STRICKLER AFTER MESSY 2021

STRICKLER LOOKS TO ‘22

BY ASHLEY ZIMMERMAN

in the late model world. So, even when I wasn’t driving his car, and I was running a Longhorn, Scott would try to help me some, and we would talk; that’s kind of what led me to go drive his cars. It’s definitely helped my career and helped me to learn a lot about the racing world in general, and how the politics of it all work out because late model racing is big business and it’s a lot different from the lower series and way different from the modified stuff that I did.

DE: When you decided to make the move from modifieds to late models, what was it that made you decide to make the transition?

KS: I’d been trying to get into late model racing since I moved down to North Carolina in 2006. I bet I had ten opportunities that I thought were going to happen and none of them ever panned out, so I went back to modified racing. The turning point was I just won the Race for Hope for $20,000 in Batesville. I was at Lance Landers shop and he gave me an opportunity to run his son’s Gavin’s car and go to Greenville, Mississippi, and run at the Gumbo Nationals. It was obviously the top of the line, best equipment and team, and I got in the car and won my first weekend out in that car driving for Lance. So, that’s what catapulted me to almost national level, and then people knew who I was, besides just a modified driver who had a lot of success. So, when that happened, I started getting calls with people wanting to put deals together. I got in contact with David Wells and we put a deal together for the next year. Brandon Overton told me that getting your first serious ride in late model racing is the hardest one, after you get in and have some success it makes it way easier to move forward. That was very true, before it was people taking a huge chance on a kid that was unproven in late models, but after I won that first race, a lot of people saw that I could win, and it made it a lot easier.

DE: Is there anyone else that has made a huge impact on your racing career?

KS: I grew up around a bunch of the Northeast Modified guys that taught me a lot. Kenny Brightbill drove for my parents. Guys like, Jeff Strunk, Meme DeSantis, Billy Pouch, Craig Von Dohren, Duane Howard, Brett Hearn, all those guys were guys that I really looked up to, they were kind of my idols. They taught me a lot about those types of race cars, and how to race, the on track stuff, how the veteran racers can do tricks or things that younger racers don’t even realize are getting done on them, I learned a lot of that stuff at a young age. Then once I moved down south, Randle Chupp played a big part in my modified and late model racing career. I worked at Wolf Pack with him and he taught me a lot of the fabrication side, a lot about brakes, race car suspension, a lot about the cars that I didn’t know because the late models were so different from what I was used to with the Northeast modifieds.

DE: Turning back to the present, what would you say you are the most excited about on the 2022 race schedule?

KS: I’m very excited about the people we have involved with my team now, I’m driving for longtime friends and sponsor, Charlie and Melanie Donaldson, and they were my first sponsors when I moved to North Carolina and have had some sort of involvement with me my entire career. We’ve started our own team and we’re kind of doing this late model stuff legit now. I have a lot of great people in my corner with them, G-Man, G-Style Transport in North Dakota have been with me for a long time, they are my two main sponsors and we’ve hired a bunch of great guys to come on the road and work on our team with Kenny Payton, Scott Fegter, and Jasper Sumner this year. We’re building a brand new shop and trying to go full time late model racing with a bunch of great people behind us. That’s what I’m most excited for to finally have some really good guys in my corner that I can trust, because there’s a lot of people out there in the late model world that are ruthless and can be extremely fake.

DE: Looking forward even more into your career, what would you like to accomplish over the next five years? KS: I want to win Crown Jewel late model races; I’ve never really been a pointschasing type of guy. I think that the way late model racing is now, that the Crown Jewel events are more important than the championships. It’s not to say that we won’t ever go down that road, I’d love to go run the full tour sometime and win a championship, but winning the World 100, The Dream, Bristol [would] solidify my name into the late model history books. I’ve pretty much gone and won everything there is on the modified end of it, so now this is the next step… You know, right now everyone remembers me for getting a flat tire on the last lap at Eldora and losing that race that I should have won, so I want to change that to people remembering me for winning, doing something that not a lot of people have done; sometimes you gotta lose them before you can win them. If you’re going to solidify your name in late model racing, winning the big races at Eldora is priority number one.

DE: You mentioned that you really enjoy running the NASCAR trucks on dirt, is there much of an adjustment going from a late model at tracks like Knoxville and Eldora to running a truck?

KS: The trucks drive way different than a modified or late model. You are going way slower, they weigh a lot more, and they’re not really built for dirt tracks, but they are a lot of fun. They’re heavy and they slide around, but the biggest adjustment was the shifting, I’ve driven street cars with manual transmissions but it’s very different when you get into the trucks in a racing situation with restarts and pit road. Having a spotter and having all of that stuff going on was for me what was so different, but I really do enjoy it. Any time I can get into something that’s out of my element, I feel like it makes me a better race car driver. I plan to and hopefully get to do a lot more of this type of stuff, I think it helps everybody with the Larson effect; I like to call it, where you’re bringing together different forms of motorsports.

DE: Let’s talk a bit more about the 2021 race season, when the opportunity came to go to Team Zero, were you surprised the offer had come or was it something that you figured may have been down the line for you as an opportunity?

KS: At the spot that I was in, in my career with how everything had played out, we had a bunch of people shuffling around, I had just lost my crew chief to another team, lost my ride with PCC. I was kind of starting from scratch again. I went down and talked to Scott and I said if we’re ever going to do this deal where I get to drive for you, I think now’s the time. Scott really helped me out; everyone at Team Zero really helped me out to get me through that tough part in my career. Now with Scott’s future kind of being uncertain with what he’s even going to do, I think it’s tough, I think he’s in the same spot that everyone else is in where he hardly has any personnel to run his own team, let alone everyone else’s. Scott and I are still good friends, I talk to him a lot. Going back to Longhorn stuff, I think was in my best interest, and that’s what we ended up doing.

DE: Obviously when you transitioned to Team Zero you transitioned into new equipment and entirely different cars, was that challenging for you?

KS: They are completely different, with having McDowell’s shop right next to Scott’s shop; those guys are old school racers that I think look for the same thing in a race car. The only thing I’ve ever known is Longhorn stuff, and it was a huge adjustment, and I never really did get it perfected to where I was comfortable in the cars. It’s almost like you’re sitting in a completely different race car, not just a different chassis, everything Scott does is so different than anyone else. The way the seats are mounted, the way the shifters are, the way the pedals are, the way it feels, it all just felt foreign to me. I don’t know what it is about those cars that make it so different, I don’t know if it’s the location of the driver where you sit compared to other cars, but it’s noticeably different to go into. I’ve driven a Rocket, I’ve driven a Longhorn, and to get into that Bloomquist car, they’re almost on an island all by themselves; it takes some serious adjustments to feel comfortable. It was almost like I was just trying to retrain everything, and it just was something that didn’t ever feel right or work for me, that was the biggest part.

DE: Given the roller coaster that was your 2021 race season, would you say that this was your most difficult season?

KS: Yes, I was so glad to see 2021 end, and I’m hoping for as terrible as it was that 2022 will be that much better. It was definitely my most emotionally straining, mentally trying year that I’ve ever had, so much stuff happened, that I’ve said before that it felt like it was five years long. But, I learned a lot from it, I feel like as bad as it was that I’m setting myself up for success in 2022 for as much learning as I did. That stuff that happened makes you stronger and you learn from it.

DE: How would you say those struggles developed you as a driver?

KS: I would say that it taught me a lot of lessons more so off the racetrack about the people who you think are your friends but aren’t your friends. The people in the racing industry that will lie right to your face for gains, you just have to really do a lot of thinking and paying attention to what’s best for yourself and your team. The off track racing stuff I learned way more there and about the industry than I did the on track stuff. By far, I think the most important thing, the way that the industry is, and the competition level is right, it is so hard to just jump in and go for a long period of time. You can jump in and have some success because there are not really a lot of expectations, but then when you get down the road and people start expecting of you, I think that’s what hurt me more than I even realized was my immediate success. I had some good people behind and I really wanted to go late model racing, and we went out on the road in my first full season, won some Lucas Oil races, and won two World Of Outlaws races, we were on the highest of highs, and we were running really good for a team that had just started with a driver that’s never run a full late model season, I didn’t realize how bad the immediate success could be. Late model racing is one of the most humbling forms of motorsports. You can be a hero one night, and a zero the next. If you don’t have a good support group, it’s extremely easy to start doubting yourself, doubting your equipment, doubting everything, doubting who your friend is and who’s not your friend, the mental warfare that gets played on you is absolutely ruthless and brutal, I went through all of those feelings in 2021. I went from the highest of high to the lowest of lows, but I think it made me stronger for what I went through and learned.