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Racing is often an inherited love, passed down from through the generations by family or inspired by a friend. It’s rare to run into a racer who never had any influence at a young age from those around them that steered them towards the track. Mike Murillo’s racing journey didn’t start in a traditional way. He has created his own path in drag racing based on terms he has defined, and won’t be changing anytime soon.
How Mike Murillo Became A Racer
Mike’s voyage into the racing world is as non-traditional as he is, and that’s what makes his accomplishments so amazing. “It’s kind of a unique story. There’s nobody in my family, immediate or distant, on either side who’s into cars or racing. There’s no uncle or father that got me into racing. Hot rodding was not in my blood when I was younger, that’s for sure,” Mike shares.
What did run in the Murillo family was sports, specifically football, and that’s what totally consumed Mike at a young age. “Football was all I was worried about when I was in high school, because I wanted to turn pro, and that was what I planned on doing for the rest of my life. All I cared about when it came to a car was that it got me to and from seeing girls. I didn’t care what it looked like, ran like, or what it color it was,” Mike says.
While still in high school, Mike moved from Ohio to Texas, but that wasn’t the only change in his life. Soon, he lost that burning desire to play football. “I was kind of lost for two or three years, not really doing anything that was related to any type of competition. It was strange,” he says.
During this time, Mike ended up behind the wheel of his dream machine, a 1977 Pontiac Trans Am that was just like the iconic car that Burt Reynolds piloted in Smokey and The Bandit. Unfortunately, that car ended up on the wrong end of a total loss accident, and that’s when his life changed again.
“I had raced the Trans Am a lot, and was always getting beat by Mustangs, so after that car was totaled, I ended up just getting a Mustang myself,” Mike explains of how he walked into the blue oval world.
My love for cars and racing came from a need to compete that disappeared when I stopped playing football – Mike Murillo
Soon, Mike was spending hours working on or racing whatever cars he could at his local drag strip in Texas. That small track was all Mike knew, but his racing life would make a huge transformation after a trip to a much larger facility.
“Someone suggested we go to a Fun Ford Weekend race in Dallas to check things out. A few of us went up there, and the track in Dallas just blew me away. It was like a football stadium. I got hooked into racing even more when I saw the record for my class, Street Outlaw, go 10.42. I had been 10.36 on a junk track, so I knew I could hang with anybody,” Mike says.
The following year, Mike upgraded his Mustang to have all of the necessary safety gear, and set out to show he belonged in the racing world. In his first time out with the car at the Fun Ford Weekend event in Houston, Mike won the Street Outlaw class, was runner up in True Street, and became a true racing addict in the process.
“That was the beginning for me. I just wanted to win more and more after that. We towed my Mustang to Bristol with a borrowed trailer and my wife’s Taurus station wagon. This was before everybody knew what you ran on the internet, so the racers were laughing at me for pulling in like that. The joke was on them, because we ended up winning six of the nine races that year,” Mike says.
The Story Of LawFawnduh
Mike could be considered one of the most decorated racers ever to pilot a Mustang, and his current 1992 Fox Body, known as “LawFawnduh”, is full of history. Mike purchased this particular car back in 2001 from Chuck Samuel and Kevin Marsh. It was one of the first Mustangs to go over 200 mph in the quarter-mile. “I picked up the car because they were selling it to move up to more of a Pro Mod-type deal, and Kevin had it for sale as a rolling chassis. When I purchased the car, it was totally state of the art. I was just trying to step up my game at the time,” Mike explains.
After he put his own touches on the car, he went on to amass an impressive list of victories that included multiple NMRA/NMCA championships, two wins at the Super Street Car Nationals in Outlaw 10.5, and victories against both Bob and Billy Glidden.
With all of the success Mike had experienced, he wasn’t satisfied and wanted to find new venues he could become a champion. “After we won our last championship in 2012, I went off on kind of a venture of ‘been there, done that,’ and I wanted to do something different. We tried our hand at Pro Mod racing in 2013, then brought LawFawnduh back out with the Street Outlaw stuff I was thinking about doing. We saw a huge draw spectator-wise, as well as the excitement surrounding it, so we got our car involved in it. That’s how I decided to try the car out with this street racing No Prep stuff,” Mike says.
While testing his Mustang in 2015, Mike had his first serious accident at Edinburg Dragway in Texas. The crash actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise for Mike, as it allowed him to get some needed upgrades done to the car.
“One of my good friends summed it up best: he told me that if I hadn’t had that wreck in this car, I’d still be driving the same piece of shit 10 years from now. Everything happens for a reason. It was time for upgrades, and we all knew it. It’s so hard to tear a car down for five or six months when you have stuff planned and you have appearances scheduled for your sponsors and the fans.”
Dennis MacPhearson and his team did a masterful job rebuilding LawFawnduh after Mike's wreck.
Mike and his team immediately got to work trying to get the Mustang ready for action again. Dennis MacPherson at DMC Racing was tabbed to start putting LawFawnduh back together again due to his stellar reputation as a chassis guru. A call was put out on Facebook by Mike to get parts, and he was fortunate to find a donor body that a fan of his had to help in the rebuild effort. The car was taken to DMC, where MacPherson put an updated front half and back half on the car using some new chassis technology. LawFawnduh 2.0 was now a state-of-the-art racecar again, ready for whatever Mike could throw at her.
Under the hood of the Mustang is a Kotzur Racing Heads-built 542 cubic inch Ford mill that uses some top secret rotating assembly parts that Mike won’t divulge. The top end of the motor contains a set of Trick Flow aluminum heads that Kotzur worked over, and filled with Victory valves and Jesel valvetrain components.
Mike may be hush-hush on the specifics of LawFawnduh's powerplant, but it's clear this blue oval bullet makes some rip.
Bringing the air into the big block Ford is a Trick Flow intake, All Pro elbow and 105 mm Accufab throttle body. Fueling needs are addressed by an Aeromotive mechanical fuel pump, along with a dual fuel injector setup from Precision Turbo that uses both 225 and 500 pound injectors to keep the alcohol flowing into the engine. An MSD Grid unit gives the engine its orders, and MSD ignition components provide the spark to keep the fire in the pipes.
Boost is supplied by a pair of Precision Turbo 94 mm Pro Mod turbos that are plumbed into a set of Kooks custom headers and exhaust system. Precision blow-off valves and Turbosmart wastegates are also used to assist in keeping the 40 plus pounds of boost in check on each pass. Before these new chassis upgrades were made, Mike piloted his trusty Mustang to a best pass of 6.29-seconds at over 241 mph, with a blistering 1.09 sixty-foot time on a 10.5W tire.
Behind the Kotzur built bullet is a burley Turbo 400 transmission from Mark Micke at M&M Transmission that works with a Pro Torque converter, while Mike changes gears with a Precision Performance shifter.
A fabricated 9-inch that uses Strange Engineering axles and center section, and a set of Santhuff shocks transfer all the boosted power to whatever surface Mike is racing on. The rest of the suspension under LawFawnduh consists of customer parts fabricated at DMC racing from front to back.
The Future For Murillo
Now that Mike has started to get a handle on LawFawnduh again, things are about to get really interesting in the No Prep racing world. Mike, who is also a highly active promoter of No Prep events, is hungry and motivated, which spells trouble for any racer who lines up against him in the future.
Don’t get confused, I’m not going anywhere, that’s for sure -Mike Murillo
If you think the future is just all about racing for Mike, you would be dead wrong, because he has big plans on the horizon that go beyond what he does behind the wheel.
“My racing will continue, but I’ve got a lot of other opportunities that are taking up time. With the promotion side of things, and some other really big business ventures coming, I’ve had to make some changes. The car has been my number one priority for over 25 years, but with everything I’ve got going on now, it will be moved to number four, but that’s just for now. Don’t get confused, though, I’m not going anywhere, that’s for sure,” Mike says.
Mike Murillo’s successful expedition into the racing universe has always been on a different course than most, and he’s perfectly okay with that. Racing has provided Mike with an outlet for his competitive desires, and turned into a way of life that he never imagined growing up. While on his horsepower-fed journey, Mike has been able to adapt to whatever the situation called for, and he’s won plenty while doing it.
