Tanner Tallarico is a self-described “iRacing nerd.”

When he isn’t racing at Michigan’s Berlin Raceway, he’s racing against his Berlin competitors on iRacing.

Every winter he and other Berlin drivers have the same conversation – why isn’t the famed NASCAR Advance Auto Parts Weekly Racing Series short track on the simulator?

“It’s such a unique track,” Tallarico said. “It’s got great publicity. There’s a lot of big names that have come out of that place. They host really big events… And we’ve always just thought that they were more than deserving of at least having a shot of getting put onto iRacing.”

Last offseason, Berlin drivers knew Tallarico was the guy to go to to make getting their track on the system happen. He started a petition on iRacing’s website and is looking to complete the 1,000 signatures needed to get the attention of the company. When Tallarico spoke with NASCAR.com, he said they had about 800 signatures.

“It’s just to kind of give myself and a couple of guys that are helping me try to get this deal done a little bit of firepower to put in front of the iRacing staff,” Tallarico said.
“Just to say, hey, we’re pulling from a really small pool of people and if we can have this big of an impact and all this feedback and stuff, with just a thousand signatures, imagine what we could do with this huge platform that iRacing has that’s worldwide now, and what that would do to Berlin. If it wasn’t on the map before, that would definitely put it on the map if we could get it on the sim, for sure.”

Berlin has meant a lot to Tallarico’s racing career, especially this year. In April, at the start of his third season there, he picked up his first NASCAR win at the track on opening night.

Since then, he has five top fives and 11 top 10s in 15 races, and is currently eighth in the track’s Sportsman division standings.

“That set the season off really good to win on opening night,” he said. “Berlin is really, really tough… The saying is, it takes three years to win at Berlin, and it’s kind of ironic that three years almost to the day we won our first feature up there. It started off the season really good. I went through a lot of ups and downs to kind of get to that first win, but really since then, knock on wood, the season’s been going really strong for us.”

Racing has taken Tallarico all over the Midwest since he began competing in quarter-midgets at 6 years old in 2004. After two championships, he and his family team built a street stock they raced around Michigan and Indiana.

Tallarico made one start in the ARCA Menards Series, but he faced a lack of funding and decided to he look at options closer to home where he could go race against the best competition. That brought him to Berlin, which is two hours from his house.

“It, at the time, was the only NASCAR-sanctioned track even close to where I’m living,” he said. “I knew the exposure level up there would be huge, and we just went up there in the sportsman class and started running, and we’ve been having a blast ever since.”

Tallarico said he and the team kept racing at Berlin because, “It’s a premier short track facility.”

“I’ve been fortunate enough to race at a lot of different short tracks all around my area … they really do a really good job with the way they run the facility,” he said. “The staff there are phenomenal. The race control are phenomenal. And then really for me as a driver, the biggest thing for me is the competition level in my class, specifically in the Sportsman division, is incredible.

“There’s a handful of guys up there that have been up there for a really, really long time, and were kind of the ones to beat week-in and out, and I’m finally starting to get into that point where I feel like I can compete with those guys week-in and out.”

When Tallarico isn’t racing at Berlin, he’s up in the press box as a commentator for FloRacing’s broadcast. Two years ago he was invited by Berlin’s play-by-play announcer to join the booth and give a driver’s perspective. He fell in love with announcing so much he jokes he almost has more fun in the booth than in the car.

“It’s a lot less pressure and it’s a lot different kind of point of view and perspective,” he said. “I race like 12-15 times a season and I’m probably up there 10-12 times a season hanging out with those guys, so that’s really fun as well… They mentioned it’s nice to have kind of a driver input and it just kind of changes the dynamic at home for people watching. We can kind of hit on things that the cars might be doing, what the drivers might be feeling or how they’re going to adjust to the track and the weather, whatever’s going on. If there’s a situation I can kind of inject the driver’s point of view into it and just kind of make the broadcast a little more interesting to the people watching at home.

“So I enjoy doing it. It’s fun. Sometimes I have more fun doing that than I do actually driving. It just kind of depends on the day, but it’s really fun to do. I’m glad that those guys let me go up there and do that with them.”

Tallarico will get back in the race car at Berlin for championship night on September 7. He’s hopeful to have the 1,000 signatures needed for iRacing by then and maybe work can be done this offseason.

If so, the “iRacing nerd” can use his hobby to get better on his new home track, and show the rest of the racing world what they’re missing.

“I’ve not really raced at many tracks on iRacing at all that I’ve actually had the opportunity to go and race them in real life,” he said. “I think it would be a great tuning tool, definitely for myself, but the other drivers as well.

“So yes, it would help me immensely to have the sim at my house where I can just get on there and run a couple hundred laps every single night, because I would. I’m that nerd. But at the same time it would be cool to just give that opportunity to the people that are at home and let them get on there and kind of play around with it and see how cool Berlin actually is.”

With North Carolina’s capital of Raleigh continuing to grow every year, it would be easy for a non-motorsports fan to assume no race track lies within the sprawling city limits.

Yet nestled on Simpkins Road, between Lake Wheeler and U.S. Highway 401, is Wake County Speedway, a hidden gem of a quarter-mile paved oval that has been in operation since it opened as a dirt track in 1962.

One of the people responsible for keeping the gem polished is William Brown, who considers himself the primary handyman of Wake County. When he first assumed his role in 2019, Brown put his vast knowledge as a builder to use by outlining a series of goals he believed would bring Wake County into the modern era.

The process is ongoing, but Brown is more than satisfied with the improvements made to Wake County over the past six years.

“From where I started to where we are now, we’re at about 60-70 percent of what I envisioned this place to be,” Brown said. “We’ve done a lot of heavy lifting working on the infrastructure, and we’re going to do some electrical work once the season ends.

“This is some of the hardest work I’ve ever done, but the fruit of our labor has paid off.”

Were it not for his son Zack, a Legends competitor, Brown likely would have never seen the potential Wake County had to offer.

The two were at the facility on a practice day when Brown came across Charlie Hansen, who had just signed a long-term lease to operate the facility. Having worked at Wake County himself since 1997, Hansen was seeking any kind of assistance on how to maintain the dream started by the track’s original owners in the Simpkins family.

A conversation between Hansen and Brown resulted in the latter officially joining the Wake County staff. A thorough analysis of the facility gave Brown an idea of the undertaking ahead of him, but he was ready to fully commit to Wake County’s modernization.

“It was like stepping in chewing gum and trying to get it off with your other foot,” Brown said. “Then you reach down to grab it and get it all over you. On that day, I said [to Charlie] that I’d help, and I have not quit.”

The renovations Brown has overseen at Wake County have been ubiquitous to nearly every aspect of the facility. They range from minor-but-important components like re-plumbing the bathrooms and installing a new sound system to repaving the surface, which stemmed from money received by the North Carolina Motorsports Relief Fund.

A personal project of which Brown is particularly proud is the restoration of the inside wall at Turn 2. Prior to Brown’s arrival, the inner barrier was comprised of used telephone poles that frequently caused significant damage to cars that hit them.

With a limited amount of funding at their disposal, Brown and Hansen had to get creative with their approach to the wall. The solution ended up being a replacement of the poles with repurposed, high-pressure gas lines Hansen happened to discover by pure chance.

“Charlie spotted some pipe on his way to Southern National [Motorsports Park] one day,” Brown said. “He sent me a picture and said ‘what do you think about this?’. I said I would check it out. It took me two days to get to the right person, and they said to come get all we wanted.

“It was their trash, but our treasure.”

Once Brown got the gas lines installed, he had them painted yellow to match the rest of the retaining walls around Wake County. At the beginning of the gas line barrier is one of the old telephone poles, which Brown kept in place as a reminder of all the progress made.

While Brown stays occupied with new projects at Wake County, Hansen is equally busy ensuring the facility still thrives from a presentation perspective. He wants the facility to be family friendly and has organized special kid-themed events such as quarter-mile marathons, bike races for children and candy drops.

Taking care of the drivers is another part of Hansen’s plan. With costs continuing to rise throughout motorsports, Hansen stressed the importance of minimizing the financial strain on his competitors so that car counts can stay reasonable every week.

“Our tire program is probably one of the least expensive in the country,” Hansen said. “We do a lease program where we give the competitors the tires at cost, and they turn them back in at the end of the night. We then re-lease the tires back. We try to do everything we can to keep the expense down.”

Maintaining healthy fields is a constant battle for Hansen amidst an always dynamic industry, but his policies have earned Wake County a loyal group of regulars across all its divisions. Among them is Clay Jones, the current Late Model Stock points leader who is chasing his fifth track championship.

Jones’ father and grandfather both turned plenty of laps at Wake County during their respective careers, so it only made sense for him to continue the family tradition starting in the late 2000s. Many changes have befallen Wake County since Jones’ first race, such as the track receiving NASCAR sanctioning in 2020, yet he believes the facility is currently enjoying one of its best eras.

The diligence of Hansen and his staff to promote the hard-nosed action associated with Wake County is why Jones believes packed grandstands are a constant. He does not recall a single evening this decade when Wake County was nowhere near full capacity.

“When Charlie and all those guys took over, they put extra effort in to get the word out,” Jones said. “A lot of people in Raleigh don’t even know there’s a race track right here less than 10 minutes from downtown. Once people come for the first time and enjoy it, they come back.”

Spreading the word about Wake County and its vibrant culture is something Jones believes will be imperative toward the track’s longevity, especially since the urbanization of Raleigh is spreading right to the track’s doorstep.

A neighborhood has been developed less than a quarter mile away, right off Simpkins Rd. More houses are being built in the subdivision every week, meaning it will be imperative for Wake County to maintain a sound reputation with noise ordinances.

Hansen said established legal precedents provide Wake County some protection from the encroaching urbanization, but he’s also doing everything feasible to co-exist with his new neighbors. Other tracks have lived on through similar scenarios; Hansen is confident Wake County will do the same.

“There’s definitely a delicate balance being that we’re five miles away from skyscrapers just like Richmond [Raceway],” Hansen said. “We try to be a good neighbor, be finished by 11 p.m. ET and not start any engines before 11 a.m. ET. We try to minimize the noise as much as we can, but we’ve been here 62 years. They might want to call their realtor, not the race track.”

An increase in residents near the track presents an opportunity for them to learn more about Wake County and why Jones, along with so many others, consider the track to be so special.

For Jones, Wake County’s influence on motorsports is immeasurable with names like Benny Parsons, Ken Schrader, Dennis Setzer and others all having turned laps there. He added the sense of community and the exciting weekly action only further showcase the impact Wake County continues to have on short-track racing in the modern era.

“There’s non-stop excitement [at Wake County],” Jones said. “You go to these bigger tracks, and everybody gets in a line. It’s boring, but you can take five cars out here, no matter what class, and it’s going to be a good show. Something is going to happen. The track itself promotes good racing.

“Everybody helps each other and works together, so this is a great thing we have going and hopefully it keeps going for a long time.”

Brown plans to keep doing his part to maintain Wake County’s momentum. His next big project involves improving sightlines by removing the overhead wires on the frontstretch and helping install a video board for fans to watch the FloRacing broadcasts at the track.

There have been many long days for Brown as Wake County’s handyman, but he has considered the experience rewarding in numerous regards. Numerous people have approached Brown to express their satisfaction about Wake County and how the renovations have made the facility more friendly for fans and spectators alike.

Looking back on the last several years, Brown can not help but be proud of what Wake County has turned into. The final version of Brown’s outline has yet to materialize, but he takes pride in knowing he played a crucial role in revitalizing one of North Carolina’s longest-running short tracks.

“I thought Wake County was a diamond in the rough that needed some polishing,” Brown said. “The more we polish it, the more results we get with kind remarks about what people are seeing. My goal was to make the people who came here happy. When I do something, I set my bar really high, and we try to keep everyone pumped.

“It’s a rock and roll thing. You have to dream on and dream until your dreams come true.”

Brown’s dream of a thriving Wake County did come to fruition. When his work is complete, all he hopes for is to see that passion sustained for generations of motorsports fans and drivers to enjoy.