BY GEORGE ALBANO
Staff Writer
CHRIS KELLY staff Barry Ferriolo, Allentown, and his driver, Duane Beers, of Monroe, are looking to form a winning race team, having recently made a successful debut at the K & N Supernationals at Englishtown Raceway. Duane Beers has come full cycle as a race car driverBorn and raised in Edison, Beers used to go to Raceway Park in Englishtown, often as a kid.
“My father took myself and a couple of my buddies there whenever they had a big race,” Beers, now 47, recalled. “They used to have match races every Wednesday night.”
Nearly four decades later, Beers now lives in Monroe Township, a mere five minutes from the track he frequented in his youth. He’s been back many times before, even to race, but last month he experienced one of the biggest thrills of his career when he raced a top alcohol funny car at the same track he made his first quarter-mile pass. Right in his own backyard. And on Father’s Day, no less.
Yes, Duane Beers has come full cycle.
“It’s something I always dreamed about,” Beers said. “Looking up in the stands seeing all those people. I remember being 12 years old sitting out there and saying that’s what I wanted to do with my life.”
Beers followed that dream and achieved his goal, but it wasn’t easy. In fact, the road to last month’s 37th annual K & N Supernationals in Englishtown was quite bumpy at times.
But Beers persevered and is now in his second season as a driver for the Ferriolo Motorsports team of Barry and Bonnie Ferriolo of Allentown.
Beers’ career, however, began to take shape long before that.
“I was around 12 or 13 and one summer a friend and me pedaled our bikes over to one of the big hotels to see a couple of funny cars they had on display. It was a promotion for a big race at Englishtown that weekend,” Beers explained. “When we got there, there was one funny car out of its trailer all apart getting worked on. So we went over to watch them and they must’ve noticed our interest. The next thing I know one of the mechanics handed me a rag and said clean this and clean that.
“One thing led to another and they snuck me into the track in the back of their pickup. I spent two or three summers helping that team. The guy’s name was Paul Smith and his son Mike, who’s also a mechanic, used to come over to our car when he was small and help us out.”
Talk about coming full cycle.
A few years after Paul Smith gave Beers his first real taste of the track, he launched his own career.
“I was actually racing in Englishtown illegally when I was 17,” Beers confessed. “I borrowed a friend’s license who was 18, and I passed myself off as him.”
By the time he actually did turn 18 himself, Beers was heavily into racing.
“That’s when I built my first dragster,” he said proudly. “I was 19 when I began racing it. I ran that dragster from 1979 till ’85 and did very well with it.”
So well, in fact, that after spending his first couple of seasons bracket racing at local New Jersey tracks, Beers moved up to the ultra-competitive Super Comp class in 1984. All he did that first season was win the NHRA Division One Super Comp championship with the front-end dragster he built.
In 1985, however, he sold the dragster to open his own business, Highland Park Automotive Inc., which he still owns and operates today. He also started building a new rear-engine dragster the same year.
“Unfortunately, the guy who owned the shop (where he was building it) died in ’85 so had to put that on the back burner,” Beers said. “I got a job driving for someone else.”
Beers spent 1986 racing in the Super Gas class, but a year later he finished building his new rear-engine dragster, and was behind the wheel of it in 1988 when he won his second NHRA Division One Super Comp championship.
What’s more, Beers finished in eighth place in the entire country in the prestigious NHRA Lucas Oil Drag Racing Series, advancing to the quarterfinals or better at every race he competed in.
“I was No. 1 in Division I in the Northeast, and No. 8 in the nation,” he noted. “I was actually leading the nation with three months to go, but in the last race of the year on the East Coast, the rear end of my car broke. Then the following week was the last race on the West Coast and a bunch of guys passed me in the standings.”
Beers’ performance in 1988 was still good enough to make the Jegis All-Stars Team.
Beers continued to be a major player in the race series in the 1988, ’89 and ’90. In 1991, however, he practically took the whole year off.
“I only did one or two races,” he said. “My wife and wanted to start a family and I started devoting attention to my business. In 1992 and ’93 I probably raced a half-dozen times, but in ’94 I was pretty serious again. I kind of saw the end coming. My wife was pregnant with our first child.”
And when Beers and his wife, Susan, had Danielle in September 1994, racing suddenly took a backseat. A year later, it was out of the picture.
“At my last race in the beginning of October 1995, I remember thinking to myself, ‘What am I doing here?’ I belong home with my wife and daughter.”
Beers felt so strong about that, he sold his entire racing operations at the end of 1995 to build his business.
“In two or three weeks, everything was gone,” he said. “The car was gone. I just said it’s time.”
But he couldn’t stay away. At least not cold turkey. In 1997, with his business doing great, his second daughter, Alexandra, a year old, and a new house in Monroe Township, Beers got the itch again and attended Frank Hawley Drag Racing school in California.
“I went out there to see if I could do it, to see if I was comfortable going that fast,” Beers said. “It was big jump, going 160 (mph) in my dragster and then hopping in a car and going 240.”
Beers found out he could and in 1998 he made eight runs in Ed Parker’s Top Alcohol Funny Car and received his license.
“My first love was always funny cars,” Beers said. “I drove the top alcohol dragsters at Hawley’s School in California, so I said let me see if could drive a top alcohol funny car. With a dragster, you just point it down the track. But with funny cars, you have to manhandle them down the track. You actually drive it.”
And the result?
“I loved it.”
Then in 2005, Beers’ “second career” got a big boost when he hooked up with the Ferriolos and their Motorsports team.
“I had been introduced to Barry in 2002 or 2003 and handed him my card,” Beers said. “I told him if he ever needed help to call me.
“Then at the end of 2004, at a race in Pennsylvania, I was walking around the pits during a free moment and saw Barry. I even helped him a little that day work on the car, and I guess it reminded him who I was. Then over the winter his driver had to leave the team, and Barry called me and asked if I was interested in driving. He didn’t have to twist my arm.”
And at their first race together, Beers won two races in the qualifying round.
“We qualified 12th and took out the No. 5 seed in the first round,” Beers said. “That got me into the quarterfinals and I got to race on national TV on ESPN. I lost, but we made it to national TV.”
The highlight, of course, came last month when Beers and his team got to race at Englishtown.
“We qualified 12th again, but unfortunately lost in the first round,” Beers added. “But it was nice to be able to race so close to home, not only for me but the Ferriolos. Barry just pours his heart and soul into this car. His family, my family, we’re all like one whole family.”
And Duane Beers isn’t done chasing his dreams yet.
“My big dream is to drive a national funny car,” he said. “But at that level, you’re talking about 3 or 4 million dollars a year, and that’s definitely beyond my budget. But I’ll keep chasing that dream, too.”