Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series
For Kimble, from racer to car builder to crew chief
By Todd Turner
DirtonDirt.com managing editor
Chuck Kimble (left) and driver Devin Moran. (heathlawsonphotos.com)
When Chuck Kimble’s father bought a welding unit for a project at his shop, it wasn’t long before his elementary-school age son saw an opportunity to use the device. | Slideshow
“I started monkeying with it and then I really, really enjoyed that,” the 26-year-old Kimble recalled. “So then there was no piece of metal safe. I was trying to weld everything I could.”
Already a go-kart racer, the Rayland, Ohio, resident’s welding projects bent toward racing. As he got older, Kimble began building and selling bumpers, T-bars and lower suspension arms for race cars. That grew into designing and constructing his own Dirt Late Model, the Punisher Race Car, when he was still a teenager.
“That’s all I ever did,” Kimble said. “It’s all I ever wanted to do.”
While he eventually shelved his chassis manufacturing plans, Kimble has continued to scratch his racing itch with a burgeoning racing career. He first worked with Keith Berner’s Accu-Force Dynos & Testers for more than three years, then in 2023 landed a job as crew chief for Double Down Motorsports and Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series star driver Devin Moran.
“What a joy it was seeing him graduate and now being where he is now,” said Berner, who first met Kimble when he visited Accu-Force for a job-shadowing week as a high school student. “I’m really happy for him.”
The 30-year-old Moran, son of Hall of Fame racer Donnie Moran and a two-time Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series points runner-up, has enjoyed watching Kimble progress as a crew chief for the Roger Sellers-owned national touring team.
“He’s still young. This is only his third year full time, so he's got a lot left to learn,” Moran said. “But he’s far above and beyond expectations already, and he's doing a great job for us.”
While many of Dirt Late Model racing’s top teams are guided by veteran crew chiefs or connected with high-profile mechanics and engineers, the blue-eyed, bearded Kimble is an under-the-radar presence in the pits as he carves his position in the competitive dirt racing world.
“The goal is to be the best that I can be in the sport,” Kimble said before a recent event at Farmer City (Ill.) Raceway. “At first I kind of was aiming towards maybe the car manufacturer side of things, and then I got to working with Dev and enjoy being out on the road a lot, so now that I'm in this role, I really, really enjoy it, and anything I do, I want to be the best I can be at it. I mean that's kind of the goal is to become one of the best crew chiefs in the pits.”
Kimble grew up around racing with his father serving as longtime crew help for regional standouts including Mark Banal of St. Clairsville, Ohio and Tye Long of Cambridge, Ohio. Chuck began racing go-karts as a first-grader, soon developed his penchant for welding and built his first Dirt Late Model in 2017, driving his own Punisher Race Car while racers Kyle Thomas of Pennsboro, W.Va., and Brian Baumberger of Jacobsburg, Ohio, were among Punisher customers.
Kimble won a 2019 Super Late Model feature at Wayne County Speedway in Orrville, Ohio, among drivers without a feature victory, then added a $1,500 Crate Late Model victory two years later at Tyler County Speedway in Middlebourne, W.Va.
Eventually Kimble, who in 2019 crewed for Kyle Lukon en route to the Burgettstown, Pa., driver’s Fastrak points title, has turned his focus to crewing.
"I always enjoyed driving,” he said. “I mean, I was an average local guy, and then I realized that I enjoyed working on them more and realized that if I got myself around someone that is a good driver and I enjoy working on them, then they could be successful.”
Kimble’s work ethic, politeness and attention to detail impressed Berner during Kimble's brief stint at Accu-Force as a student.
“Man, in that first week we were amazed at how eager he was to learn and how smart he was,” Berner recalled. “So we had a great week with him when he was in high school, and we kept in touch and I always told him, ‘Well, if you ever need a job, just give me a call.’ ”
After graduating, Kimble first took a job working on oil pipelines, but while he was making good money “he figured out pretty quick that that wasn't his passion, and that's not what he wanted to do,” Berner recalled. So when Kimble took Berner up on his offer, Millersburg, Ohio’s Accu-Force owner was quick to hire him.
“He came to work and we kind of made him a jack-of-all-trades … he was just a great employee and fun to be around. He was young then, but man, he had hustle in him,” Berner said. “The longer he was here, the more responsibility we gave him, and I knew it was just a matter of time that he went and did something else.”
Kimble commuted nearly 90 miles every day to Accu-Force. Berner encouraged Kimble to stay at his house on occasion, but Kimble was eager to get back home and work on his race cars or other racing projects during lengthy work days.
"I feel like we gave him a lot of experience and tried to give him life lessons also, what to look for and things to do that way, but he was a heck of a fabricator,” said Berner, who sold his Accu-Force brand to DDP Performance Products in December 2023 and still operates AfterBurner Performance. “He took to doing the shocks, he helped me like when I did pull-down rigs, he helped on the equipment side, like he got to where he could diagnose all this equipment we built. He just caught on to stuff. He was just, like I said, a great employee.
“Chuck, he learned (that) close isn't good enough; perfect is what we're looking for. And he'll work till he's bone tired. He won't give up and he knows to do that. And that's just in him.”
Kimble’s stint at Accu-Force helped him develop a broader knowledge of race cars and the latest technologies while allowing him to rub elbows with high-profile team owners, drivers and crew chiefs, many folks he now sees weekly on the Lucas Oil circuit.
“(Berner) brought me on to do a lot of his welding fabrication work, so I started doing that and then helping with the spring smasher side of the business, like getting parts gathered up and helping assemble stuff,” Kimble said. “And then I moved into helping in the shock room and then taking phone calls and doing some shipping and invoicing and stuff. Basically Keith was kind of grooming me to be able to handle every aspect of it and taught me a lot about being able to do that.”
Moran was among Berner’s longtime customers, so he was well aware of Kimble’s talents.
"That's kind of how I got to know Devin, him coming up to the shop while I was working up there and going through cars with him and just hanging out and working on stuff with him, and then it turned into, when he was racing for Tye (Twarog) out of Coshocton, it was about a half-hour from Berner's shop,” Kimble said. “I’d go there every once in a while after work and help him out, hang out if he needed a hand, and then here and there go racing with him some if he needed help or whatever.”
When Moran shifted to Double Down Motorsports from Tye Twarog Racing before the 2023 season, he had his eye on Kimble as a crew chief.
“I worked on him, worked on trying to get him to come racing because I knew he wanted to do that at some point,” Moran said. “And then when this deal with Double Down Motorsports came about, he felt like it was the right time for him to do it and that's what we did.”
Kimble, Berner and Moran had a sit-down lunch at La Palma Mexican Grill in Millersburg to discuss Kimble’s transition to his new crew chief role.
“It all went pretty smooth,” Kimble said. “There’s no hard feelings or nothing. Keith still comes out and hangs out with us.”
Moran and Kimble have developed an easygoing working relationship that has helped the No. 99 machine to 24 victories, including the $50,000 Silver Dollar Nationals at Huset’s Speedway in Brandon, S.D., the $50,000 Show-Me 100 at Lucas Oil Speedway in Wheatland, Mo., along with Moran’s first-ever victory at Rossburg, Ohio’s Eldora Speedway in a Dream preliminary.
At Farmer City, Devin tended to his driving duties while Kimble supervised the Double Down crew of Dillon Kline (mechanic), Nick “Two-Tone” Smith (tires) and Brad McLoughlin, a cousin of Ohio racer Shane McLoughlin, who often assists the team.
Kimble doesn’t have the profile of other national touring crew chiefs like Kevin Rumley, Cody Mallory, Anthony Burroughs or Jason Durham, but Moran said that’s only because his career is still blossoming.
“He's still in his learning years, but he's excelling way higher than expectations, without a doubt,” Moran said, adding that “he's a knowledgeable young man. He’s only 26 and he's done (so much) already.”
Gaining experience at other tracks and conditions is something Moran is helping teach Kimble, who had never been west of the Mississippi River until joining the team.
“He just never had any experience on traveling around. So, just learning the different dirts and the different style racetracks and how these guys race that you're racing against,” Moran said. “I mean, it's a whole different level than just racing at Tyler County every week, and that's not a slam on them guys. It's just these people do it for a living, so they know what they're doing. And he’s learning that as he goes, and like I said.”
With Berner’s mentorship and continued experience, "I feel like Chuck does a great job absorbing it and learning it. And if he can't figure it out right away, he does over a little bit of time,” Moran added. “Chuck is literally like my brother. I’m as tight with Chuck as I am anybody other than maybe my wife. He’s one of my best friends and he's my brother.”
Kimble is soaking up the experience.
"I mean, you're working on race cars all the time. It's what I love, it's what I enjoy and it's what I've done for a long time,” Kimble said. “You go from doing it 30 or 40 hours a week to 80 hours a week. You double the amount of time you're working on them.”
Through Accu-Force, Kimble developed a relationship with Ronnie Stuckey of Black Diamond Race Cars, who has served as a crew chief for Hall of Famers Billy Moyer, Scott Bloomquist and more. He’s leaned on Stuckey for advice.
"When I first took this deal, I called Ronnie and talked to him a little bit about, you know, ‘Give me some pointers here, give me some help.’ I don't really know 100 percent what I'm getting into,” Kimble said. “And then like (veteran crew member and racing consultant) Vinny Guliani, he's been really good for me, and I look up to Vinny. He's a very smart person and I always try to better myself and take a lot of advice from him.
“The adjustment is just the travel,” added Kimble, who along with Kline and Smith lives in a three-bedroom apartment at Moran’s shop in Dresden, Ohio. “You’re always moving, always on the road. Just getting in that rhythm of we're racing here tonight, testing tomorrow at another racetrack. So like I'm already thinking, ‘All right, what's my plan for tomorrow?' I mean, what time do I need to be there, gonna get my test schedule ready. The adjustment is just trying to be always planning ahead.
“You just learn so much cause you're around it every day. I mean, we're always doing things, always testing, always trying stuff. And then you just build a notebook every day you race or every day you're on the racetrack, your notebook gets another page or two bigger, so you're always learning stuff.”
While Kimble’s progress has been impressive, it’s been a process. Berner has noticed that Moran is more and more comfortable with his crew chief.
“It took Devin a little while to trust Chuck. I mean, Devin and I talk quite a bit and they're getting to the point now where they communicate their deal and Devin does his driving stuff and/or T-shirt stuff or whatever that day, and Chuck takes care of the car now,” Berner said. “(Moran's) not worried about that car being done. As Chuck has more experience and more experience here in the next two more years, he’ll be an absolute bona fide crew chief who can go anywhere and help anybody’s program.”
Moran doesn’t want Kimble going anywhere soon, hoping they can be “together for a long time and I think be a driver and a crew chief that everyone will remember in Dirt Late Model racing.
"I feel like we have a great crew. I preach all the time about how good your team has to be, and that's where we're at,” Moran added. “And it all started with Roger Sellers. When he hired me, he said, he was obviously in business for a long time, and he said, 'You're only as good as the people you put yourself around,' and I feel like I've got lucky enough to get Chuck and D.K. and Nick and we all gel and hang out and have a good time together and we just make it work.”
Kimble wants to excel, but he’s not worried about press clippings or accolades.
“I always just do the best I can do to help the team and help Devin help everything here,” said Kimble, the primary driver of the team’s transporter. “I mean, one of the things I've always went by is you don't really worry about what everybody else is doing. You worry about yourself and what you're trying to achieve. So that's kind of been one of my thoughts on going through life.”
Crew chiefs tend to shuffle among teams, but Kimble pledges loyalty, adding that “me and Devin are really close and my guys, Two-Tone, D.K. and Brad, we all get along really well and are really close. We’re running good. There would be no reason to leave a team right now like this, you know what I mean? We got a great car owner; Rog is phenomenal. So we just keep doing our thing and keep plugging away.”
When his crew chief years come to an end, Kimble’s long-term plans still involve racing.
“I’m always thinking about that because you always got to be prepared for the next step in your life,” he said. “I mean, it's still kind of one of them deals. I'm still trying to figure it out 100 percent.
“I really like the role I'm in. If I know I can keep doing this for a number of years and be successful and win championships and races and crown jewels and stuff, and then possibly move into like a consulting (gig), going through cars, putting cars together, you know, doing shocks for people (or that) kind of deal. That would probably be like a long-term goal.”
