Thornburg, Virginia’s home for grassroots racing, Dominion Raceway is gearing up for another season of “Bad Ass Fast” action in 2025 with a major change that could shake up the NASCAR Advance Auto Parts Weekly Series (NAAPWS) national championship race.
As a part of the track’s upcoming campaign, Dominion has designated their America Racer Late Models as their recipient for Division I points.
The NAAPWS is NASCAR’s short track national championship program, and tracks are tasked with designating what car class they choose to receive points at the program’s five division levels. Division I is the feature class in which drivers compete for the overall national championship.
In the southeast, tracks typically choose late models, and Dominion Raceway had been no different dating back to their inaugural season in 2016. Over the last handful of years, Dominion was a player in contributing to the national championship battle. With Peyton Sellers bringing home the title in 2021 and Layne Riggs in 2022, DR helped shape who hoisted the trophy by season’s end.
Connor Hall won the last two championships out of Langley Speedway in Hampton, Virginia. However, with Hall’s move to JR Motorsports and the CARS Tour, fresh opportunity has presented itself to tracks who want to crown national champions.
To do so, Dominion is elevating their previous Division III entry, the Virginia Racer Late Models, and are rebranding them as the America Racer Late Models.
The America Racer division is the fastest growing affordable stock car in Virginia. Developed at Dominion Raceway in 2017, the series features late models running Crate motors at 450 horsepower with a Holley 500 carburetor, 8-inch America Racer tires and no bump stops. This rules package was designed to allow the drivers holding the steering wheel to generate the racing action. These affordable late models attract a wide array of drivers and are a perfect proving ground for up-and-coming talent looking to race stock cars.
Last year alone, the division generated the largest field of racers and the most exciting action. Chase Johnson not only won the track championship, but the NAAPWS Division III Southeast Region championship.
“We had five cars every week that could win,” Johnson said. “It is awesome to be in Division 1 this year. I think it is going to bring in more competition, which I am super excited for the challenge that will bring.”
NAAPWS rules require a field of 16 cars in order to award season points and payout toward the championship. With rising costs and the creation of other touring late model series tempting racers away from weekly racing, car counts for late models were sparse nationwide.
Despite a phenomenal battle for the track championship between Landon Pembelton and Dustin Storm last year, Dominion Raceway’s late model fields were not excluded from this problem. To combat the issue, Dominion decided to make the switch away from late models to the America Racer Late Models for top points.
“We set up the America Racer Late Model to succeed the Late Model, because we knew the cost would kill it, and it has,” said Dominion Raceway owner Steve Britt. “I think if you have a late model team at this point, you’re either running a CARS Tour season or maybe even doing an ASA. You’re probably running a touring series and committing a lot of resources to that, and that is the result of the expense to race. We didn’t see how our local teams could expend the cost to go race with us every weekend. That resulted in a smaller field, and we don’t think that is fair to our fans to buy a ticket and see eight late models run around the track.”
Not only will moving this class to Division I help promote their young crop of drivers like Johnson and Conner Weddell, but it will allow late model racers who may have struggled to keep up with the lucrative financial cost.
While a change to divert the spotlight away from traditional late models is a nerve-wrecking innovation, it is one tactic that has already worked out in Dominion Raceway history. When similar financial issues led to car count issues prior to the 1978 season, Old Dominion Speedway president Dickie Gore met with competitors and developed a new rule set to keep costs down. By putting an emphasis on strictly using stock parts, like carburetors, exhaust and shocks on a brand new stock front-end, cars could be built for around $4,000, about half the price of what was the precedent at the time. Thus, the Late Model Stock Car as we know it was born.
While that first year in Manassas, Virginia saw five late models grow into 11 by season’s end, the stock-car racing community resisted the idea of upsetting the status quo.
Late Model Stock Racing at Old Dominion saw increased car counts, and ultimately more fans in attendance. By 1981, the rule set was added to the NASCAR rulebook. Britt also mentioned this cost-saving renaissance was something he experienced over a decade ago when he first purchased Old Dominion Speedway.
“We had experienced this once before with the advent of the Crate motors. We were part of that effort when I was at Old Dominion Speedway 10-15 years ago, and the reason for that was the cost of buying a race engine had again gotten out of control,” Britt said. “When we went back to thinking about what we were gonna do with late models, we went back to how they kind of started. They didn’t have bump stops and shocks that were ridiculously expensive, and they had cheaper 8-inch tires.
“The America Racer class was about resurrecting that with cost-containment items in it with the idea that we could create a racy type stock car that was
cost effective.”
Now late model stock car racing is the foundation of motorsports in the heart of NASCAR country. With legends like Dale Earnhardt Jr. occasionally strapping into a late model to prolong their racing careers, the emerging popularity of the CARS Tour, and streaming services like FloRacing putting more eyes on late model stock car racing, a move away from them would be another deviation from the status quo.
For Britt and Dominion Raceway, it is one that could rewrite history.
“It is scary; it is a lot of risk,” Britt said. “This venue is unique, and it has wide-open thinking; that’s the way it was built. You have to have courage; you have to believe.”
While the Dominion oval-track season starts April 5 with the ASA Stars Super Late Models, fans can see the America Racer Late Models on April 12, which will start the NAAPWS season.