Brad Perez is a well-known commodity in the NASCAR garage. After all, he’s been working behind the scenes since 2019 for middle-of-the-road teams, such as JD Motorsports, Martins Motorsports, Rackley W.A.R and now Emerling-Gase Motorsports.
For Perez to just be part of the racing industry was once a far cry. As someone with Dominican and Puerto Rican heritage and growing up in Florida in a middle-class family, he didn’t have the resources to go racing. Instead, he focused on playing baseball, which his father played in college in the Dominican Republic.
As a child, it was Perez’s grandmother that noticed his love of cars. He had a Sam Bass poster of Jeff Gordon’s paint scheme, and he was in love.
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After attending his first race at Homestead-Miami Speedway in 2001, Perez became “obsessed” with racing. So much so that he tried his hand at go-karts at age 7 but crashed after completing only a couple of laps. He was never told why he couldn’t return to the track.
“It grew like a resentment from my parents because I really wanted to do it,” Perez told NASCAR.com before racing at Sonoma Raceway. “I didn’t understand the financial side at the time, so I ended up playing baseball.”
Perez was hooked on “NASCAR Racing 2003 Season” and met some people in the racing industry on the game servers. But he never hopped back inside a race car until he returned to Miami GP Raceway nearly 10 years later, the same venue where he thought his racing career was over before it started.
But the itch of racing never went away.
“I didn’t really care where it ended up,” Perez said of racing. “I figured I was too old by the time I started racing to ever get somewhere. I just wanted to see if there was a way I could race.”
While playing NR2003, Perez met Jay Lopez, who formerly worked at JD Motorsports. When Perez expressed he wanted to be around racing “because that’s really the only thing that made me happy,” Lopez suggested working for JDM on the side. One problem: Perez never turned a wrench in his life.
“All I did was play baseball, go on [NR2003] and occasionally race,” Perez said. “I have no background in mechanics. [Lopez] said, ‘We’ll teach you, it’s fine.'”
Perez took that to heart and began helping kids with their karts at the tracks. He also began running Spec Miatas, which piqued his father’s interest after seeing his son’s success.
“That was a big thing, convincing my dad because it was the first time he spent any money doing anything,” Perez noted. “We went half and half on this car, and it was a hunk of junk – a fast hunk of junk – but it was all us working on it.”
While outperforming some of the best in Spec Miatas in 2019, Perez realized he had competitive talent. He didn’t want to shortchange himself, so he went on the sponsorship hunt after figuring out how much it cost to race.
Perez recalled asking companies: “If I did this, would you be able to support it? I don’t know when it’s going to happen or where it’s going to happen, but if I were to do this, could you do this?”
The tipping point was speaking with Curtis Sutton, co-owner of Rackley W.A.R. and CEO of Rackley Roofing, Inc. There are other people who helped Perez, and he swore secrecy over ever revealing their names. But without Sutton’s help, Perez “would have been a lot short.”
“It was important to me because Brad is a very unique and driven individual,” Sutton said. “He never made excuses and always owned any mistake he made. Brad is always happy, energetic and he is always trying to help in whatever way he can. My sponsorship was a way of telling him to keep reaching for his dreams and never give up.”
Perez got his first shot on the NASCAR scene in 2021, competing for Josh Williams Motorsports in the ARCA Menards Series at Watkins Glen International. He has an intensive background in road-course racing, which is where he feels most comfortable.
On that August afternoon, Perez started and finished 24th, having to retire from the race early due to a brake issue.
“His talent on road courses is very good,” Williams said. “A lot of people don’t know this, but I would have Brad come over to the shop whenever there was a road-course race, and he would help me practice for road courses. We would get on iRacing and try to help me out with different road courses. It helped me a ton.”
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Last season, Perez made his first national touring series start at Circuit of The Americas for Reaume Brothers Racing. In two Craftsman Truck Series starts in 2022, he posted an average finish of 21.0. He also made his Xfinity Series debut at Watkins Glen last year, placing 20th for Emerling-Gase Motorsports. He finished 23rd late in the season at the Charlotte Roval.
In 2023, he competed in a pair of road courses in the Xfinity Series with two 29th-place finishes. He was also the relief driver for Leland Honeyman at Portland International Raceway earlier this month. Perez’s next scheduled race in the Xfinity Series is at the inaugural Chicago Street Race on July 1.
Overall, Perez believes he’s made a good impression through his first seven NASCAR starts.
“I feel like I’ve proved I can bring a car home,” Perez said. “That’s what it’s like in the back half of the field. It doesn’t really matter where you finish, just that you bring the car home. Being competitive is big as far as trying to get up the ladder, but bringing a car home is what gets you back in a car and keep going.
“That has helped put me in a car this year. Without me doing that, I don’t think many people would trust me now to do that and not for an astronomical price.”
Of Perez’s talent, Williams said: “He’s really good. I think with more seat time and more opportunities, these road-course races, I think he could run inside the top 10.”
MORE: 2023 Xfinity Series schedule | 2023 Craftsman Truck Series schedule
For now, though, Perez is staying occupied. Along with working at Emerling-Gase Motorsports, he’s a driving instructor for the Ford Performance Racing School at Charlotte Motor Speedway and works at the BMW Performance Center in South Carolina. At the track, he’s in charge of the tires of the No. 53 Xfinity team, primarily led by crew chief Paul Clapprood.
And the end goal? Race more frequently, including on ovals.
“I think it’s the same goal that I had originally, but I think now I can accomplish it,” Perez said. “I just want to be able to get paid to race. I want to race as much as I can. I want to be happy.”