He was the hero behind the heroine – but he won’t take any credit for it.
Chuck Grospitch, car chief for Norwalk Top Fuel winner Maddi Gordon, insisted he simply was doing his job that Sunday morning when he performed a quick repair on her Carlyle Tools Dragster at the starting line. But were it not for Grospitch, Gordon would have exited in the first round without attempting a pass.
For certain, it was, in his words, a “pretty high pressure situation,” but he said jumping into action – with Spencer Massey and his crew chief, Scott Graham, patiently standing by in the opposite lane – was intuitive.
“It was definitely a natural-instinct moment, more than something you think about or plan for. So it’s more or less just using your decision-making skills and experience to just get the job done in the moment. And obviously missing a run at any point out here is big, let alone first round,” he said.
Talking with Competition Plus and being in the spotlight, Grospitch said, “For me, the media has been a little nerve-wracking, because I’m kind of new to that side of it. So it’s been great. I’m glad everything worked out the way it did and not went the other way. Yeah, the media has been kind of, for me, a little nervous, but I’m getting used to it now, I guess.
It’s more about the storyline, right?
“For me, that’s my job. I did my job,” he said. “As a car chief, I plumb these cars, so when there’s an issue, that falls on me and I’m just fixing problems and doing what I get paid to do. And then the situation and the timing of it all is what brought all this interest and kind of media outpouring. And like I said, I’m just out of here doing my thing, and I’m glad I was able to get the problem fixed and we were able to make that round and not only make that round but win and then continue throughout the day.”
The issue was a blown air line on the dragster. The car chief said, “So essentially, I turned the CO2 bottle on, and as soon as I turned that bottle on, it blew an air line. And to our best knowledge, maybe just from we were the sixth pair, sitting up there in the heat, maybe the bottle built a little extra pressure when we opened it. It just kind of shocked the system. And that was, to our investigation, kind of the best why of what happened.”
The problem, Grospitch said, “was a case of just pure bad luck and bad timing.” But he said, “We’ve taken the steps to figure out why. And that’s always been my kind of mantra or my thought process out here: things happen, but why did they happen? How do we prevent them from happening again in the future? And that’s been instilled in me since I was in auto tech school in high school: Why is this bad? What happened? What’s wrong? All that. Going forward, we kind of tweaked some things, changed some things how we have the system plumbed to combat that if it ever does happen again. So we’ve gone through and done all that and tweaked a couple things, and hopefully that never happens again to us.”
As for his own turn in the limelight, he sloughed off the attention, saying, “It’s been cool, but moving forward, I’m still Chuck. I still have a job to do on this race car. We’re only halfway through this season. This was a highlight of our season so far, but we have more to come. We still have another 10 races to go. We have a Countdown to race. So there’s a lot more ahead of us. A lot of things happen, and there’s a lot of smart, talented people out here. It was just one of those ‘right place, right time’ moments kind of thing. And to be able to get it fixed and to go on, for me, it was a proud moment to be able to handle that situation and the pressure.
“Your adrenaline’s going, and you’re just trying to not only fix the issue, but then fix it correctly and legally, as well. Because as soon as we got back to the pit, NHRA techs there looking: ‘Hey, what’d you do?’ Make sure we didn’t do anything against the rules or legal to bypass any safety systems or any of that, which we didn’t,” Grospitch said.
“So no, it’s been good. It’s been cool. I’ve been out here racing a long time, and you’re just out here grinding a lot. And to get recognized a little bit for something, it’s been nice. But at the same time, I’m just out here doing my job,” he said.
It’s something he and his colleagues at Ron Capps Motorsports and throughout the pits do every day without fanfare.
“A lot of people don’t see that as the work that’s gone into putting this team, these cars, all this stuff together in these last six, seven months has been tremendous. To start a Top Fuel team, to put together cars that are of top caliber to come out here and compete with these guys, it takes a lot of hard work, a lot of effort,” Grospitch said. “And it’s a team effort from everybody. It’s not just me. Everybody’s put their heads together and their time and their effort together to do this and be successful. We’re just trying to keep up and do well and keep her safe.”
He indicated he didn’t do anything that any one of these other guys wouldn’t have done.
“Or anybody, any other car chief or someone out here that was in that same situation. We’re all those kind of people that are get-it-done kind of guys, just make that lap. So I’m not going to toot my own horn for the credit.”
