I
“It’s been such a feast or famine thing in gen-
eral since I started driving these cars,” Michalek
says. Driving the Dreher Motorsports car, he
won his debut at Charlotte in 2014, then broke
a crankshaft before eliminations at the next race
at Norwalk. He returned to Charlotte to defend
his win in 2015, only to break a rocker arm when
the car started for first round. A runner-up finish
followed at Norwalk.
The Michaleks, originally from nearby Lou-
isville, Ohio, then purchased their own car
and assembled the operation they debuted at
a regional event in Indianapolis last summer,
understandably failing to qualify. The car then
went straight to the final round at the Carolina
Nationals. “Up until this race,” Michalek begins,
“if the car started first round and we staged it,
we went to the final round every single time. So
this is the first time, essentially, that we lost in
the first round. It was just a different experience.
It’s given us a lot more motivation and a reality
check that things aren’t going to be as smooth
sailing as they were in the past.”
As the back door of the trailer is closed and
locked up, its contents neatly in place and locked
down for the short drive back to the MBR head-
quarters in Utica, Corey’s focus returns to the idea
of strapping into Pat Dakin’s Commercial Metal
Fabricators Top Fuel dragster in just over 12 hours.
“There was so much going on with our program
this weekend that it distracted from the oppor-
tunity waiting at the other end of the weekend,”
Michalek admits. “Now that we’re finished, the
reality of the situation is starting to set in.”
t’s Monday morning at Summit
Motorsports Park, where just a hand-
ful of the several hundred race rigs
from the race remain in place for the
“Monday Nationals”. Some teams are
servicing their cars after a long Sunday,
while others are testing and working
out issues before the New England Na-
tionals in Epping, New Hampshire.
Meanwhile, just after 8 a.m., Michalek
has just experienced his first warm-up in an
11,000-horsepower Top Fuel car. It’s not exactly
what he expected, but in a good way.
“I played up a lot of this stuff in my head,
between just visualizing runs in my head and
thinking about different scenarios,” Michalek
says. “Anytime you do that, it’s always way more
drawn out than what it really is. So when you
show up at the track and you think about all
these things that are going to happen, it’s kind
of sobering when they’re just like, ‘Get in the car.
We’re about to start it,’ where there’s not all this
hype and buildup that you always think about.
They just put me right in the heart of the action
from the get-go.”
Team owner and driver Pat Dakin and crew
chief Scott Graham are not here for hype and
buildup. After all, Michalek was sworn to secrecy
regarding the Top Fuel licensing plan until Sun-
day night. They’re here to get Michalek his Top
Fuel license and they’re trying to do it as quickly
– yet safely – as possible. The plan is to make
both runs – two full 1,000-foot passes required to
upgrade a TAD license to TF – before lunchtime.
“Some drivers take two or three years to grad-
ually get comfortable with these cars, but that’s
not really an option for us,” says Michalek, who
worked alongside Kyle as a clutch assistant on
Dakin’s car for the 2011 and 2012 seasons. “That
puts a little extra pressure on everyone involved,
whether it’s the crew to make sure the car is set up
THE ULTIMATE TEST
Corey Michalek worked
alongside his brother, Kyle, on
Pat Dakin’s Top Fuel dragster for
two seasons before jumping into
the seat of an A/Fuel dragster
in 2014. Every lesson learned
throughout those experiences
played into Michalek’s Top Fuel
licensing process.
D r a g Il l u s t r a t e d . c o m
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Dr ag Illustr ated