Championship Drag Racing

Lucas Oil NHRA Nationals
Brainerd, MN
(August 10-13)

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Driver Profile

Mark Pawuk Pawuk Racing Pontiac GTO

Brainerd, Saturday:  For the fifth time this season Mark Pawuk ended up in the 17th position among Pro Stock hopefuls in NHRA POWERade Series competition, and with only the top 16 advancing to eliminations, the man they call  the “Cowboy” headed back to the ranch earlier than expected.

“We’re obviously disappointed in the outcome of the race,” said Pawuk following qualifying.  “For some reason we just couldn’t get enough power to the track in low gear, and when the car doesn’t get ‘up on the tires’ right away, it’s not going to produce a good enough elapsed time.

“We made a lot of changes, including going to the lowest first gear ratio and rearend gearing combination we had, but it just wasn’t enough.  You can see it in our elapsed times.  We ran back-to-back 6.810s in the first two sessions, and we made a big move with the car between those two runs, but it just didn’t deliver like it should have.

“There’s nothing wrong with this new Pontiac GTO, but we’ve obviously got some problems under the hood that we’ll have to resolve before our next outing in Memphis next weekend.  We’ve got a lot of work to do, and very little time to do it, but that’s just the way things are in motorsports – the work never ends, and the pressure everyone feels just keeps increasing.

“The guys are headed back to Ohio where we’ll spend as much time as we can going through the car before we head to Tennessee.  We’re also going to do our best to come up with some additional spare parts for our transmissions and rearends so that we’ll have an even wider selection available next week.

“Don’t count us out just yet, because if there’s one thing this team is all about it’s not giving up in the face of adversity.”

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