Inside Dirt Late Model Racing
Column: Gator's passing weighing heavy on Gilpin
Devin Gilpin went racing in Saturday’s Northern Allstars Late Model Series Breakout Bash at Montpelier (Ind.) Speedway just like he had long planned, but the drive to-and-from the track and his hours spent in the pit area didn’t feel right. No longer at his side was his best pal and crew chief Walter “Gator” Branum, who died of an apparent heart attack April 5 at the age of 55.
“It was very … different,” said Gilpin, a 35-year-old regional Dirt Late Model racer from Columbus, Ind.
Branum had been Gilpin’s right-hand man since joining the Hoosier’s team — fielded by Gilpin’s grandfather Don Fleetwood — near the end of the 2023 season. The veteran mechanic quickly became indispensable to Gilpin on both a professional and personal level, making his absence impossible to quantity.
“Just the week throughout (before Montpelier) … he did a lot of around here,” Gilpin said. “And then riding up, you know, not having him in the truck and then racing … when he came around, I became the driver solely and he was the crew chief. We would collab on what the car felt like and this and that and he would make changes, and now he’s gone and it’s back to me and Pa-Paw again.”
Gilpin couldn’t have been more pleased with the outcome from Branum’s hiring. While Gilpin had essentially known Branum for his entire life — Branum grew up in Columbus, Ind., and went to high school with Gilpin’s father Todd — and was well aware of Branum’s vast experience in the Dirt Late Model game that dated back to his start as a crewman with Indiana racer Dickie Phillips, but they “just could never get linked up” as a driver-crew chief pair. The opportunity finally came in ’23 when Gilpin was looking for a full-time crew chief and Branum was available and their partnership developed into one that would thrive on and off the track.
They became fast friends, and their technical communication made Gilpin a better race car driver.
“Chassis setup” was Branum’s specific area of expertise, Gilpin said, “but he could do it all. That’s the thing. Like, there’s gonna be a big void around here. I’m gonna miss him. He did the tires. He was on the spring smasher. Everything. There wasn’t nothing he couldn’t do. I mean, he was the crew chief. He did it all.
“I lost my buddy, but I lost my crew guy, too. We just had such a good deal together that, you know, it’s gonna be hard to replace him.”
Gilpin enjoyed modest success over the past two years with Branum, especially at Brownstown (Ind.) Speedway where he won five times in both 2024 and ’25. He also captured a $5,000 Ultimate Heart of America triumph in August 2024 at Paragon (Ind.) Speedway.
This year Gilpin’s handful of early-season appearances with Branum seemed to indicate he had speed in his Rocket XR1 Chassis. (He also has a Longhorn Chassis but hasn’t run it yet in ’26.) Notably, he finished fifth in March 21’s Northern Allstars Spring 50 at Florence Speedway in Union, Ky., and won a $3,000 Dash for Cash and ran up front in April 3’s Northern Allstars show at Ponderosa Speedway in Junction City, Ky., before a broken rocker arm forced him out.
Then came the shocking news that Branum had died at his home Easter Sunday.
“It was just so unexpected,” Gilpin said. “I mean, literally Friday, he was fine. We had the greatest conversations on the way home from Ponderosa, like, pumped up. Me and him had worked our butt off over the winter, changing this (Rocket) car and trying to put our own little twists on it, and it was working. Like at Florence we was fast, and then good at Ponderosa. We was excited for what was to come, and he was fine.
“We were supposed to go to the Northern Allstars race Saturday at Mudlick (Valley Raceway in Wallingford, Ky.) and they rained out. You know, we had our bags packed in the truck to stay and they rained out, so we went home and everything around here rained out. So he’s like, ‘Well, we’ll just get ready for next week.’
“I talked to him (by phone) Saturday at 3 o’clock,” Gilpin continued. “We normally talked every night; he’d normally call me or I’d call him about 8:30, and we’d just BS, bench race for an hour, talk about racing, and he didn’t call me (that evening) and I didn’t think nothing of it. And the next day I got a phone call saying that he had passed away in his sleep during the night.”
Like Branum’s family — including his wife of 18 years, Cheryl, four children and four grandchildren — Gilpin was left in shock. The guy affectionately nicknamed Gator decades ago by Dickie Phillips (apparently as a play on the classic Hanna-Barbera cartoon character, Wally Gator, from the 1960s) seemed indestructible.
“This guy never complained a bit,” Gilpin said. “You never heard anything from him, like saying, ‘This hurts, that hurts, this feels bad.’ ”
As Gilpin said, Branum was a “true racer,” as hard-nosed and dedicated to the sport as they come. It was essentially where he made his livelihood for his entire adult life. His resume includes short tours of duty with two of the division’s all-time greats — the late Scott Bloomquist for much of the 1997 season and later Billy Moyer — and his extended stretch in the early 2000s with Randy Korte of Highland, Ill. He also worked for, among others, Mark Voigt, Brian Bielong, Brandon Kinzer and Chad Stapleton before joining Gilpin, and in recent years he offered consulting services to various racers in the Midwest through his Suspension by Gator enterprise.
Gilpin heard “all kinds of stories” from Branum about his racing exploits over the years. There was a never-ending reservoir of memories that Branum could draw upon to keep Gilpin interested, like, for instance, how he ended up crewing for Bloomquist.
“The story is, when Scott went to the Rayburn car — I think it was in ’97, like when Scott just came out with the yin-yang (symbol on his car) — Gator was always up at Rayburn’s (in Whiteland, Ind.) all the time,” Gilpin said. “Scott came in there working on his car and I guess he liked how Gator worked and he asked him if he’d want to come on the road with him. He did that like six to eight months in ’97. He moved to Mooresburg and stayed down there for a while and then came back home.”
Branum also told Gilpin about his stint with Korte, which included time traveling the Hav-A-Tampa/UDTRA circuit. Korte, who following Branum’s passing wrote on Facebook that Gator “had a way of bringing light and laughter wherever he went,” won HAT-UDTRA events with Branum in 2002 at Hagerstown (Md.) Speedway and West Virginia Motor Speedway in Mineral Wells and Branum also received the tour’s Crew Chief of the Year award.
Gilpin of course understood Branum’s vast background in the sport, but he came to realize just how expansive his reach was in the aftermath of his death. The text messages and calls of condolence kept his phone buzzing during the week. Then he was inundated by more from people stopping by his trailer Saturday, and Monday he attended Branum’s funeral services and witnessed a huge turnout of mourners from all points on the map.
“I was honestly surprised how many people he had touched,” Gilpin said. “Like at his funeral, there was people from all over, racers, people in the industry that are local, regional. Korte was there. And at the race, the amount of people that came up and was giving their condolences and telling me how sorry they were just really meant a lot and showed me how many people that he had touched and just how many friends he had. I mean, the guy just knew everyone. I knew he had worked and knew a lot of people in the industry, but I guess I didn’t realize it was that big.
“He was just one of a kind. He could help a regional or a local super stock guy or he could help Scott Bloomquist and everybody in between. That’s just what kind of guy was, so the amount of people that came up and said something was pretty remarkable.”
Now Gilpin has to go on without his trusted crew chief and buddy by his side. He’ll find a way, but he admits that nothing will be the same. ‘Ol Gator had come to mean the world to him.
Gilpin dearly wanted to win Saturday’s Northern Allstars show at Montpelier in Branum’s memory, but a busted piston knocked him out of the feature just as he felt his hard-compound tire choice was coming on. He’ll try again this weekend — with another engine under his car’s hood — in a Northern Allstars doubleheader at Paragon and Brownstown. And, at every race he enters for the remainder of 2026, Branum will be on his mind.
“We’re going to race in his honor the rest of the year actually,” Gilpin pledged.
