PARTNER SPOTLIGHT
G
How Mark Menscer Became
‘The Shock Nerd’
iven his proclivity for making
magic out of suspension systems and
popularity amongst big-name drag rac-
ers, it’s hard to believe that the highly-
respected man known as “The Shock Nerd”, Mark
Menscer, once knew nothing at all about the sport.
Based out of his home state of North Carolina,
Menscer has been involved in motorsports since
day one – just not in a way that most would expect.
His grandfather, A.L. Menscer, was one of the
early members of NASCAR in the late 1940s and
became a prominent figure in the series. As such,
the circle track way of life is what Menscer grew
up with, and where he first got his start.
After high school, however, Menscer took a
temporary break from racing to pursue his ex-
traordinary musical talents. He fronted a band
of his own, and played lead guitar for legends
like Patti LaBelle and B.B. King while touring
blues and jazz festivals. Next, he worked as a
photojournalist and spent time shooting people,
wildlife, conflict, and more throughout Africa
and Central America. “Being chased by lions in
the jungle will prepare you for drag racing,” joked
Menscer, now 38, who also made a career out of
transporting zoo animals, including lions, tigers,
leopards, and more, once he was back home in
the United States.
Eventually, Menscer returned to motorsports
in the early 2000s. Working as both a circle track
crew chief and a car owner gave him a different
perspective on how and why things worked, and
he found himself asking a lot of questions. “My
shock guy was great but I would get answers
like ‘that’s just the way we’ve always done it’ and
I needed more than that, so I took all my shit
apart and learned how to do it myself,” said the
mechanically-minded Menscer.
When the team at AFCO invited Menscer to
attend a race in Indianapolis, the tides began to
turn. He connected with a few customers, and,
suddenly, people were calling him about drag rac-
ing shocks. “I didn’t know the sixty-foot cone from
the scoreboard; I had never really gotten near
those cars before,” laughed Menscer, with a hint of
sarcasm in his voice, “but I knew everything you
could about a dirt modified or a dirt late model.”
Desperate times call for desperate measures,
and as Menscer was admittedly struggling hard to
make a living in the circle track world, he decided
to give the drag racing thing a shot. “It got so bad
that we couldn’t buy gas to put in the propane
tank during the winter, so we would heat our
house with a little space heater,” he confessed of
the tough times that he and his lovely wife, Ally,
faced. “Ally has been so wonderful and amazingly
patient through all of this, especially since she has
to share me with the racing community.”
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Around 2007, Menscer got his shop, Menscer
Motorsports, certified through AFCO as a service
center. He sold all of his circle track gear, and,
combined with money borrowed from a “you
might not want to print that” source, Menscer
was able to purchase a shock dyno and other
equipment to get his business going. “I only had
about twelve dollars in my checking account af-
ter that… it was a huge leap of faith,” added the
suspension guru.
A few years later, Menscer was talking with Eric
Saffell at AFCO. “Eric had an idea… everyone in
circle track racing used custom-tuned shock ab-
sorbers, but no one in drag racing was interested
in tuning drag shocks,” Menscer recalled of the
conversation that really solidified his partnership
with AFCO. “He kicked me some customers, I met
some people, focused on building relationships,
and it paid off way more than anything else ever
could have.”
Those relationships kicked Menscer’s opera-
tion into high gear around 2012. He credits fate
as having a big hand in how things worked out,
because the first main drivers that he worked with
were none other than Kevin “Flash” Fiscus and
Stevie “Fast” Jackson and his tuner, Phil Shuler,
and he couldn’t be more appreciative of the op-
portunities the two allowed him. “Fiscus said ‘if
you think you can tune suspension, have at it,’ and
we went to every track we could find and went out
there and moved four-link bars, clicked shocks,
moved weight, and I did everything I could think
of until I learned how to tune suspension for a
drag radial,” explained Menscer, who was first in-
troduced to Fiscus by heads-up racer J.R. Gibson
and to Jackson by Robbie Lowry.
It was then that he had an epiphany. Menscer
knew how to make traction in a dirt late model
through adjusting the thrust angle in the rear bars
and figured he could apply it to his new market.
“It’s called anti-squat in drag racing, and I knew
how to do it! Once I made that connection, that’s
when I started flipping people over backwards,
and I knew if I could get the front end to stay
down, we would haul ass,” he said excitedly of the
pivotal moment that would inevitably become a
game-changer in small tire racing. “What a drag
radial car does now actually has more in common
with a dirt late model than any other drag car;
it’s not even related to a Pro Mod or slick tire
car whatsoever.”
Perhaps it’s his intrinsic ability to understand
the what and the why that sets Menscer and Men-
scer Motorsports apart from other suspension
shops. Rather than take a “one size fits all” ap-
proach to suspension packages, Menscer prefers
instead to listen to the car and let it tell him what
it wants. “I look at the program and figure out
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