Mutiny on the Bilstein

By Susan Wade

Joe Amato called it "the week from Hell." Wayne Dupuy, new crew chief for the Bilstein Engine Flush Dragster, conceded he picked the wrong week to try to quit smoking and added drolly, "It's been an interesting week, wouldn't you say?"

The Mutiny on the Bilstein occurred with the breakdown of the Top Fuel team's transporter on the way to the NHRA summitracing.com Nationals. The $10,000 calamity, which will end up costing even more, left more than just a broken truck on the side of a desert highway, 40 miles west of Phoenix and 290 from The Strip at Las Vegas. It left the team in emotional tatters. (photo by Mike Fischbeck/nhra.com)

A personality clash had been brewing between new crew chief Wayne Dupuy and the workers he inherited just after the Gatornationals. When the truck axles snapped, all but two crew members quit Amato's team on the spot. Randy Shatzer and Mike Shenal, the two men driving the truck, stayed.

The broken axles on the trailer will be fixed. The original crew for Darrell Russell couldn't be salvaged. And Amato called the whole series of personality-clash disasters "total eighth grade."

Dupuy had joined the team as crew chief and 17 frustrating days later, Jimmy Walsh, 18-year Amato associate, and chief engineer/clutch man Bob Bauer were fired. The semantics didn't matter to Dupuy -- he said "Amato Racing" made the decision. (photo by Zak Hawthorne)

Amato said the mix of methods and egos was unstable from the beginning. "I had hoped for the best. But you know when you're not compatible. I tried to force it, and it just didn't work," he said. He was out of the country during much of Dupuy's early days in the shop -- "and I wasn't there to referee.

"I don't know what they were thinking," Amato said of the departed crew members. "Maybe they thought, 'We won't be nice to Wayne and maybe he'll leave.' I don't know."