At one point this summer, Sam Butler was watching a Facebook Live video with media members and who they would consider the “Big 3” drivers at Hickory Motor Speedway.
Two of the three were obvious choices. Josh Berry went on to win the NASCAR Advance Auto Parts Weekly Series Division I national championship, and Ryan Millington finished third while also winning the late model track championship.
The other driver in the Big 3 though came as a surprise to 16-year-old Butler. It was his name in that conversation.
In his first year in a late model, Butler proved to be a force to be reckoned with at Hickory, finishing third in the track‘s late model points and seventh in the national Division I points. His three wins and 13 top fives in 23 starts were enough to help Butler to a Jostens Division I Rookie of the Year and UNOH Youth Achievement Award, given annually to the top driver in the country under the age of 16.
Butler made a weekly 10-hour trip from his Indiana home to Hickory, North Carolina this season to race against the top competition in the country. His goal at the beginning of the season was to just win rookie of the year at the track, but there was a point about midway through the summer when he started to dream a little bigger.
“We started running up front with Josh Berry and Ryan Millington, and I was like, wow, I would have never thought coming into this year I would be running with them ahead of everybody else. It was just kind of an insane thing that I couldn‘t really wrap my head around until the end of the year,” Butler said.
Butler has been driving for about eight years, starting out in a quarter midget then moving on to a legends car. He‘s the first in his family to giving racing a try.
“I‘ve always been into cars since I was little, but never really understood why,” he said. “It was kind of weird growing up just liking cars. I was trying to get into basketball and football and everything but it didn‘t click with me, but I saw the bandolero on TV and I was like, ‘I want to do that.‘ And my dad looked up racing around me and we found quarter-midgets.”
Butler is used to traveling the country to race, having gone to Arizona and Las Vegas in previous years, so the trips to Hickory weren‘t too far out of his comfort zone. For him, the traveling was so he could learn the ropes in a late model at one of the toughest short tracks on the East Coast.
“It was definitely a learning curve, especially saving tires and everything because you have such a bigger car with a bigger tires that can get hot a lot faster. It‘s a lot different from the previous car I drove. These kind of just float in, they kind of drive themselves honestly. It‘s more of a mental learning curve with the late model because of all the laps you have to drive and the tires you have to save.”
Butler said he and his team didn‘t start the year as well as they finished, but he learned a lot from the late model veterans he raced against. He talks to Millington on a daily basis, and would watch him and Berry during practices and races.
“It was a lot easier to learn the track when you have two really good drivers to work off of,” Butler said. “Ryan and Josh, I would talk to them between practices and qualifying and just kind of ask them what they‘re doing, how‘s their car, what do you think I have to do to improve, stuff like that. Especially just being in the car during the feature, if I can‘t figure something out then I‘ll probably just kind of look ahead and see what Josh is doing and try to learn from what he‘s doing, or Ryan. They definitely helped a lot.”
Finding success and gaining national recognition gives Butler confidence as he moves into 2021.
He‘ll stay in the same car with his team, including car owner Zach Bruenger, crew chief Steven Civitarese, and crew members Zach McDaniels and Zach Wyatt, racing with PRW Chassis and Triple R Racing.
“They‘ve done an outstanding job for me this year,” Butler said of his team. “They‘ve worked their butts off. I was down there for three weeks and how much work they put into my car was insane so I would just like to thank them a lot.
“Coming into next year I feel like we have a really good car and I have a really good team to do it with. Unlike other years, I have a lot of confidence going into this next year. I feel like we‘ll be able to run up front and be competitive.”
From a young kid watching racing on TV to doing it himself, Butler plans to be in the sport for a long time to come.
“It‘s mind-boggling for me just to think that a few years ago I was just racing for fun and racing with my buddies that I still have today, and now I‘m racing and NASCAR is calling me,” Butler said. “I would have never thought that. It‘s so hard to put it in words. It‘s just been a huge part of my life and truly I don‘t think I could live without it.”