With its intimidating pirate flags, menacing skull design and solid black coloring, the “Black Pearl” and its crew have earned a reputation around the pits as one of the fiercest teams on the Nitro Jam tour – and for good reason.

In just their first year of competition in the innovative new Pro Fuel class, Evans and his team took the Nitro Jam series by storm winning the first two events and eventually the championship in one of the tightest points battles in Nitro Jam history against rival Mike Manners and the “Shredder” team.

Evans also completed the historic season with a perfect 6-0 record in final rounds and set the national mark for speed and time in the new class, roaring down the quarter-mile in 5.240 seconds at 283.85 miles per hour at the North American Nitro Jam in September.

And the scary part is, despite all of the accomplishments Evans enjoyed this past season, he did it all with a rookie crew in their first year working with a Pro Fuel dragster.

“The amazing thing is, and most people don’t know this, before this year I never tuned one of these cars and my crew chief John never worked on one of these cars. So not only did we win, but we were learning every race and just got better as time went on,” Evans said. “Last year may have been the inaugural year for Pro Fuel as a class, but it was also our first year as a team and with what we learned, look out next year.”

Now, with a championship in his pocket and a couple of new additions to his dragster, Evans and the “Black Pearl” crew are ready to reach to new heights in 2011 when the season officially gets underway in January at Evans’ home track in south Florida.

“We really enjoyed the fight to the finish with Mike and his crew last year and we are looking forward to seeing what we can do in 2011,” Evans said. “We know we can run with the best of them, but we may also have a target on us because everyone wants to beat the champs. The one thing I do know, however, is that we have more confidence in our abilities to get this car down the track and we feel we are in good shape to start the year.”

In addition to learning the ins and outs of the new class, Evans also made a few additions to the “Black Pearl” dragster in the offseason including adding a slide valve to help with fuel management and a cannon to help with clutch management. Evans is also setting his sights on improving his record times in the class and hopes to be the first to run in the four second zone at some point during the year.

And Evans’ quest for records and a second championship all gets underway next month at Palm Beach International Raceway, a track with which Evans is very familiar. Not only is the track just a few miles from his home, but Evans is also on quite a hot streak at the state-of-the-art facility having won every time out at the very fast track over the past three years.

“For some reason we have owned that place for several years. In fact that might give us an advantage because we have more laps there than any of the other cars and hopefully it can be a spring board for us again this year,” Evans said.

After beginning last season with a weekend sweep at the inaugural Palm Beach Nitro Jam, Evans is confident that he can once again best the competition which includes Pro Fuel championship runner-up Mike Manners, most recent race winner Robin Samsel and heavy hitter Cherissa Smallwood at one of the fastest tracks in the entire country.

“It all comes down to laps and the amount of time we have on the track compared to the other competitors. Although Robin has also been competitive at Palm Beach, meeting me in the finals at our last race together, I think we found something there that will help us get the season started off right,” Evans said.

-Courtesy Nitro Jam Media