Inside Dirt Late Model Racing
Column: Team 22 reset gives team jump on '26
If there was any question about the relationship between G.R. Smith and Drake Troutman following a full year together as car owner and driver, the jovial back-and-forth they engaged in throughout the recent World Finals weekend at The Dirt Track at Charlotte in Concord, N.C., made it clear they have a solid connection.
The 44-year-old Smith, of course, decided to end his more than two-year absence from competitive Dirt Late Model action and run the World Finals as a teammate to the 20-year-old Troutman, giving his two kids — a 10-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son — a chance to see him race. Smith’s participation also provided Troutman an opportunity to bust his boss’s chops rather relentlessly.
“He’s been all over me this week,” Smith said of his talented young driver from Hyndman, Pa., during Charlotte’s season-ending World of Outlaws Real American Beer Late Model Series meet. “He’s been drilling me hard.”
There were plenty of verbal barbs launched by Troutman. For instance, when Smith retired from a Thursday heat race with an overheating engine, Troutman suggested to Smith that he had pulled in because he was “out of breath.” The next evening, Troutman was back with some good-natured sniping after Smith was knocked from his heat again.
“I was upset with him at first, but I didn’t know what happened,” Troutman said. “He had some (steering) rack issues, so he couldn’t steer, so I guess I’ll cut him some slack on this one.
“But,” he added with a twinkle-eyed smile and a laugh, “I don’t know if it’s that or if his arms just got tired.”
Smith, who didn’t qualify for any of the three World Finals features, took all of Troutman’s jabs with a grin. By the end of the weekend, in fact, Smith knew he had no ammunition to go after Troutman because the kid had performed so darn well, standing out as the only driver to score a podium finish all three nights after placing third on Thursday and Saturday and second in Friday’s feature.
“I told him, since I ran top-three, I get to give him s--- now. That was our deal,” Troutman said. “Man, all I can tell you is, whenever we get back (to the shop), there’s going to be a lot of watching some replays of the weekend. I’m going to get him whipped into shape after all this.”
Smith certainly would have preferred better results for his return to the cockpit — his only appearance over the past two years was in June 2024 at Thunderhill Raceway Park in Summertown, Tenn., where he did a start-and-park amid a short WoO field — but he had to let Troutman puff his chest and exert his bragging rights. He deserved it after a superlative weekend at Charlotte that clinched him the 2025 WoO Rookie of the Year award and a sixth-place finish in the national tour’s overall points standings.
What Troutman did at the World Finals was satisfaction enough for Smith, who concedes that as much as he enjoys being behind the wheel, his Charlotte action was just a rare weekend of fun for him. The New Jersey native who now lives in Cornelius, N.C., is at peace with transitioning to a primarily car owner’s role, especially with a budding star in Troutman locked in for a second year of traveling on a national tour.
“I enjoy watching them go out there and be successful,” Smith said of his team that has plenty of room to grow with a nucleus of Troutman and his equally fresh-faced buddy-crew chief Hunter Cornell. “I like racing, and being a team owner is a way for me to stay involved.”
The future looks bright for Smith’s Team 22 Inc., which will head into the 2026 season significantly more prepared than it was when the ’25 campaign began. Troutman’s strength at Charlotte was achieved with a brand-new Longhorn Chassis, one that was assembled in the weeks leading up to the World Finals with an eye on the coming year.
“This is really the start of 2026 for us,” Smith said. “We raced a lot this year and we took a little time off (late in the season) to kind of regroup and start getting ready for next year.”
Indeed, Troutman was one of Dirt Late Model racing’s most active drivers in ’25. With only Dec. 4-6’s Gateway Dirt Nationals at The Dome at America’s Center in St. Louis, Mo., remaining on his schedule, he’s made an astounding 114 full-fender starts. (He’s also run a handful of open-wheel modified races and won six times, including a $100,025 victory in May 31’s Modified World Championship event at Mississippi Thunder Speedway in Fountain City, Wis.) While he only managed three Dirt Late Model triumphs — his first-ever WoO score on June 21 at I-55 Federated Raceway Park in Pevely, Mo., and DIRTcar Summer Nationals shows at Peoria (Ill.) Speedway and Wilmot (Wis.) Raceway — the experience he gained from his extensive action was immense.
It was also grueling, though, and Troutman did show some dropoff in performance as the season wore on. He made some waves right out of the ’25 gate with a pair of runner-up finishes during Georgia-Florida Speedweeks and in June seemed to be hitting his stride as he scored all three of his victories within a 10-day period. But after his $20,000 score at Pevely, he managed a modest six top-five finishes in his next 22 WoO starts prior to the World Finals (dropping him from fourth to seventh in the points standings) as the grind and some second-guessing with his setup calls hampered him.
“We started off really hot this year,” Troutman said. “But it’s just how this racing works. It’s like, you know, you get going good, everything’s going good, and you don’t want to change anything up. Then one day you wake up and for some reason everything goes to s--- in a hand basket. It’s like, ‘Man, what’s going on?’ Like, you sit there, you’re scratching your head, you’re doing all this different stuff just trying to get better. And honestly, a lot of the time, I feel like it just makes you worse, so you got to get back to baseline, get back to standard.”
Troutman, who handles preparation of Smith’s equipment at his shop in western Pennsylvania, skipped some races he would’ve preferred to enter in order to put the team back on the right track. That included August’s North-South 100 at Florence Speedway in Union, Ky. (Troutman finished third in the event last year with his family-owned team) and October’s Dirt Track World Championship at Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio. With Troutman’s lone racing with Smith between the WoO events on Oct. 10-11 at Boothill Speedway in Greenwood, La., and Charlotte coming on Oct. 24-25 at Whynot Motorsports Park in Meridian, Miss., he had some time to breathe and catch up.
“We really just hit the reset button here over the last couple weeks and that’s helped more than anything,” said Troutman, who last fall replaced Max McLaughlin in the Team 22 seat. “We really have done most of our winter prep already. We got a lot of stuff still to do, but we got a lot of the hard stuff out of the way. We’ve done built two new cars, and we got one more we gotta go down to Longhorn to build. We already got all of our P’s and Q’s all lined up.
“This year, the day that we left for Vado (January’s Wild West Shootout in New Mexico), we weren’t even done (with prep). We finished the rest of the stuff up at the track. You gotta remember, we put this deal together last year in about a month. Now we’ve got a year underneath us and we can sit back and focus on the little stuff that adds up instead of just trying to make it there.”
The payoff was Troutman’s World Finals finishes, which marked the first time he’s recorded three consecutive top-five finishes in full-field national touring series events, let alone three podiums in a row. (Troutman ran the 2024 Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series with his family team and earned Rookie of the Year honors.) Charlotte isn’t even a track he considers to be in his wheelhouse, though he did finish second in last year’s World Finals opener.
“I don’t really know what it is, man,” Troutman said when asked about his strong Charlotte results. “Everything about this place is the opposite of my driving style. Gotta be smooth, gotta be straight — that’s not really me. But I don’t know, I’m trying to work on that, obviously. And we got a really good car, which makes my life a helluva lot easier behind the wheel.”
Troutman acknowledged that he did feel more comfortable than he ever has at Charlotte.
“I don’t know if it’s the way you circle around here or what, but it kind of reminds me of (Pennsylvania’s) Port Royal (Speedway),” Troutman said. “Like Port Royal, it’s got a lot of banking and you drive it way different. It’s a way different track configuration. But I feel like you kind of got to drive it the same as this place, like, just keep it straight and just momentum, you can’t ever break your tires loose. If you break your tires loose, you might as well throw an anchor out.”
The World Finals provided Troutman some on-the-job education as well from all the laps he ran Friday and Saturday within sight of Blairsville, Ga.’s Jonathan Davenport, the 42-year-old superstar who won both features. Troutman always soaks up whatever he can from Davenport.
“I watch him a lot everywhere, but, you know, I really focus on, like, Eldora and here, and just the way he drives,” Troutman said. “I mean, this is his style track. I mean, he’s tough anytime, but especially in these conditions. I don’t know how the hell he does it.”
Troutman noted that Davenport was one of his “idols growing up,” and he’s thankful to have developed a relationship with the Dirt Late Model titan who “kind of took me under his wing last year, showed me the ropes on some stuff.” He also joked that he’d like to see Davenport “retire here soon” because he’s been a runner-up to him multiple times this season — in fact, three of Troutman’s four second-place finishes in 2025 have come to J.D. — but Davenport isn’t ready to oblige him.
“He told me he wants me to retire and go on the road with him and help him,” Davenport said when asked about Troutman after his $25,000 victory in the World Finals finale. “But then he would get to have all the fun and I wouldn’t, so I don’t know.” He paused, and then added with a smile, “It’s going to have to pay pretty good for me to quit and go be a driver coach for him.”
Nevertheless, Davenport sees Troutman becoming an ever-bigger threat on the Dirt Late Model scene.
“Man, he’s been doing an excellent job,” Davenport said. “He’s a pretty good friend of ours, and he does a good job and he’s really mature. I’ve been trying to beat some other things in his head. Sometimes he’ll listen to me, sometimes he won’t, but for his age he’s progressing really fast … a whole lot better than I did.”
The World Finals just might have been the first weekend in the rest of Troutman’s racing life.
“This is a huge confidence booster, man,” said Troutman, who is planning to start his 2026 season with Smith in January’s Wild West Shootout at Central Arizona Raceway in Casa Grande before diving into Speedweeks competition. “Like, I’m telling you, if we would have came here and run s-----, and then you got to sit all winter, it's like, man, like, it’ll get inside of your head, and then you want to do this and do that, do this, do that, when you really just don’t need to.
“I’m pretty pumped up about the weekend. I mean, it’s the best I ran really all year, as far as consistency. It’s huge, man. We really needed that. It's been a struggle in the last two, three months. So, you know, it, I got to thank everyone that on board with this deal. I couldn’t be more grateful for all the support behind us. I’m amped up.”
Ten things worth mentioning
1. Troutman’s plans for January’s Wild West Shootout have been altered slightly by the recent news that he will attempt Jan. 12-17’s Chili Bowl Nationals in Tulsa, Okla., in a Team 22-backed midget powered by a Toyota engine. If all goes well on his midweek qualifying night and he’s either locked into Saturday’s A-main or in good position to make a run at transferring, he’ll have to bypass the next-to-last Dirt Late Model show at Central Arizona Raceway and the fly back for Sunday’s finale.
2. Troutman’s Chili Bowl effort will include some experienced open-wheel hands to guide him. The car will be prepared by Grady Chandler of Oklahoma City, Okla., who was paralyzed in 2019 at the age of 18 in a sprint car crash, and technical input will be provided by Shane Hmiel, another paralyzed racer whose driving career ended in a 2010 USAC Silver Crown accident. In addition, seven-time USAC champion Levi Jones, who now serves as the general manager of Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio, will be available to assist Troutman.
3. After dealing all season with pain in his feet that appeared to be from plantar fasciitis, Lucas Oil Series director Rick Schwallie underwent surgery last Friday on his left foot to correct problems that were far more serious than initial thought. He said after trying all the “normal interventions” for plantar fasciitis during the 2025 season — wearing a walking boot on his more painful left foot for a spell, then putting his foot in a cast for another stretch — he was expecting that he’d need surgery to address the condition following the Lucas Oil campaign. “The Monday after Eldora (Oct. 18’s season-ending Dirt Track World Championship) I finally got the MRI for my left ankle and foot,” Schwallie wrote on Facebook. “It revealed I had a lot more going on than a basic case of plantar fasciitis. I had a 6-centimeter longitudinal split to my peroneus brevis tendon, attenuation of the ATF and CF ligaments and a delamination rupture of the central cord of the plantar fascia. My podiatrist called with the MRI results and said he was surprised I was able to walk on it.”
4. Schwallie was back at his home in Batavia, Ohio, on Friday night to begin his recovery. He said he can’t put weight on his left foot for at least four weeks and then will have another eight weeks with limited use while undergoing physical therapy. If he’s able to attend next month’s Performance Racing Industry Trade Show in Indianapolis, Ind., and the Lucas Oil Series awards banquet that same weekend, he said he’ll likely need to use a scooter to get around. Schwallie hopes that his left foot will be healed by the time the 2026 Lucas Oil Series schedule kicks off on Feb. 19 at All-Tech Raceway in Ellisville, Fla., but he noted that he’ll have to address his still-painful right foot at some point in the future.
5. While Schwallie would like to soon return to working in his home office, he’ll be largely conducting his business by phone with his leg propped on the couch in his “partially-finished basement/man cave.” He assured everyone that he’ll be “fine,” but joked that his friends should “maybe check on Ashley’s sanity,” referring to his wife and fellow Lucas Oil Series official who will have to handle household duties while he’s off his feet.
6. Carson Brown, a 17-year-old from New London, N.C., who has been competing in the Super Late Model division — among multiple racing disciplines — for the past three years, signed a development driver deal with Richard Childress Racing on Monday. The announcement does not, however, detail RCR’s future plans for the young racer, who has gained pavement stock car experience this season with starts on the ASA STARS National Tour (Rookie of the Year honors and a victory at Wisconsin’s Madison International Speedway) and the ARCA Menards Series.
7. The teenage Brown’s Dirt Late Model action has come in family-owned equipment with some high-profile personalities from the class assisting him, first as part of a Mike Marlar-Ronnie Delk development program and more recently under the guidance of veteran crew chief Randall Edwards. He’s still searching for his first touring series win in the division.
8. A post that appeared last week on Josh Rice’s racing Facebook page pointed to some news surrounding his new deal driving for JRR Motorsports. The team is seeking a crew chief to work with the 27-year-old from Crittenden, Ky., because Dean Bowen is no longer with JRR after it initially appeared he would remain with Rice replacing Daulton Wilson of Fayetteville, N.C. One week into the head wrench search, Rice said no hire has yet been made.
9. I’ll admit I was a bit surprised when I saw Brandon Overton of Evans, Ga., fire his helmet at Bobby Pierce’s car during the caution period following the pair’s scrape in Saturday’s FloRacing Night in America-sanctioned Peach State Classic finale at Senoia (Ga.) Raceway. But I was also impressed by the helmet fastball Overton tossed — pretty much a direct hit to the right-side door of Pierce’s passing machine. Helmet throws by angry drivers don’t always look too good.
10. There’s an interesting array of pre- and post-race entertainment being planned for January’s Wild West Shootout at Central Arizona Raceway. In addition to concerts after the two Saturday show, an off-day golf tournament and a tent party on Jan. 16, I noticed one especially intriguing activity: horse barrel racing exhibitions during the Jan. 11, 16 and 17 programs. That’s something different for a dirt race. Perhaps event promoter Chris Kearns, who usually is seen wearing a cowboy hat at the racetrack, will jump on a horse and weave around some barrels.
