Engine pieces were scattered around the spartan pit area at Pacific Raceways, and Mark Wolfe had that determined look in his tired eyes.

The NHRA Competition Eliminator racer, his girlfriend Dana, and buddy Curt thrashed away on the '96 Thunderbird all weekend long, barely sleeping.

"We had the motor down to a bare block three times that weekend for various issues," Wolfe said, looking back on his O'Reilly Northwest Nationals experience earlier this month as a first-time No. 1 qualifier. "And people would walk by and shake their heads and say, 'Why are you working so hard? It's just one race.' We stayed at the track, and we were the first ones up every morning and the last ones to go to bed, working on the car.

"Guys come by and they'd see the motor on the ground in the dirt, all just tore apart. And they said, 'So -- you're done?' We said, 'No, we'll be there the first round.' We made it," he said. "We don't mind working as hard as we can until there's no chance of making it."

That is the motto of Wolfe, 43, who calls Marysville, Wash., home but really has no home. He isn't exactly homeless, but he once lived in a campground and today claims a small, loft-like storage room in the back of his dad's trucking-company shop as his residence.




Engine pieces were scattered around the spartan pit area at Pacific Raceways, and Mark Wolfe had that determined look in his tired eyes.

The NHRA Competition Eliminator racer, his girlfriend Dana, and buddy Curt thrashed away on the '96 Thunderbird all weekend long, barely sleeping.

"We had the motor down to a bare block three times that weekend for various issues," Wolfe said, looking back on his O'Reilly Northwest Nationals experience earlier this month as a first-time No. 1 qualifier. "And people would walk by and shake their heads and say, 'Why are you working so hard? It's just one race.' We stayed at the track, and we were the first ones up every morning and the last ones to go to bed, working on the car.

"Guys come by and they'd see the motor on the ground in the dirt, all just tore apart. And they said, 'So -- you're done?' We said, 'No, we'll be there the first round.' We made it," he said. "We don't mind working as hard as we can until there's no chance of making it."

That is the motto of Wolfe, 43, who calls Marysville, Wash., home but really has no home. He isn't exactly homeless, but he once lived in a campground and today claims a small, loft-like storage room in the back of his dad's trucking-company shop as his residence.

"I've got a little area set up with my bed, and that's where I live," Wolfe said.

He drives a truck for his dad's company but doesn't throw down any spare money from that on football tickets, a boat, exotic vacations, the latest tech gadgets, premium wines, fancy dinners out in fine restaurants, a night at the movies, golf clubs, or a trendsetting wardrobe.

He has taken, in a sense, a vow of poverty to become rich in racing knowledge and prosperous in performance. And it's starting to pay off in a way not even Wolfe, for decades a dreamer, ever could image. Thanks to heeding his dad's advice to "follow your dreams and go for it," this fall he'll attempt competition in the Pro Stock class at Las Vegas and Pomona.

"I've sacrificed everything in my life so I can get to where I'm at," Wolfe said. "I don't have kids. I don't have a house. I don't have toys. Everything I have is about racing. That's what I've chosen to do. It's been tough, but I enjoy it. I enjoy it more than anything else in life."

Does he ever wonder that he might be a little crazy?

"Constantly," he said.

"I look at my friends and other people. They get to go home to a home and that sort of thing. I've never owned a house. I've just lived where I've had to live so I don't pay rent. I can put it into my car.

"It's a sacrifice I've chosen to make, and I'm OK with it," he said. "But there are days when you have a bad day at the track or things just don't go right and you go home to . . . nothing. And you wonder, 'Why am I doing this?' "

He said his answer to that is "just keep continuing on and trying."

As for his lifestyle, his father, he said, is "for it 100 percent. He knows it's my passion. We're not a rich family, but he has done what he can to help over the years, and he thinks it's great.

"To be honest, I'm a truck driver. I don't make a lot of money," Wolfe said. "I really don't have enough to go racing, but luckily I have some very supportive friends, supportive family. Without my family and my mom and dad, I'd never, ever, ever be where I'm at. There's just no way. They've helped me tremendously throughout the years. It's why I'm at where I am now.

"I'm not rich, by any means. The level that I race at, I hate to admit, I'm way over my head money-wise," he said, "but somehow I keep getting back out there."

His role model in fellow Comp Eliminator racer Brandon Huhtala, the Puyallup, Wash., resident who outshines his peers and owns records for C-Altered hot rods in his GXP, all on a bare-bones budget.

"He's a one-man show. He does it completely on his own," Wolfe said. "He has his own body shop. He runs that and races his car. He has a wife and family. He supports it all, working by himself or sometimes he has one employee. Guys are spending huge money trying to beat him, and they can't do it. And he's out there on a shoestring budget, just barely making it. He's probably one of the most respected Comp racers out there. You say his name in the Comp world, and everybody knows who you're talking about.

"He has done it his way and on his own. That's a huge thing to me," Wolfe said. "He's making it on his own, on his terms. It's a big inspiration."

Wolfe might live in his father's trucking shop, but where he truly comes alive is on the dragstrip. Driving a Pro Stock car is his ultimate fantasy. And with financial help from a group of  investors who wish to remain anonymous, he purchased Frank Gugliotta's Ford Mustang and arranged for Larry Morgan horsepower for his two-race gig. He's nearly got all the funding necessary to make it happen, holding out hope a few more companies will come on-board to help fill the remaining balance.

"I still can't really believe it," Wolfe said of the dream-come-true, fairy-tale-type ending this season promises. "It'll be the first time in my life I'm in a legitimate Pro Stocker. I've raced Pro Stock before, but I really didn't consider it a legit deal. We knew we were never going to qualify. We were just out there making laps.

"This is a legit deal. This is a state-of-the-art car," he said. "Larry's proven he's got the power. It'll totally be up to us to make it work. Larry's going to help us the best he can.

"Of course, the hard part's going to be no or very, very limited testing before," Wolfe said. "So we're going to be way behind the eight-ball. But we're going to try. How do you know if you can do it or not if you don't try? "

Pro Stock always was his goal since he was graduated from high school, Wolfe said. And he got a taste of it before realty of big budgets set in and he had to stick to the sportsman schedule.

"That's all I ever wanted to do," he said. "I can remember going to Seattle International Raceway (which is now Pacific Raceways) to the nationals, watching [Bob] Glidden and Warren Johnson go at it, just a wide-eyed kid watching that, thinking I'd never, ever -- ever -- be able to do that.

"But we worked toward it. In the mid-90s I tried Pro Stock," he said. "I got a Jerry Haas car, saved up my money for 10 years and bought that car. Tried it, tried to build the first new-style Hemi back then that Glidden had designed then he quit. I got some of the first heads for that. Of course, I was way over my head and we couldn't get it to work -- major valvetrain issues. Finally pulled the plug on that and raced Comp after that until -- I can't remember the time frame -- maybe 2002, somewhere in that range."

Then he met Hurley Blakeney, who helped Wolfe with his Comp car and for whom Wolfe was a crew member.

" I ended up with his Probe Pro Stocker," Wolfe said. "Hurley gave us some used parts. We took those and tried to do the best we could with those. We came fairly close to qualifying the last time we tried. It was at Seattle. I think the good guys were running 6.90s. We were at 7-flat. We were a tenth off the big guys. I was pretty happy, actually, for us to do it on our own with absolutely no budget whatsoever. We were happy at the time.

"After that," he said, "I just flat ran out of money. I was flat broke. Sold everything, sold all the cars, sold everything I had for racing and thought I'd never do it again. Just kind of did other things for three or four years. Then Hurley called me up one day and said I need to come get the Thunderbird, and that got me going again. We've been doing the Thunderbird for three years, maybe three and a half years."

What he did with that sometimes-misbehaving T-bird at Seattle certainly got him going.

"When we qualified No. 1, it was like we won the race. It was just great," Wolfe said.

However, he said, "It actually wasn't surprising. We've been trying to do that ever since I got that Thunderbird -- three, three and a half years [ago]. The car's always had more than enough power. It should qualify No. 1. It's a turbo car in Comp, and the indexes are exactly -- they're not equal, really, compared to a naturally aspirated car. The indexes are a little soft. There's some turbo cars out there that could easily run a second under the index I was running. We always knew we could do it. We just never could put everything together to make the car do it.

"The big change was that Bob [Eakins] from East West Clutches [East West Engineering of Carson City, Nev.] got us a clutch and helped us set it up. That was the difference, right there," Wolfe said. "That was the only change we made to the car between all the other runs. We picked up a ton. There's a ton left in it, but it was heartbreaking to have problems in eliminations, 'cause that race was ours to win, really. Jirka Kaplan, a guy who can go a second under his index, he went out in the second round. And after that, I don't think anybody could outrun us."

Wolfe speaks the language of a Comp racer, and he clearly enjoys that scene. "I race in Comp," he said, "but I'm always standing up there on the line, watching Pro Stock."

This year he took special notice of Larry Morgan while he was absorbing Pro Stock qualifying, because "that guy's an incredible guy to do what he's doing with the limited resources he has." Just like Brandon Huhtala, he thought.

"He's running right there with the top guys now," Wolfe said of Morgan. "I was watching him and thought, 'What the heck? It can't hurt to go ask him what it would take to do a race or two.' A friend of mine has new Mustang that could race Pro Stock. I thought the heck -- maybe we could do a one-race deal. Larry was receptive and here we are, headed down that road again.

Turned out my friend's car won't work for Pro Stock. We called the chassis builder and he said it would just be too much time and effort to make it a legal car. So we thought we were done then. Hours after that, same day, a friend of mine called up and said he wanted the Thunderbird. I'd had it for sale for awhile. So he bought the Thunderbird and we looked around for a car and found a car from Frank Gugliotta."

As for his unexpected financial aid, Wolfe said, "I'm still awestruck by it. Some incredible friends are helping me out to make this deal work." The car was supposed to be ready for Morgan to retrieve late last week.

Fans will get to see Wolfe's new Pro Stock car, but at least for right now they won't have any clue about who the investors are.

Said Wolfe, "They've all made it brutally clear that I'm not to mention their names."

What Wolfe might call himself today is a "realistic dreamer."

"This whole Pro Stock deal, I totally realize I'm in way over my head, have very little chance of continuing on past the two races. But we're going to go down there and have the time of our lives. We're going to do our best. Maybe something will come of it. You never know," he said.

"When I was younger, I never thought I'd ever own a real race car. And this Mustang we're getting is my fourth Pro Stock car that I'm going to own. It just boggles my mind that that's actually happened. It's like they say: Where there’s a will, there's a way.

"We're going to try to get in there somehow," he said. "It's my lifelong goal to race Pro Stock for a living. Maybe this is a stepping stone to achieve that. This'll be the first time we can actually do it legitimately, so maybe we can raise some eyebrows and get someone to look at us seriously for once."

Just like with his Comp car, Wolfe will have his hands full with a Pro Stock engine. A trip to his pit might even find engine pieces scattered around a Spartan pit. But passersby will find the same diligent look in Wolfe's predictably tired eyes, trying to make it work.

"We don't mind the work. We enjoy it. It's a challenge. The days that it does work, which I'll admit have been very few, it makes it all worth it," he said.

"I've had friends or people I just met ask me, 'What have you done with your life?' And I tell them and they're like, 'Why?' That's the first thing is 'Why? Why do you do it?' And it's hard to explain. It's what I enjoy."

And nothing, not even forsaking the fancier things in life and sleeping in a storage corner in an industrial shop, will change Mark Wolfe's mind.

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