Inside Dirt Late Model Racing
Column: Leach's blood, sweat and tears pay off
BARBERVILLE, Fla. — Michael Leach was pumped up. Like, really pumped up. When he emerged from his car in victory lane after winning Wednesday’s first 20-lap DIRTcar-sanctioned semifeature during the Federated Auto Parts DIRTcar Nationals at Volusia Speedway Park, you couldn’t have found a happier person on the planet.
The 22-year-old native of Sun River, Mont., pounded on his machine’s roof. He thrust his fist in the air. He hugged his team members. Finally breaking through for his first-ever Super Late Model triumph early in his second full season of action in the division had him flying high.
Yes, the win came in a split-field event, but that didn’t matter. There was still plenty of quality racers spread across the triple races, and Leach just relished achieving an unforgettable milestone in his burgeoning career.
“We’ve been struggling so bad this year,” Leach said, bubbling with excitement as he stood inside the World of Outlaws Late Model Series operations trailer while his car was outside undergoing postrace inspection. “Last year we came down to Florida (Speedweeks) for both Volusias (January’s Sunshine Nationals and February’s DIRTcar Nationals) and for our first year in a Super we ran really good, so I was expecting to do the same thing. I was expecting to come back here, make some shows … not no problem, but not be seventh or eighth in the B-main, you know?
“This year we ain’t even been close, like not even in the ballpark. But the track was a little heavier today and that’s kind of more my style so I was just able to blow it off in there.”
Leach gassed up his Longhorn Chassis No. 09 — an entry fielded by his father, Paul, who is also a co-owner of the Longhorn company in China Grove, N.C. — and kept it in front for all but the first lap of the semifeature. He survived two restarts along the way to defeat national touring series veterans Daulton Wilson of Fayetteville, N.C., and Ryan Gustin of Marshalltown, Iowa, for a momentous $5,000 victory.
“It’s awesome,” Leach said. “I’m telling you, I really don’t know what to say. I’m just so happy right now. We’ve been down. Not down in the dumps — like we're all pretty positive most of the time — but we keep saying,’You know, tomorrow’s a new day, tomorrow’s a new day, tomorrow’s a new day.’ Well, a new day finally came.”
Even bigger wins are likely in Leach’s future, but everything that comes next will springboard from this first checkered flag. He’s been working toward it since taking his first dip into the Super Late Model ranks late in the 2024 season and grinding out over 100 starts all over the country last year — including races at some 45 tracks he saw for the first time — to gather experience.
Leach began his path to national Super Late Model racing while still in high school in Montana, which is far from a hotbed for the division.
“They don’t even have Super racing up there,” Leach said. “We have WISSOTA cars (Limited Late Models) … I ran a little bit of that when I was a senior. I dabbled with the modifieds obviously also, but the goal’s always been the Supers. Like at this level, I guess, that’s where most of the money’s at. That’s where you can make a living doing it. Racing modifieds, making a living and not doing anything else, that’s damn near impossible unless you're building them.
“So I figured, with the Super Late Models, I love the culture around here, too. These are my type of people, so just to be able to do race with these guys is unbelievable.”
Leach understands he’s been “blessed” to have options not available to every young, aspiring racer thanks to his father and uncle Jon Leach, brothers who are very successful businessmen and took their love of motorsports to new level with their purchase of Longhorn Chassis. The brothers put Longhorn’s operation in the hands of Steve Arpin, a Canadian who carried backing from the Leach siblings’ Loenbro Motorsports during his years as a driver that included stints in open-wheel modifieds, NASCAR Trucks and off-road racing. Arpin came to know Michael Leach when he was a toddler and has been a key figure in his progression in the sport.
“Steve Arpin has always been my guy,” Leach said. “I’ve know Steve for damn near as long as I can remember. My dad was sponsoring him for years and years and years, and really, Arpin’s been my guy. He comes to everything I do. We don’t necessarily speak the same language, but we do we do understand each other enough to where he can help me. He helps me a lot mentally. He helps me a lot with running my team as well.”
Arpin, 42, considers the Leaches to be family, calling them “the most incredible people I’ve ever met” and hailing them for offering him “so much opportunity in my career and making so many of my dreams come true.” He has an especially close relationship with Michael, of whom he says “sometimes he’s my little brother, sometimes I’m like his dad away from home, and sometimes I’m his buddy.”
So of course, Wednesday night was special for Arpin.
“This right here, to me, is the absolute highlight since we took over Longhorn Chassis,” Arpin said of Leach’s victory. “To see that boy win a Super Late Model race, it’s just incredible.”
Arpin was part of the plan to steer Leach into a life in racing when he began showing a keen interest in the sport.
“He really focused his whole childhood and high school years on sports,” Arpin said of Leach. “He was an incredible football player (he had an opportunity to play running back for Montana State University), wrestler. Everything he did, athletically, he just excelled at.
“And then we got him into dirt racing. It wasn’t that long ago, and we were really contemplating what to do. It was his dad and his uncle Jon and I, we were sitting there talking, and we all had different opinions, right? Like, do we keep him in crate modifieds? He was racing 602 modifieds in Charlotte just a few years ago and he was working at the (Longhorn) shop …
“It’s like, he just loved it, was doing well, and he’s like, ‘I think this is what I want to do,’ ” he continued. “And then it’s like, well, what do we do? Do we take it slow? Or do we throw them to the wolves? And we all kind of went back-and-forth, the pros and cons, and we decided to throw him to the wolves (in a Super Late Model) and let him go out there and just learn the lessons the hard way.”
Leach moved to North Carolina in February 2024 to work as a fabricator at Longhorn, where he lived in a camper on the back portion of the company property for most of the next year.
“I didn’t mind it at all,” Leach, who now lives in a rented house about 20 minutes from Longhorn, said of his time spent essentially sleeping where he worked. “I’d go back to doing it. It wasn’t too bad. That’s how I got to meet a lot of my buddies that are on the road now, because they’d all come around to get a car, get the car fixed, and they’d all sleep in the parking lot too. That’s how I met Drake (Troutman), a bunch of these guys.”
Leach’s eyes started moving toward Super Late Models while he was spending all those days and nights at Longhorn.
“I knew I wanted to race cars when I moved out here after high school,” Leach said. “I guess I always knew it was gonna be a Super Late Model, but once I got rolling in the modified stuff, I started going good in that stuff, I was like, ‘All right, I'm ready to go race a Super. Let's get it going. Let's just get in one. Let’s go.’ ”
Leach was put out on the road last year to cut his teeth in a Super but not on any series. Arpin said a pick-and-choose schedule, one where Leach was, and still is, liable to show up anywhere at any time, was the best option for his development.
“The biggest thing we’re trying to do for him is, like, the (national) series is a dream of every young racer, right?” Arpin said. “For where we’re at with (Leach and his Dawson Cook-led crew), we just really want them to be able … like they’re young, right? They’re going to struggle. They’re gonna run into hurdles. So we want them to be able to just stop and regroup if they have to and not be forced to keep on going. They have a lot of learning to do yet, and being able to have that luxury to stop, regroup, collect yourself, start over, it really helps.”
In a sense, Leach took a moment to collect himself and reset before Wednesday’s triple 20s at Volusia. He failed to qualify for the first two features of the DIRTcar Nationals and wasn’t feeling upbeat, so a pep talk from Arpin and Kevin Rumley, the Longhorn engineer and owner of the K&L Rumley Enterprises No. 6, put him back on the right path.
“No matter what, Arpin’s always like, ‘We’re gonna be good here. Everything’s fine. You’re OK,’ ” Leach said. “Like, even yesterday, he could tell I was down the dumps, man. It’s been a tough start to the year. Like, absolutely. And him and Kevin Rumley both yesterday were like, ‘Dude, you gotta chill out a little bit, man. This is hard. This is tough. You know?’ ”
Arpin recalled Rumley’s midweek message to Leach: “It was funny because Kevin Rumley walked into the trailer last night and he like pretty much grabbed hold of his shirt and he goes, ‘Now, listen here, boy. You do not get down on yourself. This is the hardest thing you’re gonna do.’ ”
And then when Wednesday’s program started, everything changed for Leach. His fourth-fastest lap in qualifying gave him the pole position for the first 20-lapper thanks to a four-car inversion, and Leach’s anxiety over leading the field to the green flag soon turned to a feeling that something special might be in the offing.
“I’m telling you, actually, I was really nervous when I got told about the invert,” Leach said. “But after about 30 seconds I was like, I don’t know, I got it in my head … I started rehearsing my victory lane speech, you know what I mean? I just put it in my head, like, ‘I’m gonna win this race.’ ”
When Gustin outgunned Leach for the lead at the initial green flag the thoughts of a victory dancing in his head “went out the window for a minute,” but the returned moments later when he regained command on lap two.
“He just messed up once, and on a (hammer-down) track like that, that’s all it takes,” Leach said. “So I just had to take advantage of that, and after that we just had to make zero mistakes, kind of keep the car underneath me, and we were fine.”
The race was stressful for Leach all the way to the finish. He knew he couldn’t stumble or Gustin, and in the final laps Wilson, would be there to snatch glory from him.
“I was leaving on the top of (turn) two, so it’s even harder to look all the way across the track to see where (Cook) was at (signaling),” Leach said. “So under green, no, I couldn’t see him, but he told me with three to go on that caution — I was able to look at him — to start diving in one and two, so at that point I’m like, ‘Someone’s got to be catching me. If he’s telling me to change my line, then someone’s got to be catching me.’ So I trusted Dawson, I did what he said, and it worked out.”
Arpin, watching from the pit stands outside turn two, was all nerves as the race wound down.
“Honestly, my heart was going, my tears were flowing,” Arpin said. “I was swearing when the caution came out (on lap 10), and then I was cheering when the caution came out (on lap 17).
“When you’ve got Ryan Gustin and Daulton Wilson chasing you, like, those are two seasoned competitors that know what they’re doing, and they can put a young guy like that in a vulnerable spot, just by air, because they know how to do that. And he did such a good job, just to protect himself and not give them the opportunity to do that.
“I can just imagine the nerves he had — you get going and you start getting into a rhythm, and then the caution comes out and it’s like, ‘My, God, I gotta do this again,’ ” he added. “But the kid did a great job.”
Arpin was there in victory lane to greet Leach with a hearty hug. He was there at the postrace inspection, too, taking in the moment with Leach and thinking ahead to his bright future.
“The kid is just, he’s full of energy,” Arpin said. “He’s full of determination. He’s full of, just, sheer will to get stuff done. He’s the type of kid that if he’s not the best at something, he’ll get there just by effort. He’s not afraid of it. He lives and breathes this stuff. He’s at the shop all day, day in, day out.”
Arpin told a story of how Don O’Neal, a longtime Dirt Late Model standout and father of Tuesday-night feature winner Hudson O’Neal, had congratulated Leach moments earlier and offered some sage advice.
“He made a really good point,” Arpin said. “He said, like, ‘Just enjoy this moment.’ He said this is such a different sport, money can’t buy what he just did. Right? It’s like, obviously, it’s an expensive sport, and it takes money to compete here, but these are some of the hardest cars to drive in all of motorsports. This discipline is so hard, and so many people come in here with a lot of money, they can’t go and buy a win like that. And for him to earn a win like that, it’s pretty phenomenal.
“The confidence is going to be huge for him. The hard part is, it’s like — and this is why we don’t want to do a series with him right now — because these cars are so aero-dependent, because we’re maximized on grip so much, that the next thing, the only thing left, is aero (with the bodies), right? So when you’re with the best guys all the time, and you’re in the middle of the back and the back of the back, you really don’t get an idea how to feel the race car and understand what you need and what’s better. You’re constantly in defense trying to just kind of navigate your way through the dirty air.
“So for him to get the opportunity to race up front like that, it’ll just give him the confidence and help him understand what he has to do to position himself better in dirty air. And if we can keep stuff like this going, his progression will just continue to increase.”
Leach, who flirted with a Super Late Model victory several times last year (he had four runner-up finishes in regional events), is ready to keep the momentum rolling. But he has no illusions about what it takes to be successful.
“Well, you gotta love it,” said Leach, who won five WISSOTA Late Model features in his home region before relocating to North Carolina. “Like at the end of the day, I don’t care how many people say they want to be a race car driver, until they get out and do this a hundred times a year … you got to freaking love it. You will burn out. I’m telling you, if you don’t love it, you’re not gonna make it. Absolutely.
“You definitely get your ass kicked a whole lot more than you win. That's what I would tell everybody — it’s not you win some, you lose some. I say you win some, you lose a lot. That's the truth, man. Like if you win 10 percent of these Super Late Model races you're a badass, like as badass as it gets. I don’t think any other sport is like that, if you win 10 percent of the time, you’re one of the best. It’s just so cutthroat and tough, but I’m all in.”
