Inside Dirt Late Model Racing
Column: Underdog Cook steers to racing success
Dalton Cook would love to have the open checkbook of a sugar daddy car owner backing his racing efforts. What Dirt Late Model driver wouldn’t?
“That would make things a lot easier,” the 32-year-old from Columbus, Ga., said.
But as Cook attests, there’s a certain magic in how he’s risen to serious contender status in the Southeast as an owner-operator on a budget. Scratching and clawing to steadily improve his program, his technical knowledge and his driving ability without unlimited resources is a source of pride that he wears like a badge of honor.
“I think it's cool to do more with less,” Cook said. “I think that’s cool as s---. I mean, I think for a general fan or spectator, I think it’s more appealing to see them guys who try to do more with less. The David and Goliath story, you know what I’m saying?”
Cook’s performance through the early portion of the 2025 season offers concrete evidence that the blood, sweat and tears he’s poured into his racing career aren’t going for naught. He’s enjoyed some smatterings of success since entering the Super Late Model ranks in the late 2010s — including four Southern All Star Dirt Racing Series wins and the ’24 points title plus a career-best $20,000 victory in Hunt the Front Super Dirt Series action last season at Swainsboro (Ga.) Raceway — but consistent contention eluded him. This year has been different, though, as he’s emerged as an across-the-board factor in his home region.
As the month of April comes to a close, Cook has already matched his victory total of 2024 — two — with triumphs in March 28’s Hunt the Front event at Whynot Motorsports Park in Meridian, Miss. (worth $8,000) and April 12’s unsanctioned Jimmy Thomas Memorial at East Alabama Motor Speedway in Phenix City, Ala. (worth $10,000). He’s tallied eight top-five and 12 top-10 finishes in his 14 overall starts (with no finish worse than 13th) and is the current points leader for the HTF tour, Southern All Star circuit and EAMS’s six-race Super Late Model miniseries.
Oh, and Cook has earned a coveted ranking in DirtonDirt’s Top 25 poll for the first time (he’s at No. 24 this week), an accomplishment he excitedly calls “bad ass for my little operation trying to represent all us little folks” against the superstars and powerhouse teams in the sport.
Cook’s strong start has his confidence soaring and his outlook on the future becoming bullish. He feels like he’s finally garnering attention in a difficult racing world.
“I’m just riding the waves, you know?” said Cook, who has a loquacious, outgoing personality that makes talking to him easy. “Like I’m enjoying being in a Top 25, and calling manufacturers and, like, saying, ‘Hey, it’d be nice if we could put something together.’ I ain’t never been able to do that because I ain’t never had a name or performances to be like, ‘What's special about you? Like what do you bring to the table?’
“So, yeah, it’s cool to put in all this work and see results, and I ain’t going to say recognition … I ain’t trying to be, like, a center of attention, but it’s fun to see things sort of play out. I’ve been self-funding and doing this thing myself, with my little dinky decal shop at the house. I’m just small on the scale here, and so keeping it going and really being able to stay in this thing, it’s a big deal,
“I’ve always told my dad, I was like, man, you know, it’d be great if I could just get myself to that spot where somebody called one day and would just be like, ‘Hey, you know, I got these motors, I got this rear or whatever, let’s get together and let’s do something, put a schedule together, stuff like that.’ I’m hopeful that'll transpire someday.”
Cook paused. Then, considering his newfound success, he quipped, “It’s been a process.”
Indeed, nothing has come fast or easy for Cook. In fact, he got a relatively late start in Dirt Late Model racing, debuting with a Crate Late Model just over a decade ago and really only picking up steam with his Super Late Model exploits in 2020.
Cook didn’t grow up with a deep family connection to dirt track racing. His grandfather did some racing in the 1980s at East Alabama, the track just 10 minutes from his home across the border in Georgia, but he was out of the sport by the time Cook was born in 1992. So Cook’s introduction to motorized competition came largely through go-kart racing, which he started doing when he was 6 with his father and a couple cousins.
While Cook recalled racing go-karts against such drivers as current Dirt Late Model standouts Brandon Overton and Chris Ferguson and Daytona 500 winner Trevor Bayne, he didn’t move up to bigger types of cars like they did as teenagers. He stopped racing go-karts around the time he entered high school and didn’t revisit active participation until he was out of his teens.
Cook stayed around racing through his high school years and immediately after, attending races at EAMS and obtaining some insight into the competitive side from his friendship with future Dirt Late Model racer Montana Dudley. He spent time with Dudley “hanging out and going to the skate rink when we were 13, 14 years old, and eventually he was like, ‘I’m building a street stock car,’ whatever it was at the time, and I was like, ‘Man, that’s cool.’” When Cook’s grandfather, a home builder who was friendly with Dudley’s father, provided Dudley some sponsorship, Cook started going to EAMS with him to see the sport from “the other side of the fence.”
After Cook graduated from high school, he eschewed attending college and bought some used sign-making equipment and started his own business, Wrap Tech, that focused on racing clients and kept him in the sport. A few years later, he decided that “if I could buy me a car” and go racing himself, he “could advertise, you know, my wrap business.”
Initially Cook purchased a go-kart and did some racing, but he didn’t enjoy it. So he sold the go-kart, saved up some money and found a 2004 GRT Late Model to buy. It took him a while, however, to assemble all the parts necessary to race the car.
“It just it was a very long process, kind of getting the stuff together,” Cook said. “I mean, a little bit here and there and … my girlfriend at the time, who’s my wife now (Taylor), she absolutely hated (racing). But then when she kind of understood I’m kind of like advertising my business (by racing), or trying to, she actually became really cool with it.”
Cook obtained a Crate engine and shocks for his car by trading a boat he owned with a guy he met in his home town. Then, in his early 20s, he went racing at EAMS and some other area tracks, launching his race team that he would gradually build piece-by-piece.
Crate racing turned into Limited Late Model action, highlighted by a 2017 season that saw him win five times in the division at EAMS. He began diving deeper and deeper into racing, soaking up as much information as he could, and eventually he moved up to the Super Late Model class when he found a backer who bought him a used 418 cubic inch Clements engine. The deal with the prospective team owner was short lived, but Cook bought the engine himself and continued on.
“I probably had two years where I was kind of starting to get after it pretty hard,” Cook said. “I started really studying and trying to learn, just because I’ve always done my own thing. I’ve never been coached or just kind of, you know, babysat, or even had, you know, like a dad or a granddad involved to like keep things coordinated. It’s always been my own deal from Day One.”
Cook won his first Super Late Model feature in September 2020 at Talladega Short Track in Eastaboga, Ala., his first touring event in 2021 with the Mississippi State Championship Challenge Series at Whynot and his first Southern All Star feature in 2022 at I-75 Speedway in Sweetwater, Tenn. Each success was a steppingstone, an accomplishment that told him he was on the right path but still had a lot to learn.
“I feel like my whole career is literally like a spit and a sputter, and one little thing happened and it gave me a little more juice to go a little further,” Cook said. “I might have won this race, and it just kind of kept going and kept going. And in the meantime, you’re getting experience, you’re basically improving, and you just wind up landing somewhere.
“It’s taken me a good five, six, seven years of just learning what not to do. (Former Senoia, Ga., national touring driver) Clint Smith is kind of like my mentor, he’s helped me, and he’ll give me a hard time because I’ll always be doing like some off the wall stuff. He’d just be telling I need to be running just standard XR1 stuff, and I’m like, ‘Oh, man, I want to be different. I wanna do this. I don’t wanna’t do that.’ Well, that’s why I can go quick time and then all of a sudden I’m back there getting lapped. He says, ‘You’re going to learn one day.’
“I’ve just spent a lot of time doing stuff, learning what not to do, and it's almost like it’s just gotten to start working now,” he continued. “You just kind of fall in the right direction because you’ve done made all the wrong decisions, and I feel like I’m more consistently a factor. And that’s the exciting part to it. I don't know where that leads. I could suck from next weekend on to the rest of my career, but I’m getting all the indications that the stock is starting to go up.”
Cook has cobbled together a formidable regional-level team — but, of course, on a budget and over time. He has two Rocket XR1 Chassis (one a 2017, the other a ’19) and three Clements engines, but it took some well-placed wins and other financially sensible moves to put it all together.
For instance, for Cook to obtain a second engine a couple years ago, he sold his two-car, liftgate trailer and switched to a cheaper, more conventional single-car enclosed trailer.
“I thought I needed one of those liftgate trailers to be cool like everybody else, which was so ignorant because I only had one car” at the time, Cook said. “I just felt like I had to have one. Well, I got me one, and then it got to a point I was like, ‘No, man, this is ridiculous. Why am I running around with this thing? I need another motor.’ So I got rid of that trailer for obviously real good money and then I went and bought me a motor.”
A third engine was added with some help from his father, who became more interested as Cook demonstrated his desire and achieved greater success. And Cook was able to bring his second car on line after his $20,000 victory last year at Swainsboro gave him some extra cash.
What’s more, Cook decided to chase the Southern All Star schedule last year — rather than the Hunt the Front tour after his fourth-place finish in the circuit’s inaugural 2023 season — because he saw the $10,000 championship as more attainable. He pinpointed earning that five-figure payoff as the way he would have the money for a postseason motor refresh.
“So that kind of explains a little bit how I have to think about things,” Cook said of the challenges that come with fielding his own team. “I mean, you literally race just to keep racing.
“It’s just those kind of decisions — how do I go about doing it?” he continued. “You get presented with a gauntlet. It's like, ‘Dang, dude, how am I going to come up with 20-grand?’ And it’s like, you do certain things and you’re like … you just get there. There’s no formula to it and I can’t even tell you a real story about how it all went down. It’s just I somehow have been able to make it work.”
One move Cook has made to bring in money while also increasing his knowledge is his startup technical consulting business, Juice Man Speed, which burrows him even deeper into the game as he and offers Fox Shocks service and works with local racers “who want to learn and want to do it for themselves.”
“The last year or so I’ve gotten so, like, caught up into how to go fast,” Cook said. “And I've noticed that there’s kind of a calling and there’s a need for guys that know how to make s--- go fast. You know, like you can get paid for that. That’s a real thing. You just kind of have to obviously be fast so somebody believes you can help them go fast, you know what I'm saying?
“So that’s what kind of what's good about what’s going on this year, because things are just leading to another because you get the good results, like people want some of that. I felt like last year, I knew a lot about my race car and I could talk race car stuff with anybody. I really have a good understanding of things, but I was like, I don't know nothing about shocks. I don't know it, man, I can’t tell you nothing, and so I sort of felt I needed to get a shock dyno and start learning something.
“I got a shock dyno like the end of last summer, and so I just spent the rest of the year just playing with it with my own stuff, not really doing nothing, but just seeing things, you know? And I guess I did have some good runs last year, like I had some moments, and this and that.
“Then I started thinking about how the year finished, some of the problems I had and things I wanted to maybe correct, and so I started really tearing stuff down and really started working on some stuff, trying to come up with something different, and then came up with some ideas, did some things. I had some other guys that that were doing some practicing and racing before I got my stuff ready so I put it on their car and they got to run it before I ever did, and, I mean, watching and looking and doing that, it was like, ‘Hey, man, that’s better.’
“So I started finding some gains before I even got in my car and started running it this year,” he added. “One thing’s led to another, and like I kind of arrived at what I say is my package, kind of what I’m doing, and it’s like, man, this is kind of working. Like, this is for real.”
Cook is realizing unmistakable results from his increased Dirt Late Model immersion, which he views as his avenue to even the playing field with the better equipped teams he battles on the track.
“A way I've always thought about myself is, I'm just a thinker. That's all I really do,” Cook said. “I never was interested in doing the party scene and drinking and carrying on. I just always like to just sit back and problem solve.
“My thing is always asking, ‘Why?’ You know, like when you’re trying to learn and trying to further yourself knowledge-wise, like you have to ask that question. You can’t just be like, ‘So-and-so told me to do this and I’m just going to do it.’ I got to figure out, ‘Well, what happened? Why was that?’ Because the end of the day, when it's up to you to make all the decisions and have a a direction about what you’re doing, you got to really understand where you’re starting at. Like, ‘What’s the plan?’
“So my whole concept of this was, I can try to beat the money aspect by being better on diagnosing and making myself faster,” he continued. “Because if I could be both of them guys (driver and mechanic) in one, I got a better chance to outrun that money.”
Cook is doing a pretty good job of going toe-to-toe with accomplished drivers and bigger teams. His 2025 ledger even shows a pair of top-10 finishes in World of Outlaws Real American Beer Late Model Series action at Swainsboro. But he’s still honing his craft by doing his homework.
“I would like to figure out a better rhythm qualifying, and some preliminary stuff. I think that's some stuff I need to work on obviously,” said Cook, whose sponsorship backers include New Point Lighting & Design, TMT Utilities & Grading, Three Trade Consultants and River Side Window & Door.. “But, you know, a driver, if they’re being real with themselves, they’re going to call out their flaws. Everybody got flaws. Everybody ain’t perfect. And so that’s how I try to look at myself. I try to grade myself every night. I might be riding down the road (driving the truck) and I’m just thinking of myself and I’m like, ‘Well, you know, I didn’t do that restart right,’ or something. It’s like any athlete treats their sport.
“It ain’t like I’m just in it right at the moment, and I can't wait to get back and go ride side-by-sides or get on a boat. I don’t do, like, nothing else. This is what I do. I mean, I love golf. I like the little getaway of playing some golf, but man, I ain't played golf in a hot minute because it just ain’t in the schedule, you know?
“You really gotta love this (racing), the challenge, and just eat it up and study it, and that’s what I do.”
Cook, who is the married father of a 3-year-old son (Dawson, whom he calls “Daw-Daw”), is focused on pushing forward and continuing his underdog story.
“When you get on a good wave, like I feel like I’m doing this year, you really start trying to stack and stack,” said Cook, who noted that his current regular weekend crewman, Josh Atkins, has helped his effort with his experience as a racer himself. “And while you’re stacking like that, you’re figuring out, all right, well, what are some things or some investments or things to buy and do that can lead to more success that I wasn’t able to do before, and how much do I need to try to sit back for them bad days? You got to be very smart and calculated.
“I feel like I've been doing things the right way for the most part. I mean, otherwise I wouldn't have made it. I wouldn’t still be here doing what I’m doing. You can’t afford no false moves (as a modest owner-operator). You can’t make bad decisions.”
Cook is also relishing the uptick in results.
“I’m trying to stay in my lane, trying not to let things go to my head, not trying to really change how I do things, how I operate, just go on business as usual and then let things unfold however it is, but try to just stay the same,” said Cook, who this season, if all goes according to plans, expects to chase championships with Hunt the Front (worth $50,000), Southern All Star ($10,000) and East Alabama’s miniseries ($10,000). “Every Saturday, I don’t ever wake up and dread anything. Man, life is good, life is great, everybody’s healthy. I ain’t never been so happy in my whole life. All I do is just get up and figure out how to grind and hustle a dollar and, you know, make my race car go faster.”
Ten things worth mentioning
1. While the World of Outlaws Real American Beer Late Model Series is coming close to Cook this weekend for the Alabama Gang 100 weekend, he’s bypassing the doubleheader that offers $12,000-to-win on Friday and a $50,000 first-prize bonanza on Saturday. He’d like to enter the action, but he’s taking the weekend off for several reasons: to conserve his equipment for May 2-3’s Hunt the Front events at Lavonia (Ga.) Speedway and Cherokee Speedway in Gaffney, S.C.; so he can earn some cash helping customers on Saturday at East Alabama; and to make sure he’s ready for his son’s third birthday party on Sunday afternoon. “My wife wants the (race) cars in the front yard and all did up for the party,” he said, “so I'm like, ‘Well, I probably shouldn’t go race and mess one of the cars up.’ ”
2. Cook certainly enjoyed his memorable win in April 12’s Jimmy Thomas Memorial at East Alabama. It was not only his first-ever Super Late Model triumph at his home track but also the first time his son joined him in victory lane after a win. Cook said he had “always fantasized about holding my son up in the air like the Lion King” movie scene, and that’s exactly what he did. “I’m a little quirky, so it's just one of them things I’ve wanted to do,” quipped Cook, whose wife and father were also in attendance for his milestone. “He’s a little bigger than that what I originally envisioned, but still, you know, I got to have that moment.”
3. I asked Cook about his race team Facebook page’s very interesting profile picture, which features several cartoon-style rockers and the logo of the 1980s glam metal band Ratt. He said that yes, Ratt ranks as his favorite band. “I love the ‘80s metal, like the ‘80s hair bands,” he said. “Like, I swear, man, I was born in the wrong damn years. I think everything about the ‘80s is cool.”
4. Cook noted that he likes to “play into the heavy metal” theme with the appearance of his car, which includes flaming flourishes and a skull and crossbones on a black and blue color scheme. “If you if you ride a Harley, you’re probably going to like my stuff,” he said. “And when I’m at the track, I’m blastin’ my music, man. I’m just doing my thing, you know?” Added Cook: “Scott (Bloomquist) made black (cars) bad ass. I just think black means business, like, ‘That's the guy that you got to worry about,’ and I'll always thought skulls and flames are as bad as you can do. So, you know, to me, it’s just an attitude, it’s just a mindset, just like heavy music puts you in a mindset. You’re trying to get psyched up, because what we do racing these cars, man, it’s an extreme thing. We ain’t out there riding around hitting golf balls.”
5. Cook has become friendly with Tyler Erb of New Waverly, Texas, who has made a stop at Cook’s shop to work between Southern races in the past. He’s fond of how Erb has “learned to tap into himself and his personality and how he lets it flow,” and Cooks tries to take that type of attitude to heart. “When I just ride down the road, just listening to music, it’s just really kind of hammered to me that I need to be who I am, you know, don't try to spin off and look like the rest, try to be off authentic, try to do my thing,” he said. “I feel like by staying true to my colors — obviously don't be classless, don’t act like no buffoon, keep it clean where kids can be around but still can kind of do your thing — that’s something I think people really kind of gravitate toward.”
6. All the disparate people in Dirt Late Model racing is a part of the division that Cook views as a plus. “Everyone’s got their own little unique personality and so that's what I feel like draws the fans in,” he said. “That's what's different about our sport and about what we do. It’s like, man, we actually kind of seem like superheroes to people, like we really are characters, we got styles and we got things that just separate us. I think that's what's so bad ass about our sport.”
7. There’s been one constant with Cook for quite a long time: he always wears a distinctive yellow and purple driver’s suit. ‘They’re like, ‘Man, when are you going to get a new suit? Dude, you’ve had that thing forever,’” he said. “And, you know, and it’s funny because it’s true. I mean, this suit is like 10 years old. I’ve been wearing this damn suit, this clown suit, for a decade. And it's almost like now it’s like damn near turning out it’s starting to be iconic, like it’s starting to be funny.”
8. Speaking of driver uniforms, how about the one Tyler Erb sported for his $21,000 Schaeffer’s Spring Nationals victory last Saturday at Tazewell (Tenn.) Speedway? It was styled after a minion from the Despicable Me movies, complete with faux denim overalls to give it the look of a minion’s typical outfit. There was even a yellow minion on his chest. Erb said Chad Harrington, whose MatMan Designs makes the branded rugs that so many teams have in their trailers, came up with the minions-themed uniform and had it made for him.
9. Saturday’s racing program at Hagerstown (Md.) Speedway ended just in time. About 10 p.m. a severe thunderstorm blew across the area with heavy downpours, dangerous lightning and winds that were clocked as high as 75 mph at the Hagerstown Regional Airport. While significant damage was widespread in many nearby places, the track reported no serious issues but power to the facility was knocked out.
10. SportsPlus Video legend Steve Gigeous, who lives just outside Hagerstown in Williamsport, Md., wasn’t home when the storms hit; he was on his way back from shooting a race at Pennsylvania’s Port Royal Speedway. Upon his return, he found that his house had narrowly escaped the weather’s wrath. He said a 60-foot-tall tree just 25 feet from his residence was uprooted and fell onto his neighbor’s house, and he lost power until Monday night so he spent a few days at a nearby hotel.
