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Photos: Jacy Norgaard
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JOSEPH JOINER HUNTING THE FRONT
By Ashley Zimmerman Dirt Empire is taking questions provided by YOU and will seek out your favorite drivers to get you the answers to your long awaited questions! All you have to do to submit your question is just Like Dirt Empire on any social media and include #DEasks with your question. Then watch for the next issue to see if your question is featured!
WITH THE GROWTH of racing across social media platforms, live streaming and YouTube, race fans have the ability to tap into racing around the world with just the click of a mouse, whether it’s live as the race is happening or raw behind the scenes footage from race teams; dirt track racing is thriving in an era where grassroots race teams can find themselves as well known or sought after as teams spending their time following a series around the United States. Joseph Joiner, through the management of his brother Jonathan, is capitalizing through the reach of a YouTube channel Hunt The Front to share their racing success to
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nearly 100,000 follows through their blog style recaps each week. It’s through this unique racing point of view that Joseph Joiner and family have been able to chase racing dreams in the late model world and shared the exciting moments of their 2021 race season success with their fans near and far. Fans have garnered the opportunity to enjoy the ups and downs as Joiner has debuted at Eldora, tackled Bristol on dirt, share in the celebration of big wins like the Super Bee for $50,000, and the realities that no race team is invincible against. With an expansive point of view offered by Joiner and Hunt The Front, it came as no surprise when the requests came in to feature Joseph in our segment #DEAsks, where we sat down to quiz this late model driver on all the things fans just HAVE to know. Dirt Empire: You have a substantial social media following and platform built with Hunt The Front to showcase the entire team, how
DIRT EMPIRE MAGAZINE • ISSUE 07 - 2021
did this decision to begin such an inclusive platform begin? Joseph Joiner: Well, that wasn’t really my decision; that was my brother Jonathan and whoever else that all kind of came up with that idea. I’m just the guy that kind of gets to reap the rewards of getting to drive the race car because of it. I’m not really sure where exactly that really originated. I know Jonathan, it was mainly him there with the videos and stuff, and now I just get to find myself in the seat. DE: While I am sure it was your goal for the platform to grow and reach fans that you might not potentially be able to meet during your time at the racetrack, did you expect it to grow to the size it has? How time consuming is it to maintain fan engagement at this size? JJ: Of course not, you know there’s no way you could expect that. We’re just going to keep riding the wave and hopefully it’ll take us a long way, we’ll just see.
