Bedford Speedway
Victories validate T-Mac's confidence in his ability
By Kyle McFadden
DirtonDirt staff reporterBEDFORD, Pa. (May 18) — With two victories in a four-day span on the World of Outlaws Real American Beer Late Model Series, Tim McCreadie has proven he remains capable of winning at the Dirt Late Model racing’s highest level.
The last few seasons have taken a toll on the 51-year-old Watertown, N.Y., driver, who has regressed statistically, monetarily and in relevance during adverse 2023 and ’24 seasons. But his driving ability? Even though he was replaced as the house car driver for both Longhorn and Rocket Chassis in back-to-back seasons, McCreadie never bought the narrative that his days as a consistent winner, or a consistent frontrunner, were behind him. | RaceWire
He’s never lost faith in his skill.
“As far as what rides you get pushed out of, that’s part of life. It ain’t that big of a deal,” said McCreadie, Thursday’s winner at Raceway 7 in Conneaut, Ohio, and Sunday’s winner at Bedford Speedway. “It only sucks when you get older because people assume that maybe you’re not doing as good. Really, I don’t think I’m much different than I was five years ago. I just feel like I maybe lost ideas on how to make the car better. Now there’s people smarter than me doing that. It makes my life easier, too.”
The notion seemed plausible: if McCreadie was shuffled out of the Longhorn and Rocket house car programs, then what better options remained?
McCreadie likes to think he’s found just that in the Boom Briggs-owned operation he’s beginning to gel with. He’s regained comfort behind the wheel in connecting with the Briggs team that’s “like family,” finding a change of scenery on the World of Outlaws and reuniting with Longhorn Chassis.
“We just had to get him comfortable,” said Briggs, the team co-owner, longtime national competitor and former crew chief for cousin and longtime national tourer Chub Frank. “And I think he’s comfortable. … It just shows what my family has put into this, Chub’s family — and this is Chub’s family, too — it’s a true family thing. My mom is into this. She watches every lap. She treats Timmy like another son. We’ve been working really hard.”
In 10 races since returning to a Longhorn Chassis after starting the season in Rockets, McCreadie has a pair of victories, four top-fives and six top-10 finishes. His four finishes outside the top-10 were Saturday’s wreck at Marion Center (Pa.) Raceway, which he was a victim of; May 6’s 18th-to-12th run at La Salle (Ill.) Speedway; and 19th- and 21st-place finishes in his return to Longhorn during April 11-12’s Illini 100 at Farmer City (Ill.) Speedway.
Even in that disappointing first weekend at Farmer City, McCreadie saw upside in his chassis change. He started eighth in April 12’s Illini 100 before running into trouble in the 60-lap feature, but having not raced a Longhorn in 14 months, he was rusty on setups. “But now I know what to do these things,” he said.
“This car just seems to suit me, and how could it not suit me? I was an intricate part of their program for probably almost a decade,” McCreadie said. "All the stuff we would do with all the people that were there, it was just kind of easy to fall back into that mode of trying this and trying that. Just for me, I know the car is a lot better. I thought we minute we got it, it had really good speed. Unfortunately sometimes you run seventh.
“Every time we were running seventh, I told the guys at Longhorn, ‘We’re really good. I just haven’t really put it all together.’ We finally did and we finally did it again, so it’s pretty good.”
McCreadie didn’t have to win Sunday’s 35-lap event at Bedford’s thunderous fairgrounds half-mile oval to vindicate his rekindled success, proving Thursday’s win at Raceway 7 was no fluke.
He’s felt competitive again for the first time in years and for once feels he can put together a successful season. After Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series championships in 2021-22 for Paylor Motorsports, the last two seasons have ended in letdown.
In 2023, he missed Lucas Oil’s four-driver playoff. A year later, he clawed his way into Lucas Oil’s Big Four in Rocket1, but was out of title contention by October’s Dirt Track World Championship at Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio. The DTWC ended up being his final race with the Rocket team.
McCreadie’s plans for 2025 were to follow the Lucas Oil tour for the 10th consecutive season in an alliance with the Rocket Chassis house car program. Instead, McCreadie’s Briggs Transport team went a different direction in March with series and chassis choice.
“It’s no secret Boom and I go way back, and it’s no secret Boom and (Rocket Chassis owner) Mark (Richards) have a great relationship, too, and it was all of us putting this together,” McCreadie said. “The hardest part for me, why I’m not doing stuff with Rocket, is that I just wasn’t good enough. Listen, it’s part of it. I thought we had a very good year (in 2024).
“And it’s not a lie that I don’t believe we did as good as we should’ve, and neither does (Richards). You make changes based off that, and that’s OK. Driving with Boom, we wrap everything together and basically, he’s like me. We’ve just raced a lot where you try to get better.”
McCreadie admitted that, after four victories in 100 races on the Lucas Oil tour in 2023-24, campaigning on the series had gotten “stale.”
“Boom and I talked about it. It was more of, doing things a little different isn’t a bad thing,” McCreadie said. “I left the Outlaws years ago (after the 2015 season) for the same reason. It’s not like I don’t dislike anybody, but sometimes you need something to put life in your people. Plus, like I said, you get into ruts. If you run with the same guys every night, and you’re on that tour for 10 years, you’re in a rut and it’s hard to climb out of it.”
Change often brings anxiety, but it's the opposite for McCreadie.
“I haven’t been here in a while, so it’s relaxing. The Lucas tour, there’s a lot of pressure on that tour,” said McCreadie, whose 2006 WoO championship came a few years after shifting away from big-block modified competition. “When you continue doing it and have a lot of success, it wears on you, you know what I mean? This has been fresh. When we left Florida, we had such a bad Speedweeks that we were kind of out of all the point tours. The points haven’t been the focus, it’s been trying to run better and get ready for races that pay a lot of money. That’s what we’re trying to do.”
McCreadie added that Longhorn staffers Matt Langston and Kevin Rumley, along with chassis co-owner Steve Arpin, have embraced his return. Quickly integrating the three-time national champion back into the fold has been key.
“Yeah, like I said, some of it, it’s they’ve done a good job with setups,” McCreadie said. “Bilstein’s done a good job with the shock program. Some of the stuff I used to do, I’m not really doing a lot of that, I’m doing some of it. It’s hard to explain.”
In winning his Lucas Oil championships, McCreadie wasn’t inclined to venture too far from trusty setups. But as the sport evolved — along with Hoosier’s introduction of the National Late Model Tire — McCreadie had to find his way again.
“Sometimes you get in a rhythm of doing it and doing it, and then a year goes by, a couple years go by, and you’re on top. You win two championships in a row and it’s hard to veer from what was working,” McCreadie said. “Well, then (in 2023), we’re not even in the top four.
“I probably should’ve done more changes (on the car), then you get apprehensive. And as all of that builds up, now that I’ve stepped in different cars and as I come back (to Longhorn), it’s really easier for me to see, ‘This is what you do because X driver wins the race.’ ”
McCreadie’s says assistance from fellow Longhorn racer Jonathan Davenport, a Lucas Oil Series competitor, critical finding his way forward, emphasizing that “J.D.’s always been a big help to me.”
“I know there’s times he’d say I helped him and now he’s basically on top all the time, and he’s paid it back with me, too,” McCreadie said. “It’s a great relationship because he’s done such a good job, in my opinion, of figuring his car out. He can drive his car hard every lap but he doesn’t look like it. He’s been a big help. Everybody’s been a big help. It’s just been fun, it’s been a lot of fun. We’re making money again and hopefully we can continue on this.”
On rival tours, McCreadie can’t collaborate with Davenport as much at the track. But the two still find ways to stay connected and not sharing the racetrack can have its benefits because “he’s not worried about his car because he’s not racing,” McCreadie said.
“Sometimes that’s able to help because he might remember something I wouldn’t have remembered, things like that,” McCreadie said. “When Boom wasn’t here, I called him for advice on things, and sometimes it’s nice to do that. This tour has forced me to do that more.
“I come over here and I don’t have as many people to rely on and do it for me, so I still get the advice, but it’s a different way of doing it,” McCreadie said. “When you’re sitting at the racetrack with guys you travel up and down the road with, you get advice, but it’s different than when they’re focused and at the track. If I call J.D. right now before the feature, he might be home and his mind is open.”
McCreadie could’ve easily struggled again Sunday at Bedford. On Saturday at Marion Center, the team “literally replaced everything in this car with the exception of, say, the engine and transmission,” following a hard crash on the 27th of 60 laps. But McCreadie, with the help of Briggs, his family and Frank, were able to repair the car, capitalizing on the hard work with Sunday’s $20,000 victory.
“Nowadays, if you hit one really hard, you can knock the frame around,” McCreadie said. “They run fast, but you just get worried. I didn’t wanna have to put a clip on it this week.”
Starting from the pole of Sunday’s feature made Bedford his race to lose, but McCreadie pointed out the half-mile was “right in my wheelhouse” because he had to keep his car pointed as straight as possible.
“Some of these tracks … if you don't have to be so crooked all the time, and if I can tug left on the steering wheel, as I’ve gotten, like, I don’t even want say older, but as I’ve gotten better at this stuff, I’ve made my car do more of that,” McCreadie said.
McCreadie won’t be in action on the national stage until June 4-7’s $100,000-to-win Dream at Eldora, but he plans to run May 25’s Andy Kania Memorial at Eriez Speedway ($7,600-to-win) and May 30’s Pete Loretto Memorial at Freedom Motorsports Park in Delevan, N.Y. ($4,000-to-win)
Briggs insists the car that’s won two of its last three races “isn’t going anywhere until Eldora,” so McCreadie will try out a newer Longhorn the next two weekends. But when McCreadie goes against national-level competition at Eldora, where a FloRacing Night in America event leads into Dream action, there’s little reason to think McCreadie won’t carry over this newfound speed.
“I hope so. The beauty of that is you have three nights to mess around with the car,” he said. “Usually, personally, I enjoy double features when they do it because they give me two nights on the track and I can try different things, hopefully fall on something really good. The Flo deal, it’s take it or leave it. It’s not that great of a purse through the middle for 100 cars.
“Yeah, it wouldn’t surprise me if we ran really good there. We’ve been good there, and I’ve been good there in many different brands of cars, so that’s good, too. This car feels very comfortable and we’re doing good. (Sunday at Bedford) ain’t Eldora, but it’s a flatter track where you’re not back steering a ton. It was good from the beginning to the end.”
