Blame it on adrenaline or inexperience or some toxic mix of the two that saturated the youthful 30-driver field, but Mark Pombo’s victory in the inaugural Volkswagen TDI Cup at Virginia Int’l Raceway earlier this month came with a few close calls.
But Pombo, at 25, one of the more experienced drivers in the TDI Cup, stayed clean, never pushing the issue even as those around him did.
“If somebody acted like they were going to dive-bomb me, I let them go,” Pombo said. “Some people didn’t have the same mindset, and they nailed each other fighting for the same piece of real estate.”
“Dive-bomb?” That’s an interesting turn of phrase coming from Pombo, whose experience goes far beyond that of your typical young road racer because Iraq is not your typical place. Not now, maybe not ever.
The road course there may be a mostly straight line between the U.S. Army’s so-called Green Zone and another Army outpost, but the hazards came in spurts of gunfire from people to whom it mattered not at all that Pombo’s unit may have been delivering needed humanitarian aide. Water to Iraqis, fuel and supplies to U.S. infantry troops — it was all the same, and the bullets flew.
“You could never stop — that’s the worst thing that you could do,” Pombo said. “You had to keep going. We had two escort Humvees, front and back of our supply line, with two guys in one truck and one would be laying down fire.”
Pombo, the son of former SCCA and SCCA Pro champion Pepe Pombo, spent 13 months in Iraq, including two months attached to the famed 82nd Airborne. Before it was done, he had logged more than 15,000 “accident-free” miles, as a driver and a passenger,  through the hostile Iraqi sands. He had volunteered 10 times for what were considered dangerous missions that are full of U.S. military acronyms such as LOGPACS, BSFZ and CSS.
After all that, avoiding an amped-up teenager or two in Volkswagen Jettas on a Sunday afternoon in Southern Virginia seems almost trite.
But in an odd way, Pombo’s tour of duty is what brought him to the gentle hills of Virginia. At least partly, it is what helped deliver him to VIR’s victory circle in the TDI Cup.

“In the military, you pursue the path that’s in front of you, and you want to have all your wits about you and be totally focused. In a race car, that comes down to sticking to the gameplan and having patience. You have to set yourself up to win on the last lap. In the Army, you want to make sure you do everything to set yourself up for a successful mission and to get back home.”

— Mark Pombo

Pombo was an admittedly unfocused undergraduate at Georgia State University on Sept. 11, 2001. Lives were lost, and lives were changed that day.
“It affected me a little more than my roommates and some of my friends,” Pombo said. “I decided that it was time to step up and do something for your country this was it. It was time to be a man and be a patriot.”
So, Mark Pombo became Pvt. Pombo, figuring he would help fight the War on Terror and put together money to continue his education when his active military commitment ended.
“Really, the Army helped me be able to race because when I came back, I had a little over 35 grand in my bank account,” Pombo said. “I was able to use my military benefits to live off of and the State of Georgia’s (HOPE Scholarship) paid for school. It enabled me more than anything.”
A dedicated Pombo obtained his accounting degree from Georgia State, and is working on his MBA.
But a funny thing happened on the way back to his home track, Road Atlanta — Pombo became a better driver. Maybe it was age or conditioning. Or maybe it was lessons learned a world away, the same ones that helped bring Pombo home that he transferred into the cockpit of a race car.
“I know that before I went into the Army, I made a lot more mistakes, whether it was in Legends or spec cars,” he said. “It just comes from everything as you get older and the military was just one of those aspects.
“In the military, you pursue the path that’s in front of you, and you want to have all your wits about you and be totally focused. In a race car, that comes down to sticking to the gameplan and having patience. You have to set yourself up to win on the last lap. In the Army, you want to make sure you do everything to set yourself up for a successful mission and to get back home.”
Pombo’s first step on his latest path — the TDI Cup — was a very successful one, and one that could pay big dividends in the form of a $100,000 prize for the points champion and another $250,000 in assistance if the winner signs a professional contract in any series.
It couldn’t have started any better — on a historic course in front of a good crowd on a peaceful Sunday with nothing but the road ahead and not a bullet to be fired.
“I realize that I’m 25 years old and I’m not going to be the next young racing sensation like Kyle Busch,” Pombo said. “I’m just making the best of the opportunity I have.”
No. He won’t be the next Kyle Busch, Denny Hamlin or Graham Rahal. Those guys are heroes, right?