A Blessing in Disguise
Andrew Cowin’s miraculous return to Top Fuel competition
Story and photos by Brian Wood

In March of 2003 young Australian Top Fuel star Andrew Cowin was sitting on top of the world. Just a month or so earlier the quiet 23 year-old from Sydney had rebounded from the loss of his previous Yankees deal with Darrell Gwynn and signed on to drive for the new Carrier Boyz Racing team, based in Johnson City, Tennessee.

Little did he know that his tenure with Andy and Mark Carrier’s team would only be three races long, however, as a sudden and near- tragic accident threatened to end his career, and quite possibly his life. Andrew and girlfriend Jenny Rhoades were exploring his new surroundings in the mountains of Tennessee, taking photos to send to family and friends back home when the unthinkable happened.

Coming upon a large piece of construction equipment, Andrew climbed up on it for a shot. Jenny turned around for a second and when she turned back, he was gone; Cowin had slipped off and plummeted 15 feet to the ground, landing on his head. He was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he was initially listed in critical condition. He was later upgraded to serious condition, but he was in for a long, painful recovery.

After undergoing a battery of tests and brain scans, doctors drilled a hole in Andrew’s skull to relieve some of the pressure on his brain. In the early going, the doctors were encouraged with his progress, but very cautious at the same time, warning his family that it could just be the calm before the storm.

A short time later Cowin’s fighting spirit began to show through as he started responding to verbal commands and appeared to recognize his girlfriend Jenny. He also began moving his extremities.

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Thankfully, with youth on his side and the outstanding care and commitment of his medical team, Cowin eventually regained his health, and much to the relief of his fans around the world, late in the summer of 2004 he once again climbed into the cockpit of an 8,000-horsepower Top Fuel machine. Thankful for his opportunity to continue where he left off so many months earlier, Cowin said, "After being given a 50/50 chance of surviving the night of the fall, I’m looking at this as my second chance in life."

It might seem unusual to hear someone just 24 years-old old speaking so appreciatively about getting a second chance, but those that know him would expect nothing less, as the young star has an air of experience and professionalism about him rarely seen in people his age. Undoubtedly this comes from having been raised in a dyed-in-the-wool drag racing family and literally brought up at drag strips around the world. "I was born into the sport – I don’t actually remember my first race because I’ve been told that my twin brother John and I went to our first meeting when we were just a few weeks old, "Cowin said.

Throughout his early years, Andrew was there when his dad, the legendary Graeme Cowin, made the first six-second pass in a funny car in Australia in 1978, came back in 1986 to crack the five-second barrier for the first time, and then completed the hat trick by running the first "four" down under in 1993, this time in a Top Fuel dragster. Graeme also has numerous other records to his credit, but perhaps the greatest moment of his outstanding career was the Funny Car final at Pomona in 1987, where the intrepid Aussie came up just short in a hard-fought battle with Kenny Bernstein.

"We grew up watching my dad race fuel funny cars until he quit for a while in the late 1980’s," Cowin reflected. "By the time he returned to the sport in the early 1990’s with an Ex-Don Prudhomme Top Fuel dragster, I was 12 or 13 and old enough to work on the car. I eventually left school at an early age because I already knew what I wanted to do - work on my dad’s dragster. After all, when I was in school, as soon as the day was done I’d head right to the shop, so it just made sense for me to be there full time. By doing that from a young age I got a very good understanding of the car and all its systems. After a few years of apprenticeship, I became the team’s clutch technician.

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"In 1997, when I was 17, dad gave me the opportunity to get my Top Fuel license," Andrew continued. "He basically said you’re either going to sink or float, so give it a go. I always remembered him running Kenny Bernstein at Pomona in 1987 and wondered for years what it must have been like to race at that level; what dad must have been thinking. Now I had the chance to find out for myself."

Upholding family tradition, Andrew kicked off his own driving career in style when he clocked the quickest ever Top Fuel license pass in the world outside North America with a lap of 4.92 seconds on his first full power pass. "It was a huge thrill – really fantastic," he said. "Of course, having grown up around the sport, it wasn’t like jumping into the deep end. Everything was very familiar to me and I was real comfortable in the car. Fortunately, everything turned out well. The coolest part was that dad and I now each had four-second records – he ran the first "four" in Australia, and four years later I got the first one on a licensing pass."

Before long, International attention focused on the Australian "wunderkind", and Andrew’s star was quickly on the rise. Realizing that the future of the Cowin family’s racing venture was now in his son’s capable hands, Graeme retired from driving in 1998 and tossed the keys to Andrew, who gladly gave up any semblance of a normal teenage life in order to pursue a full-time professional racing career. Prior to the 1999 NHRA season, the team relocated to Los Angeles, California, and set out to conquer the world, although on a part-time basis in the beginning.

With sponsorship from K&N and Auto Meter, 19 year-old Andrew made an indelible mark on the class in his rookie season, upsetting some of the sport’s biggest names on his way to the runner-up spot at the most prestigious drag race of all, the U.S. Nationals at Indianapolis Raceway Park. Up until that time, he had just six U.S. events under his belt and had only one round win to his name. He began his memorable march to the final by taking out five-time World Champion Joe Amato in the opening round and then mowing down the field with a string of consistent 4.60 passes before falling to Cory McClenathan in the biggest race not only of the weekend, but of the young star’s fledgling career.

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Andrew would underscore his stunning performance at Indy by became the World's quickest and fastest teenager in Topeka, Kansas later that season on the strength of a blistering 4.588-second, 313.58 MPH pass. By the time the ‘99 NHRA season wrapped up, the sport’s newest "young lion" had placed the team into the history books as the first All-Australian Top Fuel team over 300MPH (303), the first All-Australian team into the 4.70's (4.71), 4.60's (4.66) and the 4.50's (4.58). Also the youngest team on the NHRA tour at the time, the Cowin family finished in 18th position after competing in only 8 of the 23 events on that year’s schedule.

In 2000, in addition to his on-track accomplishments, Andrew was named as the 2000 Australian MotorSport Awards Drag Racer of the Year, was a finalist in competition for the 2000 Australian MotorSport Awards International Achiever of the Year, Young Achiever of the Year and MotorSportsman of the Year and awarded the 2000 Australian Sports Medal. The following year, he made another final round appearance in NHRA Top Fuel competition, facing none other than Kenny Bernstein at Las Vegas in April. Not wanting to upstage his father, Andrew added a "runnered-up to KB" memo in his logbook.

Later, while at the 50th Anniversary NHRA Nationals, held in July in Pomona, California, he recorded his first "Top Speed of the Meet", reaching 321 MPH on Pomona Raceway’s famed quarter-mile. Overall, it was a strong campaign for the Aussies, who finished 11^th in the championship points while competing in just 15 of 23 major events.

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At the end of the 2001 season word began to filter down that K&N would be throwing their support behind Jim Dunn’s Top Fuel and Al Hofmann’s Funny Car teams for 2002, leading many in the media to predict that the Cowin Family Racing team would be forced to curtail their activities. To the contrary, however, a press release issued by the Cowin team just before Christmas quashed that rumor as they announced their intentions to run the entire schedule in 2002, marking the first time they would do so since coming to the U.S.

This, of course, delighted drag racing fans anxious to see the hard-charging Aussie in the hunt full time. What really stirred the pot, however, was an announcement not two weeks later that Mike Dunn would not be back in the Gwynn/Steinbrenner New York Yankees dragster and in fact was being replaced by Cowin. With the full blessings of his family, Andrew moved to Gwynne’s home base of Davie, Florida, and set out to compete at the highest level of the sport.

That season, Andrew completed his first full-time season on the POWERade tour, finishing eighth in the championship standings and recording what was at the time the fourth-quickest run of all-time at 4.490 seconds. Also, in June of 2002 he returned home to Australia for a one-off appearance with his family team at Willowbank Raceway near Brisbane, and became the first racer to break the 500 kph barrier outside the United States when he recorded a record 4.75-second run at 314 mph (506 kph).

After just one year in the seat, however, Andrew lost his Yankees ride due to a lack of funding just weeks before the beginning of the 2003 POWERade season. Fortune smiled on him again, however, and Cowin joined the newly-formed Carrier Boyz Racing team in February of 2003, and never missed a beat. With things seemingly going well, Andrew had just started to become acclimatized to his new team and his new surroundings when fate stepped in and turned the young man’s life completely around.

Now, 18 months after his life-threatening fall, the young Aussie is determined to regain his form once again behind the wheel of the Cowin Family Racing machine. Proving that he was up to the task, he recently roared to a new IHRA elapsed time World Record at the 9^th annual Hooters IHRA Bethesda Softworks World Finals in Rockingham, North Carolina.

Cowin followed up a track record-equaling 4.550-second pass during the first day of qualifying with a record-setting 4.534 effort in the final session that earned him the pole position for the first time in his brief career.

"It’s really great to be back out here racing again," Cowin said when asked how he was enjoying his big weekend at the "Rock." "We’re slowly getting a handle on the 85% nitro deal, and when we made the change to run 85%, we also added a six-disc clutch to the car. Because of that, we played the whole clutch-grabbing-the-motor deal for a couple of races, and had to deal with a lot of shaking, smoking and what not. We’ve been working on it pretty hard, though, and it’s really starting to pay off."

As for the steady improvement he and the team have been making since his comeback, Cowin said, "the first test session we went to was at Indy, and we ran 4.77, and we’ve been sneaking up on it from there. At Houston our best pass of the weekend was a 4.70, and we improved to 4.64 in Norwalk, then to 4.55 and 4.53 here in Rockingham. Like I said, we’re slowly getting better, and as far as I’m concerned, running a 4.53 at 85% and setting the IHRA record is amazing. Dad and the whole crew are doing a great job. I ran a 4.49 when I drove for the Gwynns, but I want to break that now so I can say I ran my personal best with my dad."

In spite of having come so far so quickly, Cowin knows that things can change in the blink of an eye, as his very life did back in early 2003. "Right now it’s a high and large moment, and we’ve got to go with the flow," he said. "You never know when it might go the other way. It’s a physics thing, though – if you get down, you can only go one way, and that’s back up. We’ve had a fuel system problem lately, for example, but we worked through it through trial and error, and now we’re running really well. We’re hoping to keep improving and our goal is to soon win our first race here in the U.S."

As mentioned, drag racing has deep roots in the Cowin family, with both of Andrew’s parents being accomplished competitors. On top of that, his twin brother John is the current ANDRA Top Fuel champion in Australia, a fact that fills Andrew with pride. "My brother is a great driver – he was the first guy over 320 miles an hour in Australia, and is the defending Top Fuel champion at home," Cowin confirmed. "I’d really like to see us running together as a two-car team some day, but right now he’s got a successful career going at home, and we’re concentrating on running here in the IHRA and NHRA, so it won’t happen real soon. The good thing is that we’re still young, though, so there’s still time for us to get together sometime down the road."

Another point of pride for the young charger is the fact that he and John have inherited such a love of competition from their parents. "We’re real lucky to have been brought up in the sport by our mom and dad, and we really appreciate what we have," he said. "We’re both going to take advantage of what we’ve been given, because one day it’s not going to be there anymore. You’ve got to do what makes you happy, and racing with our dad is what makes up happy. A lot of people don’t get along with their dads, but we do, at least most of the time. It’s a stressful sport, after all!"