Mark Pawuk first visited a dragstrip at age 16, and in short order took a borrowed ’68 Dodge Charger with a 440 engine under the hood and won.

Nearly half a century later, he’s still got the bug.

This week, he returns to the scene of one of his career highlights as a Factory Stock Showdown competitor. A year ago at Gainesville (Fla.) Raceway, Pawuk covered the quarter-mile in 7.608 seconds, 183.15 mph to set both ends of the national record. In eliminations, a .002-second red light knocked him out of Gatornationals action, but a week later, he took the same car to the winners’ circle at an NMCA race across the state in Bradenton.

“It's a really, really cool class. They're a handful of driving,” said Pawuk, the president of Empaco Equipment Company in Richfield, Ohio.

“The thing I like about it the most probably is the fans can relate to the cars. And we have Ford, Chevy and Dodge all competing against one another, which is just, to me, that's absolutely awesome. And that's huge for drag racing.”

Most drag racing fans likely remember Pawuk from his career as a Pro Stock driver. He began racing in the class in 1985, and from 1992 to 2001, he notched six NHRA national-event victories in 21 final-round appearances. He got out of racing in 2006, but returned in 2018 in the Factory Stock ranks.

For the past three seasons, Pawuk has competed in a Don Schumacher Racing entry, and in 2022, he teamed with David Davies and Warren Walcher as part of a three-driver lineup.

This year, he’s going out on his own. Pawuk has brought out the 2015 Dodge Challenger in which he began in Factory Stock, but is upgrading the supercharged, Hemi-powered car to 2021 specs. He will eventually replace the ’15 body with a 2021 version. As a team owner, he opted to get his power from Ray Barton Racing Engines, which Ray’s son, David, had under the hood when he won Factory Stock at the U.S. Nationals last September. 

One thing that won’t change is that Pawuk was able to retain A.J. Berge as his crew chief. Berge, who’s from Bayshore, New York, races the same type car in NMCA action – he beat Pawuk and Walcher in winning the All-American Nationals at Norwalk last year – but limits his NHRA wheeltime to a Competition Eliminator entry.

 

 

 

Multiple factors led Pawuk to decide to go out on his own this year.

“The other two teammates (Davies and Walcher) of mine decided to leave Don Schumacher Racing, and I didn't want Don to feel that he had to campaign a single car because since the day I was there, we at least had a two-car team,” said Pawuk, 65. “I really appreciate Don bringing me back to the sport and everything he's done to restart my career, and we still remain good friends.

“But when my crew chief left there, I just decided I wanted to take my own direction. And my son (Kyle) has really been pushing me for us to do something together and have a little more control over the program so that we could make some of the decisions on how we wanted to run it, etc. – the things that we wanted to do to try to be more competitive than we were. And I just thought with what transpired, I would make the decision maybe a little easier for Don where he didn't feel he had to keep a program going just for me for now. And a couple of the crew guys decided to go.

“It just was a whole mix of things. I don't know if I made the right decision or not,” said Pawuk, who was third in the 2020 points. “To be honest with you, I'm so darn busy that it's taken up a fair amount of my time to get this program back together. My son is helping me a lot, but you start forgetting about everything that you have to handle now, from uniforms to handouts to paint designs – or wrap designs versus paint designs now – and updating seat belts and window nets and etc., etc., etc.”

Given that he was going to go his own way in 2023, Pawuk gave consideration to switching to NHRA’s new Factory X class. He nearly pulled the trigger on that move, he said, but decided to adopt a wait-and-see attitude as the class embarks on its inaugural “season” of two exhibition events and six events.

“I actually made a call to a couple chassis builders, and I was going to send a deposit in, then I started thinking about knowing how fast these things might run – then I started thinking about how old I am,” he said. “And I wasn't sure the direction NHRA was going to take, announce the schedule or what their plans were. And I'm glad now that I've hung out just to see what direction this thing goes. 

“But it could be something that I could very well be interested in down the road. I just want to see how it rolls out. Obviously, they're over a year behind now with the debut. A lot of it has to do with supply-chain issues. Chassis builders are so busy, but it's going to be the Pro Stock of old, which I think is really, really cool.”

 

 

 

 

A big influence on Pawuk’s decision to stay in Factory Stock or jump to Factory X, he said, will be NHRA’s schedule for the latter.

“If they're going to run it in all of the events, it's not something I'm interested in,” he said. “I like the 10-race (Factory Stock) season. It works out with my work schedule and being able to still work pretty good and spend time with my wife and kids, etc., even though my kids are at the races when I'm there.

Pawuk’s current endeavors remind him of his early years in Pro Stock – a class he said he doesn’t miss very much because of the current state of the class.

“I do miss the days when a driver was a driver. We worked on our own cars. You could give a lot of feedback,” he said. “I actually started Pro Stock before computers came out. I didn't buy my first computer ’til probably, I don't know, third or fourth year maybe. But then it was a driver and a car and you know, felt what the car was doing.

“Nothing against the sport. I mean, now you're tuning everything with computers and which you're doing in Factory Stock also. And drivers still have to cut a good light. But it's taken away, to me, a lot of the abilities and the talents that people had with figuring out what to do with their cars to make them go faster.

“And the thing that's disturbing to me – I don't know if it's disturbing – but Pro Stock has become a one-man band, where with the rule changes with NHRA – it's no slam against Pro Stock because I ran it for many, many years – but you know, you basically have one engine combination. Everybody's running and some of them are running different body styles, but that's totally different than when I competed. You had to run the factory motor in the factory body.”

Pawuk has two NMCA victories in a Challenger. He heads into Gainesville looking for his first Factory Stock win in NHRA competition after three runner-up showings.