05/31/2026
Great coverage on my friend!
Mark Oswald started like every other kid. A neighbor's older brother had a race car. He begged to go to the track. The rest was talent, timing, and the right people at the right time.
He came up through Pro Comp and Top Fuel with Ross Thomas and Tom Kattelman before the legendary Candies & Hughes team called. 1982. The biggest step of his life. From a backyard operation to the finest race car in the country. His words.
He won his first two national events that season in Top Fuel. At the NHRA Summernationals at Old Bridge Township Raceway Park, he broke both ends of Don Garlits' seven-year-old record. Both ends. Speed and elapsed time. Records that Big Daddy had held for seven years, gone in one pass.
In 1983, sponsorship moved the team to Funny Car. Oswald won in Montreal. Second driver in NHRA history after Don "the Snake" Prudhomme to win in both Top Fuel and Funny Car. In 1984, he beat Billy Meyer, Kenny Bernstein, Frank Hawley, and Raymond Beadle to win the Funny Car championship.
Then three consecutive runner-up finishes. 1986. 1987. 1988. Three years of being the second-best Funny Car driver on the planet. Close enough to taste it. Not close enough to take it.
When Candies & Hughes parked after the 1990 season, Oswald drove the In-N-Out Burger Funny Car for the "Over the Hill Gang." At Gainesville in 1991, they blew a left rear tire in the semis. The body was destroyed. They pieced together a replacement using parts from Tom Hoover's car that had been blown apart in an engine explosion. Frankenstein'd it together. Then beat John Force in the final. With a body made from two different cars.
20 wins as a driver. Career ended after the 1997 season. Most drivers would have walked away for good. Oswald went to Houma, Louisiana, and made plastic injection molds. Because the man who won the Funny Car championship and beat John Force with a patchwork body was also a machinist who liked making things work.
In 2000, John Lawson offered him a crew chief job. Oswald came back. In 2008, he even pinch-hit for Mike Ashley behind the wheel, qualifying second in Chicago after an 11-year absence from driving. Beat Jack Beckman in round one.
As a tuner, he joined Antron Brown's Matco Tools Top Fuel team in 2009 with co-crew chief Brian Corradi. They swept the Western Swing that year. Six wins. Don Schumacher Racing absorbed the team. Brown won the 2012 and 2015 championships with Oswald and Corradi calling the shots. Over 40 wins as a crew chief. Twice what he won as a driver.
Brown calls him the Iceman. "He doesn't get overexcited through the highs or let it bring you down through the lows. There's nothing he can't do. He's a great machinist, CNC operator, part-builder, and innovator. He does it in a modest, humble way."
Oswald deflects everything back to the team. Always has. The man who let his race cars do the talking. For 35 years and counting.
