Drag Illustrated Issue 152, January 2020 | Page 49

Paul’s Big Haul
Veteran bracket racer Paul Mosely picks up $20,000 Big Bucks win
By Van Abernethy
T
he 15th annual Big Bucks Brack-
et Race brought out lots of great com-
petitors around the Southeast who
were eager to stake their claim on
prize money and Wally trophies for
the winners of this staple two-day event at
Carolina Dragway in Aiken, South Carolina.
Saturday’s main event paid to $20,000 to win,
and came down between Dylan Coggins, who
matched his dragster against the 1998 Chevy
S-10 of veteran racer Paul Mosely. It was an eight-
round race to the finals and the temperature had
plunged to 36 degrees as the final pair inched
into the staging beams to give their best shot at
winning the 20 grand up for grabs.
Staged and ready, the tree began its descent,
and Mosely recalls releasing the button and in-
stantly knowing he’d missed the tree. “I was ac-
tually at about half-track when I said to myself,
‘Hey, 10 grand ain’t bad...I’ll take 10!’” he laughs.
Per usual, Mosely glanced over to see if he
needed to tap the brakes and realized Coggins
wasn’t going to catch him. “By this time, I’m
scrubbing the brakes, and end up running dead-
on my 5.98 dial-in,” he says. “We both missed the
tree pretty bad.”
Coggins was slightly better out of the gate with
a .040 to Mosely’s .046. The difference was made
at the stripe with Coggins three digits off his 4.77
dial-in, with Mosely ringing up matching num-
bers and a glowing win light for his efforts. “This
is the biggest money race I’ve ever won in my
life and it feels great,” he smiles. “This morning
I woke up and asked my wife Sandi if yesterday
really happened.”
Mosely is no stranger to success at Carolina
Dragway, though, having won a five-grander
here, as well as going to the finals twice while
racing Top Sportsman, winning one of them. As
for the ultra-consistent Chevy S-10 that brought
him his biggest payday to date, the truck was
actually something Mosely built over the winter
for his wife, but the 5-second ride turned out
to be a tad fast for her experience level, so she
told him to just keep it. “I started driving it at
the first of the year and me and the truck just
kinda clicked!”
In fact, Mosely advanced all the way to the
semifinals during his very first at-bat. From
there he scored a runner-up and soon after-
wards his first victory with the truck. On the
heels of the 20 grander he won at Carolina, he
also picked up the win at a fall event at South
Carolina’s Greer Dragway, where he began his
career decades ago in the Street class at age
15, while wheeling a 1986 IROC Camaro. “I
can’t say nothing bad about 2019, it’s been a
good season, and this little truck is just really
good,” he declares. “You can trust it...you can
put a number on it and hold it to the floor and
it’ll run it.”
Mosely is historically a fast learner with any
new ride. Such was the case in 2016 when he first
tried his hand at racing a Top Sportsman 1963
Corvette, and wound up driving to victory at the
IHRA World Finals in Memphis, a win he refers
to as his “sweetest victory ever.”
In addition to his successful 2019 season trav-
eling around the Carolinas, Mosely also chased
points at Greer in the Pro class, finishing 5th with
the S-10. While a championship has eluded the
South Carolina native, he’s finished 2nd in points
twice at Greer. “We have a stable of drivers at
Greer who are heavy hitters, so placing 5th is a
great accomplishment to me,” he asserts.
With his recent success at Carolina Dragway,
Mosely is eyeing the big-money bracket circuit
more seriously in 2020. “Greer has a nice sched-
ule next year with just 10 point races, so we’re
gonna do more of these type events, like this Big
Bucks race here at Carolina Dragway, and maybe
some SFG events,” he says. “We’re gonna take
the truck and chase it and see what happens.”
There’s also one more matter of business he
intends to finalize over the winter. “I did buy
my wife another truck to replace the one I took
from her,” he laughs. Sandi plans to compete in
the Sportsman class at Greer next year, while
together they’ll chase the big money prizes along
the ever-growing big-money bracket scene.
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