NHRA - National Hot Rod Association

When it comes to his accomplished career as a driver and crew chief, Mark Oswald has always let his race cars do the talking. However, he will be celebrated this Thursday as an inductee into the International Drag Racing Hall of Fame.

Oswald has had a career worthy of induction even if it had ended when he stopped driving, and he is thriving in his second chapter as a tuner. The Cincinnati native campaigned in Pro Comp and Top Fuel dragster with Ross Thomas and Tom Kattelman before he caught the attention of the legendary Candies & Hughes team, for whom he started driving in 1982 in succession of Richard Tharp. He won his first two national events that season in Top Fuel, including a memorable NHRA Summernationals at Old Bridge Township Raceway Park, where he broke both ends of Don Garlits’ seven-year-old record en route to victory (pictured, below right).

“I was just like any other kid,” said Oswald. “I had a neighbor whose older brother had a race car, and we begged him to take us to the racetrack. I kind of attribute all my success to breaks like that, all the good people that you meet that help you along to the next level. Being asked to come and work with the Candies & Hughes team was the biggest step there was. It was a huge step to come from basically a backyard operation like we had to the finest race car in the country.”

Sponsorship opportunities lured Oswald and the team to the Funny Car ranks in 1983. He became the second driver in NHRA history after Don “the Snake” Prudhomme to have wins in both Top Fuel and Funny Car when he won in Montreal. The following season, he topped the likes of Billy Meyer, Kenny Bernstein, Frank Hawley, and Raymond Beadle to win the 1984 Funny Car championship (pictured, bottom right).

Oswald was the championship runner-up for three consecutive seasons between 1986 and 1988. When funding caused the Candies & Hughes team to temporarily park its operation after the 1990 season, Oswald was contacted by Bill Schultz to drive the In-N-Out Burger-sponsored Funny Car for the “Over the Hill Gang.” Despite the sponsorship beginning as a limited schedule, he ran the full series by also driving for the Petosa Bros. and Jeff and Susan Bernstein.

Oswald scored a total of 20 wins before his driving career ended at the conclusion of the 1997 season. He put his machining knowledge to use in the years that followed, making plastic injection moldings at his Houma, La., shop before he took up an offer from John Lawson to return to the sport as a crew chief in 2000.

“I guess everybody knew me out there as someone who didn’t just drive the car,” said Oswald. “I always enjoyed building them and working on them. That’s probably why it didn’t bother me that bad when I quit driving because I always got my real satisfaction from building the car and making things work.”

His career as a tuner has yielded twice as many wins as he scored as a driver. He won three times with Mike Ashley in 2007 and once with Melanie Troxel in 2008 in Funny Car before he and co-crew chief Brian Corradi moved to the Top Fuel ranks to tune the Antron Brown-driven Matco Tools dragster in 2009. They swept the Western Swing that year during a six-win campaign while Don Schumacher Racing took the team under its umbrella toward the end of the season. With Corradi and Oswald calling the shots, Brown has earned 36 wins and the 2012 and 2015 NHRA Mello Yello Drag Racing Series championships.

“Boy, we’ve had so many good moments, but [the most memorable are] definitely the championships with Antron because that’s what you race for,” said Oswald. “Once you’ve won some races, you crave winning races, and the championship becomes the bigger goal. We couldn’t have a closer-knit bunch of guys now, so it’s really satisfying. Being where I’m at now, my biggest enjoyment comes from seeing all the hard work that all the guys do on the team and back at the shop come together to produce championships.”

Brown describes Oswald as a rock for his calm demeanor.

“Working with Mark has been a pleasure,” said Brown. “It’s like going to a university for a doctorate. He’s a wealth of knowledge that I’m continuously learning from the hard work and dedication that he puts in. One thing I can say about Mark is that he’s stable, like a rock. He doesn’t get overexcited through the highs of highs or let it bring you down through the lows of lows. We always call him the ‘Iceman’ because of that. There’s nothing that he can’t do. He’s a great machinist, CNC operator, part-builder, and innovator. He does it in a modest, humble way. He lets the race car and the things that he builds do the talking.”

Naturally, Oswald deflects credit for the success of the Matco Tools team back to those around him.

“I attribute it all to people working together as a team and having the cohesiveness to pull the same direction and want the same thing,” said Oswald. “I feel Don Schumacher has the finest operation out there, and he always bends over backwards to give us everything we need to get the job done. I think Brian is destined for the Hall of Fame. To me, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen anybody that had better instincts than him.

“There isn’t a finer human being out there than Antron. There’s not a better race car driver out there that I know of. He’s so even-keeled and works at his job every day. He doesn’t ever take it for granted. He works on it with the media, he works on it with the people and the fans, he works on it with the sponsors, and he works on it with the mechanics of driving the car. He does this day in and day out.”

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Highlight Reel

At the Gainesville event in 1991, Oswald and Jeff and Susan Bernstein's In-N-Out Burger team had to thrash to piece together a body after blowing the left rear tire in the semifinals. Using pieces of Tom Hoover's body that was blown off an in engine explosion, they put it together and defeated John Force in the final round.