This Cowboy isn’t riding off into the sunset. He jokes that he’s “a has-been,” but the six-time Pro Stock winner simply is getting recharged.
Pawuk said he had needed a break from a downward spiral that dealt him one heartbreaking qualifying blow after another in 2006. He stepped away from the Pro Stock grind following the 2006 Richmond race, where Erica Enders bumped him off the starting grid by three-thousandth of a second. His best elapsed time that weekend was 6.633 seconds, but in his final Pro Stock pass, he clocked a 6.658-second E.T. at 206.67 mph.
My first run at Norwalk, the first full run I’ve made since 2006, the wheels were two feet up in the frickin’ air and I’m hanging on for dear life! I haven’t done that in years! It was like, ‘Holy moly!’
“That was the eighth time I was 17th that year. And I quit after that race. I had had enough,” Pawuk said.
(It didn’t matter that he had lovely company on the DNQ list: Max Naylor, Warren Johnson, Dave Northrop, Ron Krisher, Steve Schmidt, Rickie Smith, Barry Grant, and Jerry Haas, among others. In the starting field that weekend were Greg Stanfield, Kenny Koretsky, Tommy Lee, Tom Martino, Larry Morgan, and Jim Yates – regulars the class surely misses today.)That nagged him. He said he had unfinished business. He didn’t want those Pro Stock DNQs to define or punctuate his racing career.
“I was really struggling. I wanted to finish my career on a high. I ran good for a lot of years, but I really struggled the last few years. I didn’t want to finish my career the way I did,” Pawuk said. “I never actually retired. I just stepped away. I honestly didn’t think I’d ever come back. But Don Schumacher and I became very good friends, and he’d been talking to me for a while about maybe trying this Factory Stock Showdown.
“My son was 10 when I stepped away, and he just loves cars. And my daughter is working for Don this summer and she’s loving racing, too. It was an opportunity,” he said, sharing that they nudged him into taking Schumacher up on his offer. But Pawuk was ready to say yes. “I love the craft. I love the cars. I just decided to try this year and see how it went,” he said. “I don’t know if I’ll ever get to the final again. But it was awesome, and I hope I get to.”
He hasn’t announced whether he’ll return in 2019. But he said, “I’d say right now there’s a pretty good chance.”
For Pawuk, his Factory Stock Showdown debut was a disappointment. He missed the cut but resisted slipping into a “Here we go again” mentality. He knew his Challenger wasn’t hitting on all cylinders, literally.
Photo courtesy David Hakim/DodgeGarage.com
“The first time I ever drove that car was the first qualifying run at Bristol, but I told the crew guys there was something wrong with the engine,” he said. “After that run, we pulled it apart and we had a broken tip on a pushrod, so we pretty much ran on seven cylinders.”
Trying to pinpoint the problem, the team decided to test the day after the Bristol race concluded. But that Monday yielded little but frustration: “We couldn’t fix the engine, so we went back to the shop and pulled it out and had it repaired. Then I flew to Martin [Mich.] to test before Norwalk, and it rained for half the day. I only made two runs and we ended up having transmission problems. I had to leave because I had to go home – I had stuff going on for work the next day. Leah drove the car for one run after they fixed the transmission. My first full run was at Norwalk, when I qualified No. 2.”Pritchett, he said, has been a huge help. She stayed in Charlotte alongside him as he earned his Factory Stock license and helped him become familiar with his Challenger. And she was at the track the next day, ready with any advice. And when the motor was uncooperative and the car ended up back at the nearby DSR shop, Pawuk said, “Leah was there on top of the lift, thrashing on the upper side. Man, she was right with us – very supportive as a team member.
I love the craft. I love the cars. I just decided to try this year and see how it went.
“It’s just been a real pleasure for me to work with her and all of the Schumacher teams. A lot of the crew chiefs on the fuel teams are good friends of mine. I’ve known Rahn Tobler for years. I’ve known [Jack] Beckman, Guido [Dean Antonelli], [Ron] Capps, Tony [Schumacher], Mike Green, and Zippy [Mike Neff]. And they have all been so supportive of me. All the texts I got after Norwalk just made me feel so good. They just welcomed me into their team,” Pawuk said. “And the other thing that really meant so much to me when I announced I was coming back, after we made that announcement at Charlotte, was all of my old fans that came back. They sent me notes on how they were so excited to see me back racing again. It made me feel so good. It gave me the drive to want to go out there and do well again. It’s pretty awesome. I figured they’d forget. The day you go away, nobody knows who you are.”
No one forgot Mark Pawuk. But just in case somebody might have, he reminded them at Bristol. And he plans to use this weekend’s NMCA All-American Nationals at Norwalk as a warm-up for the NHRA’s showcase U.S. Nationals at Indianapolis. He and Pritchett will represent Don Schumacher Racing also at St. Louis and Dallas this October.
Pawuk isn’t experiencing time warp. He’s ready add to DSR’s trophy case, and he’s not wasting any time.