You likely know the name Frank Hawley from drag-racing schools in both Florida and Southern California. Hawley’s a drag racer, so the expectation is a fast-talking guy in a firesuit, calling out competitors and pacing in the pits. What you get is a calm, studied gentleman who doesn’t betray the fact he was a Top Fuel jockey in the “Chi Town Hustler” AA/FC with the famed tuner Austin Coil, winning two world championships in the early 1980s.
Hawley considers racing a form of athletics, so he knows more about the relationship between your brain, eyes, and hands than most doctors. With part science and part passion, he shows hundreds of would-be drag racers how to handle themselves at the wheel of a 9-second door-slammer or rail. His story begins when racing in Top Fuel meant simply buying a local race car, filling it with nitro, and dragging it to the digs.
HRM] You raced Funny Cars early in your career—how did you get there?
FH] I was the youngest of five in the family, and I had sisters with boyfriends in the ’60s that had muscle cars, and that was my introduction to drag racing. My parents would drop me off and I’d work at the local track as a photographer. They bought a race car when I was 16; it was a front-engine Top Fuel Dragster—a horrible, horrible idea, no one should ever do that. After three years of wasting every resource my parents had, we started looking at alcohol Funny Car. We were always on fire, and we were the guys who oiled down the racetrack. We’d have the rods hanging out while those guys were eating hot dogs. I did [alcohol Funny Car] for a few years, eventually crashed the car, and had no money left. I went to California in 1979 and slept in my truck for six months and went around looking for a job telling people, “I just want to work on your race team.” Then a friend of mine, Simon Menzies, told me that Pete Williams was quitting the Chi Town Hustler [a Top Fuel Funny Car]. I sent a resume to Austin Coil thinking that he wasn’t even going to read this. To shorten a very long story, I got the job driving for Austin, the Chi Town Hustler. I spent five years there and won two world championships. After several years of working at this, I was the overnight success. That led to some opportunities to drive some really good race cars over the years and win a lot of races.
HRM] You run a school now. How did you get from racing to teaching?
FH] I was spending winters in Southern California, working on the cars and hanging out. I like all performance vehicles, so I went to the Jim Russell School in Riverside and drove a Formula Ford—loved it. At the time, the only racing schools in the country were for Formula Fords and a sedan school, which was Bondurant’s. I wondered if anyone would like to learn how to drag race. In 1985, the Chi Town team folded up and I didn’t have a driving job on the horizon, so I got a group of investors together, we bought some cars, and we started the drag-racing school.
HRM] Were you still involved in racing after starting the school?
FH] After I started the school, I had an opportunity to go racing again. Larry Minor had a three-car team with Ed McCulloch, Dick LaHaie, and himself, and he decided not to drive anymore. I became one of the Miller High Life team drivers until 1990, then that stopped. Unfortunately, just a couple of months into the 1990 season, Darrell Gwinn had his accident in England and he, of course, wasn’t able to drive anymore, so I called and asked if I could fulfill the Coors contract in his Top Fuel car. I drove for Darrell for a couple of years. I had an opportunity to drive some other very good cars after the Chi Town deal. In 2007 and 2008, I had the opportunity to get into what we call a current, modern-day nitro Funny Car. Initially, it was sponsored by Rite Aid and Melanie Troxel was my teammate in the In-N-Out Burger car.
HRM] You have worked with some current racers, do you see a difference between them and the racers of the 1970s and 1980s?
FH] A lot of things are different now. I don’t know if anybody is more talented than they were then, but it was a different atmosphere. It was much more affordable, which meant a lot more people could do it. There were a lot more individual personalities, there were single-car teams, no one had two-car teams. Clearly now, the technology has increased the level of knowledge spread across the teams. They are essentially better at drag racing than we used to be. But that doesn’t matter, because of equity across the field, there are still different winners on race day.
HRM] What advice would you give young people who want to race?
FH] What is unique about drag racing, is you can go compete, and win, in the car you are driving every day. Find a local dragstrip, take whatever you happen to own out there, learn about racing, learn every aspect of it, and when the opportunity presents itself, start getting into faster cars. The older I get, the more conservative I get. I see a lot of kids that get into cars that are way too fast. I am a big believer in not doing what I did.
HRM] What do you consider a fast car?
FH] Anything faster than what you are currently racing.
The post Take Five with Frank Hawley: Racer, Teacher, and a Really Lucky Guy. appeared first on Hot Rod Network.