Duane Shields
Team Owner
Career Highlights:
Duane began his racing in motorcycles. He then progressed to Sand Drag racing. He had a Ken Fuller front motor, injected on nitro, dragster that brought him to "Christmas Tree" racing.
In 1996, Duane bought his first alcohol dragster from David Busby. He went to Frank Hawley's Drag Racing School and received his license. It took over a year learning for the team to win a single round. The team tried to learn from each lap down the track. Finally, their first national event win came at the Autolite Nationals in Sonoma. CA in August, 1999.
2002, was the year Shields Racing achieved their best results so far with a win in Houston, followed by a win in Englishtown, NJ where Duane made the quickest run ever by a blown alcohol dragster at 5.263 seconds at 269 mph, setting the National ET record. Duane won the Car Craft All Star Award for Top Alcohol Dragster. He also won the Division 7 Championship and the team finished #2 Nationally.
In 2004, Duane won the NHRA CarQuest Nationals. And in 2006, he won the NHRA Winternationals and a national event in Dallas, Texas. Shields also won the Division 7 Championship in 2007, and back to back divisional events in Arizona and the Fram Autolite Nationals in Sonoma, California. In 2008, Duane won the NHRA CarQuest Winternationals.
2009 and 2010 were also big years for the Shortline Express team as they won the Division 2 Championship both years and numerous national events but fell short of winning the NHRA Top Alcohol Dragster World Championship by close margins.
Then in 2011, Duane and his team took the World Championship down to the wire, winning national events in Pomona and Englishtown as well as Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series divisional events in Atlanta, Gaineville, Maplegrove and Englishtown. In fact, Duane is undefeated in races ha has contested at the former track in Englishtown, NJ.
At the last race of 2011, the Auto Club Finals in Pomona, Duane and his team finally realized their goal of 14 years and won the NHRA Top Alcohol Dragster World Championship.
After a challenging year in 2013, Duane's having a great year in 2014. Duane won the NHRA Gatornationals for a third time and also won the rescheduled Houston NHRA Regional event all in the same weekend.
One of Duane's greatest accomplishments came in 2015 when he won the prestigious NHRA US Nationals
in Indianapolis. Then in 2019, Duane finally won big at his home town track in Las Vegas by winning the NHRA Dodge Nationals. In 2023, Duane has chose to leave the driver's seat in the capable hands of Madison Payne.
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