Brad Warthan chasing not one, but two championships at Dells Raceway Park this season

After racing for more than two decades, it seems like the only accomplishment eluding Brad Warthan is a championship. This year, he has a shot at two. Warthan is competing in both the Blystone Towing Modified and the Lefthander Performance 602 Outlaw divisions at Wisconsin’s Dells Raceway Park. He currently leads the Modified standings by one point with two wins and five top fives in seven races. He’s also third in 602 Outlaw points with a win and three top fives in six races. This is Warthan’s first year racing in both series. He’s been a regular in the 602 Outlaw class at Dells, a NASCAR Local Racing Series Powered by O'Reilly Auto Parts track in Juneau County, Wisconsin, for the last six years, and has several top three finishes in the final points standings. Last year, car owner Austin Powers let Warthan drive his Modified in one race. After that night, “He enjoyed how I drove it and asked me to drive it this year,” Warthan said. He had never driven a Modified before that race, but he’s taken to the new car well. “It's absolutely been fun,” he said. “It's more of an elbows up kind of thing. You’ve really got to be up on top of it because there's no downforce on the front end of it. Along with that, the one that I'm driving, we don't have to have a windshield in it, which is definitely a different feeling for me considering the fact I've never really had any of that wind in my face like that. “It's definitely a learning curve.” Warthan said the first night he didn’t like the way the car was reacting, so he took it to his good friend, Derik Squires at DSR Chassis, to completely work it over. The next week, Warthan put the Modified in victory lane. “I think it took more weight off of Austin's shoulders than anything,” Warthan said. “He's had that car three years now, maybe four, and he hasn't been able to put a feature win underneath it. I made sure to give him the trophy and let him take it home.” Warthan picked up his first 602 Outlaw win on May 2. “Being able to knock a win out of both cars right out of the gate at the beginning of the year really takes a lot off my shoulders,” he said. “We've already got a win so now all we've got to focus on is continuing to be as good as we are.” [caption id="attachment_521815" align="aligncenter" width="1200"] In his first year racing a Modified at Dells Raceway Park, Brad Warthan has already found Victory Lane twice. (Photo: Dells Raceway Park)[/caption] When asked if he had any goals coming into this season, Warthan didn’t hesitate. “Oh yeah, absolutely,” he said. “We wanted a championship in both of them. I mean, that's hands down, no doubt about it.” Warthan has always raced for small, underfunded teams. Even this year, for both cars they’ve ran the same tires every race. Thankfully, he has sponsors like Bob Sauer with SS&E Concrete, Steve VanEtten with Touch of Heart CPR, and Jeff Myer from Innovation Movers, as well as friends who will show up sometimes with a few extra dollars so he can buy whatever needs. Until then, he said they simply make due. “We do what we do with what we can, and when we can afford tires, we buy tires,” he said. “When we can't afford tires, well, we just race because that's what we do. We're out there to have a lot of fun and we sure do have a lot of fun doing it.” Warthan has spent his entire life around race cars. “I was born and two months later we were at the race track,” he said. His dad raced at Tomah-Sparta Speedway in Wisconsin, so when Warthan was young he would ride around in the back of the truck after the races and even clean up whatever he could find in the pits. “Most nights we'd find tools and sockets and a bunch of stuff, and then eventually, as it got to where I was 14 years old, I bought a go-kart and started racing for two years,” he said. He’s been competing ever since. When he’s not behind the wheel himself, he’s the race director at Tomah-Sparta. “Once you get it in, you just can't get out,” he said. “I've tried to quit. I've tried to sell everything. I've tried to walk away, and no matter what, every time I just, I'm too deep into it and I love the sport way too much to walk away.” Before moving to Dells in 2019, Warthan raced for several seaons at Wisconsin’s LaCrosse Fairgrounds Speedway, another NASCAR Local Racing Series track. Some bad luck cost him a championship there in 2017, so he took the 2018 season off to regroup. Once he got to what is now his new home, “I won the second night out at Dells in my Sportsman car, and I've kind of been hooked to that place ever since,” he said. While he said winning a championship was definitely his No. 1 goal for 2026, if it doesn’t happen Warthan said he’s happy to simply continue chasing wins. In his 26th season, he’s less than 20 away from 100 for his career. Whether he gets to 100 or wins a championship, Warthan looks back on his career with pride in everything he’s accomplished. And he’s not done yet. “To be able to stand down there with a sign that says 100 will be pretty much icing on the cake,” he said. “Winning a championship is something I'd really like to do before I end up quitting racing, but if it doesn't come I can always look back and say I've won a lot of races and I've won a lot of big races up here. It's not a loss if I don't ever win one, that's for sure. Will it break my heart? I'm sure. But in the end when I really sit back and think about it, I've got a lot of trophies to look at, and one championship isn't going to matter about how my racing career actually was.” Racing will return to Dells Raceway Park on Saturday for the Ron Meister Memorial 50 beginning at 6 p.m. CT.