Mark Pawuk drove his Mopar® Dodge Challenger Drag Pak to victory in the Holley EFI Factory Super Cars Class during the NMCA All-American Nationals at Summit Motorsports Park in Norwalk, Ohio. For Pawuk, the victory was sweet and well-earned as he and fellow DSR Drag Pak pilot Leah Pritchett have spent hours on the dyno and at the drag strip testing their combination and extracting as much horsepower as possible from their 354-cubic-inch supercharged HEMI® engine that makes well over 1,000 horsepower.
During qualifying, Pawuk led the field with a stout 8.05-second run at over 171 mph. Hot on his wheelie bars was a slew of Cobra Jet Mustangs and COPO Camaros fighting for the top spot. The only other Drag Pak doing battle during the NMCA All-Stars was Geoff Turk’s record-breaking “Blackbird” Challenger, which is still the only Factory Stock competitor to run in the seven-second-zone at either an NMCA or NHRA event. Turk’s Challenger was looking strong all day until a driver and mechanical error caused him to redlight in round two.
Pawuk’s Drag Pak would continue the fight for Dodge and it was like a bracket racer during eliminations. The former Pro Stock driver clicked off an impressive 8.152 in the opening round, followed by an 8.153 in the quarterfinals, an 8.166 in the semis and then an 8.152 during the finals when he defeated Leonard Libersher’s COPO Camaro.
In the Mickey Thompson Heavy Street Class, Simon Haddad from Shelby Township, Michigan, drove his 2016 Dodge Challenger SRT® Hellcat to an ET of 10.40 @ 136.06 to defeat Terry Reeves’ 2018 Mustang.
During the Dodge/Mopar HEMI Shootout, over 70 entries showed up to play and race their Dodge Challenger SRT Demons, SRT Hellcats and Scat Packs down the quarter-mile at Summit Motorsports Park. We even saw a Durango SRT and Jeep® Grand Cherokee Trackhawk blasting down the strip and shocking the fans as the scoreboard showed the awesome times these muscle machines were running.
In the 10-second bracket, second-generation Mopar racer John Keyes from Saint Clair, Michigan, took home the check in his 2016 Challenger SRT Hellcat with a three-run average of 10.187, while Eric Cunningham of Royal Oak, Michigan, granny-shifted his way down the strip to claim the 11-second bracket honors in his six-speed manual trans-equipped 2017 Challenger SRT Hellcat.
Other winners from the NMCA All-American Nationals included Brian Borawski (12-second bracket); Rich Sprinzl (13-second bracket); Casey Fitzgerald (14-second bracket); and Grady Alley (15-second bracket).
The final Dodge/Mopar HEMI Shootout event for 2018 will be the NMCA Muscle Car Nationals at Lucas Oil Raceway in Indianapolis on September 20-23. It’ll be a huge weekend of American muscle car excitement that’ll feature heads-up drag racing, a huge car show, a giant manufacturer’s midway, a burnout contest and a swap meet. This is also the final stop on the NMCA national tour, so don’t miss it.