THIRD-GEN DRAG RACER MASON MCGAHA FINDING HIS GROOVE

by Susan Wade    Tue, 2021-03-16 10:41

 

 

Young Pro Stock racer Mason McGaha kind of shrugged that nonchalant shrug of a teenager who’s not crazy about talking a lot and answering a bunch of questions.

But the third-generation driver said, “I guess it was just a mental thing,’ this difficulty in mastering reaction times when he was first behind the wheel of his dad’s second race car.

But his dad, Chris McGaha, had plenty to say about it.

“He wouldn’t wait on the Christmas Tree. He was doing the motions right. He knew what he was supposed to do. But he would not wait for the Christmas Tree to come down. So that was a major task for him to overcome,” McGaha the Elder said.

The Odessa, Texas, duo had worked on it in Florida and in Arizona, but the newcomer couldn’t get the hang of it. They decided to try it again at their local racetrack, Penwell Knights. And the comfort of home didn’t seem to make any difference. During a particularly exasperating test session, Chris McGaha said, “I took my radio off, and I opened the door. And I told him, ‘I don’t care if you can run a 6.49 [-second elapsed time], I’m going to kick your ass every day if you ain’t going to wait on the Tree.’ I said, ‘Do it again,’ and I slammed the door. He drilled his son over and over, and he finally improved by two-tenths of a second.”

Mason McGaha said, “For some reason, I just couldn’t wait on it, and every time we’d go up there . . . total screw-up. I had to go up there and keep programming it in my brain: You’re supposed to wait. That took a long time to finally get that figured out.”

His dad figured out that he might have discovered a new career for himself after enlisting Pete Smallwood’s help as Mason’s crew chief.

“It’s probably best I got rid of my headset duties. When it comes to racing, I wear my emotions on my shoulders. And there’s a few times here lately that if I had a headset when he was up there [on the starting line], I would have smashed it against the guardrail [in anger] at things that were going on. And it’s nothing that he was doing. It was just the way the car was running. So if I become a crew chief,” Chris McGaha said, “it’s going to be like a rock star smashing a guitar. I’m going to be throwing a headset, because I can’t control my emotions at that instant. And it’s not that I’m doing that intentionally. I truly can’t control my emotions up there.”  

Despite the rocky relationship with the Christmas Tree at the beginning, Mason McGaha still calls his crew “The A-Team.” Chris McGaha calls their side of the operation simply “the blue car.” Just the same, Chris McGaha said his primary goal this season is “to get that [blue] car up and running. I’m pushing that team. At some point, I’ll be the guy who runs block. Hopefully I can get both cars fast and I can run block and he can do whatever he needs to do to win.”

Mason found the tree just fine at the season-opening NHRA Gatornationals, by reaching the semi-finals.

 

 
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