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GEIGER: Five Long Years For Dupuy
Written by: Rob Geiger - Go2Geiger.com
go2geiger.com   http://www.go2geiger.com
06/17/2009
Porter, TX
 
For the last five years, veteran crew chief Wayne Dupuy has toiled in his own drag racing hell, searching for something he had almost decided would never happen again -- victory.

Then, two weeks shy of the five-year anniversary of the day he tuned the late Darrell Russell to his last and most impressive win of his too-short career, Dupuy finally got it done again, winning the IHRA Amalie Nationals at Dallas Raceway with driver Scott Weis at the controls.
Dupuy finally got it done again, winning the IHRA Amalie Nationals at Dallas Raceway with driver Scott Weis at the controls. (Go2Geiger.com) ยป More Photos

"I figured I was cursed," said Dupuy (pronounced Dew-Pwee). "I was gonna quit 1,000 different times but I don't know what else I would do. Something kept pushing me. Maybe it was Darrell looking down and watching over me. I don't know. But I've never worked harder for something in my life. Maybe now I can finally rest a little easier."

Dupuy was once a rising star in the tuning ranks, someone who John Force himself dubbed as "the next Austin Coil." Just about every big-time team owner in the sport was courting him, offering money, houses, and private airplane rides to the races.

Their aggression in luring him away from Joe Amato Racing, whom Dupuy and Russell raced for until Russell's untimely death in the summer of 2004, reached a crescendo after Dupuy tuned Russell past Tony Schumacher at the national event in Columbus, Ohio.

It was a special win even before Russell died. First of all, it occurred on team owner Joe Amato's 60th birthday. More to the point, Dupuy was able to find a way to get his car down the dodgy right-hand lane of National Trail Raceway, which had yielded few winners on the day.

In actuality, Dupuy and Russell should have had lane choice but a clock malfunction in Russell's semifinal victory over Larry Dixon showed no time on the ET slip. Dupuy walked over and asked Schumacher's crew chief Alan Johnson if they could flip a coin to pick lanes since it was obvious to him that Russell had run quicker than Schumacher had in his semifinal win over Doug Kalitta, but Johnson declined and took the favored left side.

As it turned out, Dupuy worked some magic and mastered the right lane perfectly, with Russell taking down Schumacher by a 4.560 to 4.600 margin.

"That was the highlight of my professional career," Dupuy said. "Me and DR, the crew guys, we weren't gonna lose that day, period. We were ready to take on the world."

But two weeks later, after tuning Russell to the pole in St. Louis, everything changed when Russell lost his life in a race against Scott Kalitta.

For weeks after burying his driver, Dupuy could barely function. "What-ifs" filled his head. He blamed himself. He blamed the NHRA. He blamed Goodyear. He confronted and cursed out top-ranking NHRA officials, which just about got him black-balled from the sport forever.

He went through the gruesome task of reconstructing the accident for investigators. He put all the pieces of the car together. He made depositions for the insurance companies and court officers.

He went to a grief counselor. He went to a psychiatrist. He pushed his marriage to Tressa to the brink.

Finally, he returned to the only place he really knew -- the racetrack.

"Me and Joe decided to start racing again," Dupuy said. "It was the only thing left to do besides go to the crazy house."

They selected Morgan Lucas to drive the car and once the smell of nitro filled his nostrils Dupuy seemed to be back in his element. He tuned Lucas to five final rounds in their first 20 races together and it seemed apparent to everyone that wins would be coming in bunches. Only somehow they didn't.

After some time, Amato pulled out of the sport and sold his team to Lucas' father Forrest. They kept Dupuy around for a while but soon parted ways in favor of a tuner they picked themselves.

Dupuy went to journeyman Doug Herbert's team and immediately got his program turned around. In short order, Herbert was making final-round appearances, three in fact, but they couldn't punch through for a win.

Then, on Thanksgiving Day of 2005, Dupuy had an accident of his own, flipping a supped-up Mustang over on a lonely stretch of road near Charlotte. He was ejected form the car and suffered severe head injuries. At first, the doctors weren't even sure he was going to live.

"When I woke up I was in this nylon cage so I couldn't get up and wander off," Dupuy said. "My head was real foggy. I didn't remember people or what had happened. I was in pretty bad
shape. The doctors told my wife that every brain injury was different. They said I might make a full recovery, or have trouble tying my own shoes, or anything in between. I probably should have died."

Professionally, the accident was a severe blow. Crew chiefs are notoriously protective of their tune-ups and many store their most critical bits of information in coded notes or just simply commit them to memory.

The questions quickly arose? Would Dupuy recover enough to tune a car? Would he even remember how?

After muddling along with Herbert for a short period of time, he was given a chance by Cruz Pedregon. Still searching for clarity at times, Dupuy still managed to get Pedregon into three more final rounds, but again, no wins.

Eventually, Pedregon wanted to go in a different direction and Dupuy was tossed aside. That's when reigning FIA champion Urs Erbacher of Switzerland asked for some help.

Erbacher had designs on running some races stateside and Dupuy took on the challenge of working with a multinational crew that struggled with the English language. "Now you got an old county boy with roots in Texas and Louisiana trying to tell guys speaking German, Italian, and this mix of the two languages that they speak in Switzerland what to do on the racecar. It was a struggle, and we made plenty of mistakes."

The group went back to Europe for the five-race FIA season, and suffered through horrible weather to finish just short of defending Erbacher's title. Yet, they still shined at times, with Erbacher reaching tow final rounds, alas, with no wins.

"I got to 13 final rounds with four different guys and still couldn't get a little man (trophy) no matter what we did," Dupuy said. "That's what I mean when I say I think I was cursed or something."

After a few NHRA races at the start of the '09 season, Erbacher returned to Switzerland to tend to his custom motorcycle business and search for more sponsorship money. Dupuy was left alone to square away the team's two dragsters and once he got them ready for competition he was curious to see how they'd perform.

"The Dallas IHRA race, we did all that at the last minute," he said. "I mean, we're here in Texas, I could get up there with the car in a couple of hours, I figured we'd go run it and test some ideas I had. Scott flew in to drive and he's good at getting the car down the track. What's weird was I had this feeling over and over that I could win the damn thing. I just keep thinking about that."

So with a throw-together crew of friends clad in T-shirts and jeans, Dupuy and Weis went out and got it done, finally ending a chapter in Dupuy's life he was more than happy to close.

"Ultimately, a crew chief is measured by his performances on the racetrack," Dupuy said. "People have doubted me, and after my wreck they had a right to, I guess, but I never wanted to just give up. I knew I could win again and to get it done is special. I just hope like hell I don't have to wait five more years for the next one."

The opinions reflected herein are solely those of the above commentator and are not necessarily those of SPEEDtv.com, SPEED, FOX, or NewsCorp.

Award-winning journalist Rob Geiger founded his go2geiger.com Web site in the spring of 2008 after eight years as senior editor of NHRA.com with a goal of providing drag racing enthusiasts an unbiased news outlet. Featuring a staff of respected and pedigreed journalists, go2geiger.com strives to deliver clear, concise, and well-researched stories on all aspects of quarter-mile racing.

A published author, Geiger became well known in the drag racing world through his daily work on NHRA.com, his meticulous stat-keeping, the Associated Press stories he supplied to the general media, the content that filled event programs, and his numerous regular appearances on radio programs across the country.

Prior to joining the NHRA circuit as a media relations specialist in 1997, Geiger covered the Dallas Cowboys, the Dallas Stars, ran the sports staff of a daily newspaper, and worked as a disc jockey for two rock-n-roll radio stations. An honor graduate at the University of Houston, Geiger resides in Porter, Texas, with his wife Lori, daughter Sara, and son Rob Jr.
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