Farmer City Raceway
Precocious teen ready for Illini 100 competition
By Todd Turner
DirtonDirt managing editor
Caden McWhorter in the Farmer City pits. (joshjamesartwork.com)
FARMER CITY, Ill. (April 10) — Some of the best dirt racers in Illinois, among other national touring racers, have assembled at Farmer City Raceway for the Illini 100 weekend on the World of Outlaws Late Model Series.
Champion racers Bobby Pierce, Brandon Sheppard, Shannon Babb, Jason Feger, Brian Shirley and other standouts are among those that 19-year-old Caden McWhorter of Fairbury, Ill., will be competing against with $12,000 and $25,000 purses on the line in Friday and Saturday programs.
Does McWhorter, who grew up watching dirt action at one of the country's famed grassroots racing communities, look up to any of the drivers in the Farmer City pits?
“Maybe when I was a little kid I did, but now I don’t,” said McWhorter, the driver for Doug Curless Motorsports entering his second Super Late Model season. “I’d rather beat them than look up to them. That’s just the way I am.”
The precocious McWhorter definitely has confidence, but the teen has backed up his promise with a solid start to his Late Model career, notching a pair of feature victories last season, including October's $5,000 triumph on the Ultimate Heart of America tour at Montpelier (Ind.) Motor Speedway.
He’s already logged a top-five finish on the Midwest LateModel Racing Association this season with plans for a 2026 run on the MARS Championship Series, along with occasional national touring appearances for the Coal Valley, Ill.-based team.
Part of a racing family, McWhorter was a successful gokart racer starting at age 7, traveling widely to compete before running full-sized cars at his hometown Fairbury Speedway and Farmer City. Over four years of modified racing, he logged a half-dozen victories with his family-owned team buying a Longhorn Chassis from Curless to go Late Model racing in 2025. With bigger tires, more traction and higher horsepower, the division change has suited McWhorter.
In the modifieds, “I think we definitely had some issues with some other guys, just from me just being probably too aggressive, but that's just kind of the way I am. I've been that way since I was a little kid. I think it helps me more than it hurts me,” he said Friday afternoon in the Farmer City pits. "I think that's why it transitioned so well, because the Late Model you just got to drive it as hard as you can … pretty much my first laps I felt pretty good, so there wasn't really any awkward” transition.
MARS tour promoter and Fairbury Speedway co-owner Matt Curl says he believes the Late Model suits McWhorter better than the modified, but there’s still a learning curve.
"I feel like his strength, he's always had speed. He's had good intuition on the track,” Curl said. “I think maybe the stuff that he needs to learn the most is sometimes you have to race for fifth. When you're on the front row, you can't win it on the first lap. You learn from every one of those situations you're in, and that's going to make him better and better each race.”
Crew chief Scott Ward knows “when I see a big ol’ cushion” on a racetrack that McWhorter will attack it, and says his learning how to handle the low groove and slicker track conditions will come with time. McWhorter’s tender age comes with talents that exceed many older drivers Ward has worked with in the past, the crew chief said.
Racing primarily on bullrings early in his career, McWhorter also needs seasoning on bigger tracks and a variety of ovals. He gained some of that experience with Curless Motorsports last season at Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio, and Lucas Oil Speedway in Wheatland, Mo., among other tracks. He’ll get more experience in 2026 with trips to 20 tracks on the MARS circuit in Illinois, Iowa, Missouri and Kentucky.
The three-time and reigning champion Feger, Ryan Unzicker, Babb and other top Illinois drivers typically follow the MARS circuit, but McWhorter has his eyes on not only the Rookie of the Year award but the series championship.
"I think if I'm comfortable in the car that we're capable of winning the whole thing,” McWhorter said. “I don't know if I'm too confident or what, but I feel like when we hit it right, we're one of the best cars there. So that's kind of our goal right now is just to figure out what I like and me being so new, it's hard to figure that out. But I think if we can figure that out that we could probably win the whole thing.”
Curl predicts McWhorter will have a “great season” with MARS, adding that drivers face competition at “a high level every time you roll on the track with our series, which we have really cherished the opportunity to have such a good quality series in the MARS stuff. So (the Curless team is) coming in fully loaded, ready to run for the Rookie of the Year and the championship, and races like the Illini 100 give them a good opportunity to get their all their blood pumping to get the MARS season started as well.”
McWhorter, who has 13 top-five finishes in his first 31 Late Model starts, won last August at Farmer City in his family-owned No. 14 before adding the Montpelier victory in the Curless No. 99. He’s glad to have a car owner that provides top-notch equipment.
“Me and Doug have a good relationship. It's definitely pretty cool. He just kind of lets me be,” McWhorter said. “We could go out there and run laps and he'd still be happy as can be, which is nice to have a car owner like that that doesn't put any pressure on me at all. He does it for the fun of it, which is nice, so that definitely helps me not really have any pressure.”
McWhorter, who spends time at the race shop working on the car along with working part-time at the custom mattress factory of his parents Corey and Kim McWhorter, is eager for the MARS season and hopes his racing progress leads to a career as a national touring racer.
"Just race for a living would be my ultimate goal,” he said.
For this weekend, he’ll tackle the Illini 100 and the World of Outlaws.
"I think if we have a car that I'm good with, I think that we could probably run top 10, realistically,” McWhorter said. "I just don't know. We’ll see. It's just it's hard to run with all these guys because they're so good and they do it so much where this is our third race of the year and this is their like 15th. So I feel like we're already a little bit behind, but I think we'll be fine.”
Curl, whose MARS modified tour is on Farmer City's weekend undercard, thinks McWhorter will perform well.
“The neat thing about Caden is he's got a lot of really good structured family around him and supporters. And that's the biggest thing is when you go into this, the expectations are managed,” Curl said. “You’re definitely coming into a big race like the Illini 100, where you're having the top racers in the world, Bobby Pierce and Nick Hoffman, and you got Devin Moran here. And for him, the experience that he was able to get out and run with that team last year is, I think is going to really help him out this year.
“It's definitely going to be a tough weekend for him with the car count we have here for the Late Models, but I expect him to be in the feature both nights and get some very valuable seat time.”
