Wayne Gapp and Jack Roush
Wayne Gapp was introduced to the sport by his neighbor and well-known racer Arnie Beswick when he began hanging around Beswick’s garage. After graduating from college, he soon found his way into Ford Motor Company. In 1964 a group of engineers formed the racing club, the “HiRisers”, with the thought in mind to counter the Ramchargers factory backed efforts. Ford Motor Company supplied them with a 1964 427 Thunderbolt, none of the group had much racing experience, and soon Wayne inherited the club assets. Wayne set out to build his own racing organization and was soon provided a 1965 427 SOHC A/FX Comet by Lincoln Mercury, which he campaigned very successfully, setting a new class NHRA ET record along the way. In 1969 Ford formed a new high-performance engine group and Wayne was put in charge of the 429-engine program, so he had to put his racing career on hold. About a year later, Ford withdrew its support from all racing, and Wayne left the company to pursue his drag racing career again.
Jack Rausch has always been more interested in why and how things work and how to improve them. In 1964 after receiving a degree in mathematics and a minor in physics, Ross was recruited by Ford Motor Company to work on the processing of car assembling and tooling, but his real interest was engines and how to improve them. As a Ford Motor Company employee, Jack was soon drawn into the company’s extensive motorsports activities. In 1966 Jack joined a group called “The Fastback’s”, which was composed of a group of performance minded Ford Motor Company engineers all interested in one common goal; going faster than anyone else at the racetrack. In 1969 track left Ford and began setting up his own performance/development shop. Typical of most Rausch efforts, he was soon doing development work for other teams as well as his own. In 1970, “The Fastback’s” disbanded, and Rausch began looking for a new venture. As a side note, in 1971 in 1972 while the Gapp and Rausch team was complaining their pro-stock Maverick, Jack was still doing development work and teaching mathematics, physics, and a variety of automotive subjects at Munroe Community College.
It was at this time that Wayne and Jack got together and entered the pro-stock wars. In 1971 in 1972 the team campaigned a 429 Maverick that was strong but had limited success against the Chrysler Hemi. In 1972 NHRA changed the rules to include small block engines, and the team built a small block “development” Pinto using a lot of the technology learned in the development of the 366 NASCAR engine. In 1973 the small block car set several track records and powered the team to the 1973 Pro Stock Championship. In 1974 the team campaigned two pro-stock cars. Gapp drove the infamous four-door Maverick named the “Taxi”, and Rausch drove a sleek Mustang II. The Mustang ran mainly on the East Coast match race circuit, but in the late summer of 1974, Rouch flipped it at Capital Raceway in Maryland. This was the event that was pretty much responsible for the end of his driving career in drag racing.
As opposed to the sleek Mustang and the “standard fare” two-door sedans used by other pro-stock competitors, the Maverick being a four-door sedan soon captured the imagination of the press and the spectators, and at the same time performed up to everyone’s expectations. They race the “Taxi” in Brazil and Puerto Rico as well as the states and by the end of the year had set numerous track records. The “Taxi” won the IHRA Pro Stock Championship, Le Grandnational-Molson Nationals, the NHRA US Nationals, and was runner-up for the NHRA Pro Stock Championship. One other title they one in 1974 was a very rare one, the IHRA Southern Nationals in Charlotte, North Carolina, a 1/8-mile event. At their win at the Le Grandnational event they also set a new NHRA ET record at 8.84 seconds. 1975 was another successful year with wins at the Le Grandnational-Molson Nationals, NHRA Summernationals in Englishtown, and a repeat at the NHRA US nationals.
By the end of the 1976 season, the team had no corporate sponsorship and had formed different personal goals, so the two decided to disband the program. In 1988 Gapp retired from doing prototype development and moved to Florida to pursue his hobby of fishing. Rausch, on the other hand has continued to pursue his interest in racing, moving first to the GTX and TTP cars, then to SCCA and IMSA. In 1988 Jack expanded into the NASCAR circuit, where he has been very successful.