get this figured
out.’ We always try to keep that whole team thing
going on,” Werdehausen says. “We win as a team,
we struggle as a team, and we lose as a team. I’ve
made mistakes before, Joe’s made mistakes before,
Tim’s made mistakes before, but we don’t hang on
to those, we just kind of learn from those mistakes.
We leave our egos at the door and, when we do
screw up, it’s like, ‘OK, we don’t want to do this
again.’ We don’t hate anybody for a week or not
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Ultimately, it comes
down to Slavens. If
he isn’t buying in,
none of it works. That,
however, has never
been in question.
talk to anybody for a week.
“Plus, me and Joe tend to think a lot alike, and
then that helps a lot. I’ll go back, look at the data
and go, ‘I think we need to do this,’ or, ‘I think we
need to do that.’ And then he’ll come and look at
it and go, ‘Well, I think we need to do this and we
need to do that,’ and nine times out of 10, we’re
thinking the exact same. It makes it easy when
we’re not bumping heads.”
It’s also much easier to maintain good vibes
within a team when things are going well, much
like they had been for the last couple season. The
team made constant improvements, became a
bonafide contender in RvW and broke records.
Things were good and Slavens was closing in on
his first victory at a marquee RvW event.
But drag racing isn’t a continual ascent sport.
They’ve taken 10 steps forward, which means
Slavens and his team may have to take a few back
to move forward again. And right now, there’s no
denying they’re in a valley.
Slavens traces the struggles back to crashing
into the wall in Orlando late last year. Since then,
the team has been confounded, running into one
problem after another. It culminated at Lights
Out 11 – the site of so much glory just a year ago.
This time, it was just massive disappointment,
as Slavens couldn’t make one full run, qualifying
32nd before easily being dispatched by Jackson,
who cruised to the victory.
They were far too deep into it to make radical
changes on-site, but Werdehausen and Oplawski
are confident they’ve got a remedy.
“It’s been very trying,” Oplawski says. “Ulti-
mately, you have to know it’s not any one person’s
doing. You can’t point the finger. Obviously some-
thing has happened, but it worked before and
it will work again. It’s just a piece of the puzzle
we’re missing. We’re fortunate to have owners
that understand that as well. They know there’s
highs and lows and they know we’ll get through
it – hopefully sooner than later.”
Adds Werdehausen: “We’re at the point now
where we both agree that we need to slow down to
be able to go faster. But nobody’s pointing fingers.
We know we have the car, and we know we have
Issue 154