Attica Raceway Park
Retooled design spurs Schlenk to winning start
By Kyle McFadden
DirtonDirt staff reporter
Rusty Schlenk (91) en route to his Attica victory. (Jim Balentine)
ATTICA, Ohio (May 2) — Five victories and a runner-up finish in six races. That’s Rusty Schlenk’s ledger to start the 2025 season.
The McClure, Ohio, driver is perhaps the hottest regional Dirt Late Model, racer, especially after the 38-year-old’s Valvoline American Late Model Iron-Man Series season-opening victory last Friday at Attica Raceway Park. | RaceWire
Schlenk is 4-for-4 in 2025 at the third-mile Ohio oval and also grabbed an April 12 Ultimate Heart of America Series victory at Montpelier (Ind.) Speedway. What’s his key to success so far? He’s fielding a newly-designed Domination Race Car that he’s dubbed the MK2.
“I’ll be here for three hours if I had to give you all the secrets,” the reigning Iron-Man Series champion Schlenk said with a laugh. “We just went to work on the roll centers, the front geometry, the rear geometry, we completely redid the whole car. I moved the driver’s seat around, I moved the cockpit, the cage. We’ve just been working on it with our old car and cutting it, welding it, trying different stuff. We finally put it all into one race car. And it’s a helluva race car.”
Schlenk drove cars from Hall of Fame chassis manufacturer C.J. Rayburn much of his career, then built his first Domination Race Car late in 2019 and launched his chassis business in 2020. He’s primarily used that original design since.
The idea of reconfiguring his personally-constructed chassis didn’t dawn on him until 2022, when he only managed four victories. Schlenk, who’s accustomed to winning double-figure victory seasons, knew “it was evident” he had to make a change.
“We weren’t slow and I shouldn’t say we were lacking speed by any means, but there were certain places on the racetrack we were getting beat by some of these new Longhorns and Rockets,” Schlenk said. “I knew we needed to do something. We’ve always had huge traction. These cars are just made for traction.”
“That’s what we did. We took all of C.J.’s ideas and cleaned them up.”
The newer design is a “polished-up Rayburn Race Car,” said Schlenk, one of the late car builders favorite drivers in the final years in his career.
“I’ve been perfecting (Rayburn’s ideas) for the last, shoot, 10 years, since we got back with C.J,” Schlenk said. “We took everything we knew was good on his cars and we just kept adding to it and adding to it. We got to the point where we were like, ‘You know what, we just can’t go any faster with the chassis we have.’”
Schlenk built a brand-new chassis jig from scratch “to do the things we needed to do” and accommodate for all the new measurements around his latest chassis design. As Schlenk’s demonstrated, Rayburn’s core principles in what made a race car tick are timeless.
“I don’t wanna say it was a copy of a Rayburn, but we threw the Rayburn on the jig, copied the suspension point I wanted to keep, and build a chassis around it with all the stuff I wanted to change,” Schlenk said. “That was pretty easy. This new one, I literally threw away the old jig and built a new one. We started from scratch. This is a whole new race car.”
Rayburn left the greatest mark on Schlenk’s life as a racer. From his unique personality to his knack for churning out fast, comfortable race cars, Schlenk will always hold Rayburn close to his heart.
Schlenk’s enjoyed some of his best seasons driving Rayburn-built equipment, which he used through the 2019 season. In 2010 aboard a Rocket Chassis, he reeled off 20 DIRTcar-sanctioned feature wins that season en route to the DIRTcar UMP national title, which he still calls his best season to date. But until Rayburn’s death on New Year’s Day of 2022, Schlenk routinely checked in with Rayburn and vice versa.
“Even before I started building my own cars before he passed away, he’d call me every Monday and cuss me out, and tell me what I did wrong,” Schlenk said. “And congratulate me for what I did right. He’s always been in my corner.”
Schlenk would love to test his latest masterpiece of a chassis design against nationally touring competition at some point this year to gauge the car’s stoutness. He was going to compete in Jan. 4-13’s Wild West Shootout at Vado (N.M.) Speedway Park, but recovering from a pair of broken ribs sidelined him from those prospects.
Those broken ribs were actually suffered at last December’s Gateway Dirt Nationals at The Dome at America’s Center because of “stupidity on my part,” Schlenk said.
“I was driving a customer’s car because I didn’t have a car ready. I didn’t wanna take this brand-new one to the Dome,” Schlenk started. “I had a customer who said I could jump in his at the Dome, so I threw my wrap on it. He was taller than me and I went out to hot lap, and I was sitting back too far, I couldn’t reach the pedals good.
“So right before I went out to qualify, I had people stuff pillows behind my seat and it pulled the rib support out in my seat. I drove into (turn) one on the very first lap, hit that hole and bounced, and when it landed, I felt them pop. I couldn’t breathe for two laps. They were probably the worst two qualifying laps I’ve ran in my life.”
“We were excited to take this car out there (to New Mexico). We ran it once at that point and we knew how good it was. I wanted to get a feel against those guys. I’m sure we’ll get a shot at some point this year. Hopefully by then we’ll have another new one built.”
How does Schlenk’s hot start make him rethink his outlook and goals for the rest of the season? Is his first 20-victory season since 2021 in store, or could a 30-win season be feasible? Schlenk won’t deny those possibilities, but then again, his goals are unchanging.
“My goals are the same no matter what we’re doing, winning or losing, it doesn’t matter,” Schlenk said. “We show up every week to win. We’re going to try and win the championship in the Iron-Man and the (DIRTcar weekly) championship. I haven’t won it since I started my own deal. I won it once in a Rocket and three times in a Rayburn.
“The goal is to win that this year and hopefully win this Iron-Man deal again. We show up every week to win and whatever happens, happens. If we win 30, we win 30. If not, we’ll keep digging.”
