Knoxville Raceway
Look dad, no fenders! Timms tops sprint world
By Kyle McFadden
DirtonDirt staff reporter
Knoxville Nationals sprint car winner Ryan Timms (Paul Arch)
KNOXVILLE, Iowa — Lounging in a golf cart Friday at Knoxville Raceway, the day before he’d be forever immortalized in sprint car racing lore as the youngest Knoxville Nationals champ since 1964 at 18 years old, Ryan Timms pondered an alternative reality.
What if he followed his father’s path of racing Dirt Late Models instead of embarking on an open-wheel racing career?
If only he grew up in more of a Dirt Late Model hotbed rather than open-wheel-fervent Oklahoma City, Okla., would he be among the wunderkind talents across the fendered world today? Timms doesn’t think about that hypothetical much, especially now that he’s the third-ever teenager to win the Knoxville Nationals in the crown jewel’s 64 runnings.
But reflecting on his incredible rise through the sprint car ranks, and how he grew up the son of semi-successful Oklahoma regional Dirt Late Model racer Randy Timms, the baby-faced Timms is well aware his career could’ve gone the full-fendered path.
“I grew up going to all the Late Model races. I was always around Late Models, I was never around sprint car much,” Timms said. “Sometimes, he’d be racing a Lucas Oil Series race or the World of Outlaws, and I’d be with him. I always thought, as a kid growing up, Late Models were cooler, and I didn’t dislike the sprint cars, but I wasn’t as big of a fan of them.
“I always thought I would be a Late Model driver when I was a little kid, before I started racing. Then once my dad put me in junior sprints, the open-wheel stuff, I knew I was going to be a sprint car driver. And that was fine with me.”
It’s quite rare that a child finds success in a different form of dirt racing from their parent, much less venture down a different racing path. In most cases, the child follows their father’s footsteps, no matter what discipline of racing that is.
Randy Timms, a winner on the Lucas Oil Midwest LateModel Racing Association circuit, MARS Championship Series and Comp Cams Super Dirt Series, never forced his son one way or another in terms of sprint cars or Late Models.
When his son started racing at 8 years old in 2015, micro-sprint tracks in Oklahoma like Sapulpa’s Creek County Speedway, Oklahoma City’s I-44 Riverside Speedway, Catoosa’s Port City Raceway and Meeker’s Red Dirt Raceway were the family’s best options.
“We had a local track that raced junior sprints and micros and all that. I mean, they are miniature versions of the sprint car, right? He was really good in all of them,” the elder Timms said. “Just the natural progression, we got him in a 360 sprint car when he was 13. I mean, it took him just a little bit and he was winning races.”
By the end of 2017, Timms developed into one of the top up-and-coming open-wheel prospects in the nation, winning the junior sprint portion of the Tulsa Shootout on New Year’s Eve that year.
Blown away at the talent his son showed, the elder Timms shelved his own racing career in 2018 to provide Ryan with what he needed to be successful. The Timms family eventually got connected with Billy Lawhead, who crew-chiefed for current NASCAR Cup star Christopher Bell in his fast-rising micro-sprint days.
“I was impressed, not only as his dad, but as a racer,” said Timms, who finished fourth in the MLRA standings in 2017 behind Terry Phillips, Rodney Sanders and Jesse Stovall. “I was like, ‘Man, I have to be part of this instead of wasting time.’ Like, where was I going? I was fortysomething years old at the time, and I almost did it out of habit because it’s what I always done, and I needed to quit doing it to give him an opportunity I would’ve never had. It’s not an easy road. There’s plenty of nights I wish I would’ve told him to take up golf. Like, why’d we race? It’s not easy.”
From the outset of his burgeoning racing career, Timms had a reputation for succeeding at a remarkably young level. At age 14 in 2021, he became the youngest ASCS winner on the steppingstone 360 series now owned by World Racing Group. He ended up winning 16 times in his first full sprint car season, even winning four of his first 11 events in the 410 division.
By 2022, he finished ninth and second in his first World of Outlaws races as a newly-turned 16-year-old. In 2023 and ’24, however, his racing career plateaued for the first time — winning only four times in 109 races — as his father struggled to field sprint cars for him in the family-owned No. 5T machine, the same number Timms raced in Late Models.
Timms prompted his son to start looking for rides toward the end of 2024 because fielding cars as a family operation wasn’t cutting it. That’s when Timms landed with Rapid City, S.D.-based owner Shane Liebig, a weekly Knoxville sprint car driver and owner since 1991, last October.
Since then, Timms has recaptured his abilities as a highly-touted open-wheel driver who’s now less of a so-called prospect and more of a burgeoning superstar.
Not much driving-wise translates from the Late Model world to sprint cars, but the elder Timms knows enough about what it takes to be successful as a dirt racer. After all, it’s “the same concept,” said the elder Timms, who stressed “you have to have a good team, a good car, a good driver.”
But seeing what his son is doing — a teenager to win sprint car racing’s biggest event, akin to when 19-year-old Bobby Pierce won the World 100 in 2016 — is extraordinary in his eyes.
“I never competed at this level. He’s racing against the best in the world. I’d occasionally go run with the Lucas Oil Late Models,” Timms said. “I won races regionally and had some success in the Late Models. But I never had a team that would go compete full-time. I’m trying to run a business. I always thought, ‘Man, once I saw he could race and had the instinct to do it, I’m like, ‘Man, I have to figure out how to put him in a position to win the Knoxville Nationals.’ ”
Timms didn’t only win Saturday’s Knoxville Nationals, he triumphed handily. He was never passed all week long, earned the pole through his prelim night win from eighth, and led Saturday’s 50-lapper by two-plus seconds for more than 30 laps. At one point, he had a 4.3-second lead.
Every now and then former Dirt Late Model competitors will ask the elder Timms whether his son will ever race the discipline. Timms, meanwhile, will say he’s well off in sprint cars.
“Guys will ask me, when are you going to get Ryan in a Late Model or modified? I’m like, ‘I’m not.’ It would be cool, but, look, he has to focus on one discipline,” the elder Timms said. “Motorsports on this level, whether it’s sprint cars or Late Models, is so freaking tough. I mean, Kyle Larson is the only guy that can win in both. I’ve never seen anyone else who can.”
The younger Timms would be open to testing a Dirt Late Model sometime, but other than that, any thought of him racing the discipline is merely a lighthearted hypothetical to dream about.
“I’ll try one, yeah. I’d try a Super Late Model,” the younger Timms said. “I don’t have any desire to race one, but I’d like to it out and hot-lap one, yeah.”
