Logan Brown’s 2022 race season at Salina Highbanks Speedway started with him and his crew getting their car ready about six hours before the first race.

The season ended with Brown’s first championship.

Brown won the Dawson Roofing Super Stocks championship at Salina, a NASCAR-sanctioned oval track in Pryor, Oklahoma. The title was won after Brown picked up three wins and 14 top-five finishes in 19 races, giving him the victory by 117 points.

On opening night, after Brown took the final six hours to take a nap, his last-minute fixes paid off.

“We came out the first night of the season and we actually ended up winning that night,” Brown said. “So that just put more of a kick into us. I told my dad I think we can go for the championship this year, and if everything goes well, I think we can win it.

“And from then on we just showed up every week and did our best.”

Every week, Brown spent his downtime before races talking with friends and competitors about what he would do if he won the championship. A title is something he’s been chasing since he began racing as a teenager six years ago.

“I come from a really small town, and it does have it’s supporters; there are people who support me and my buddy, but mostly it’s people that hate to see you do better,” he said. “I was just wanting people to know that I’m capable of doing that as well, because all these years I’ve been told, ‘You won’t do this,’ or, ‘You won’t do that.’ That just came to my mind, I can show them. If I win then I can show all these people that doubted me what I can do.”

When Brown was growing up, his grandfather always had cars in the garage, and Brown would often jump in them and pretend like he was driving.

Finally, one day his grandpa told him he could take a car into the parking lot.

“I kept making the rounds and kept getting faster and faster,” Brown said. “Finally, I started tearing his gravel up and his roads, and he finally said, ‘It’s time to go to the track or something, because you’re tearing my driveway up.’

“He played a big, big part in it, so I’ve got to give a lot of the glory to him.”

Unfortunately for Brown, the track where he wanted to race had an age limit of 14. With a November birthday, when Brown turned 14, he had to wait several months before the following season rolled around.

The joy he gets behind the wheel was worth waiting for, and it’s a feeling Brown has been chasing ever since.

“I guess it would be just the feeling of everything else in the world just went away for me,” he said. “Homework, sports, school, woman problems, stuff like that, it just all went away, and I was focused in on one thing… There’s nothing I would rather do. If I could race every single day of the week and get paid for it, I’d do it in a heartbeat.”

Brown moved up a class last season. He credited his team and a more patient approach, taking their time to learn everything they could about the car, with their newfound success.

He received help from his mom, dad, girlfriend, Maddilyn, and good friend, Aiden, who was there all 12 times they swapped out motors last season.

“I’m talking 2 in the morning the night before the races, we’d swap motors, gears, tires, everything, and he’s been there,” Brown said of his friend. “Dad and mom, they’re huge in it, too. Without them I couldn’t do it. I could probably do it, but I’d be pinching pennies a lot worse than I am now.”

There was another new member of the team last year, too: Former Salina driver Kyle Davis, who took Brown under his wing as a mentor.

Growing up, Brown used to watch Davis drive at Salina and said “I always picked him to win when my grandpa would take me to races to watch.”

Davis has his own chassis business now. He helped Brown with car set-up.

“I think the reason why we get along so well is because he has the same kind of passion and drive for the sport that I do,” Brown said. “Coming from others that personally know Kyle, they’ve all told me the same thing. Kyle, he doesn’t just help anybody. He only helps people he sees something in, and that actually means to world to me that he took a chance on my program and made it 10 times better than what it was.”

Davis will join Brown as they go on the road this summer, making time to race at Salina as often as possible.

He’ll keep chasing wins and championships for as long as possible, but he’ll never forget the first.

“It means more than a lot of things to me. It’s one of the greatest feelings that I’ve ever had,” Brown said. “I know it’s just a track championship to some people, but it’s something that I’ve worked a lot of years of my life for, and it just means that much more to me that I accomplished it.”

At the end of the 2022 season, Carter Langley was in need of a change of scenery.

Unsatisfied with the results from his first full year in the CARS Late Model Stock Tour, Langley elected to shift his focus to South Boston Speedway, where he looked to gain experience against the veterans of his home track like Mike Looney and six-time champion Peyton Sellers.

Langley’s first two weekends at his home track in 2023 played out differently than he expected; he currently holds a five-point advantage over Sellers after recording three victories in four races, cementing himself as an early championship favorite.

“I really didn’t [think this would happen so quickly],” Langley said. “The car had just gotten back from the chassis man [before the season-opener], and the motor was fresh. I thought it would take us about halfway through the year to get our first win, but all of this goes back to [my crew chief] Joshua Yeoman and how he sets this thing up.”

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Langley’s strong start to the season can be traced back to 2022 and South Boston’s crown jewel event in the Thunder Road Harley-Davidson 200.

In a field featuring 42 drivers, Langley proved to have one of the fastest cars in the race. He briefly led before surrendering the point to eventual winner Corey Heim. Despite getting involved in a late crash, Langley managed to salvage a top five on a night marred by attrition.

Once he committed to running a full schedule at South Boston in 2023, Langley knew his best opportunity at being competitive was to work with Yeoman on replicating the setup from the Thunder Road Harley-Davidson 200 while also making incremental changes more appropriate for different track conditions.

Langley added the experience of competing around the southeast also prepared him for the challenges South Boston was going to bring, specifically when it came to racing with respect and how to get the most out of a car.

“The [CARS Tour] guys definitely race you hard, and that’s made me a better driver,” Langley said. “You know what to expect, and you have to run hard the whole race.

“The guys at South Boston do the same thing, so being with the series helped me out from a longevity standpoint.”

Having worked with Langley for nearly two years, Yeoman believed it was only a matter of time before the young driver finally won against the best in Late Model Stock racing.

Dealing with inexperience inside a Late Model Stock is a natural learning curve Yeoman expected Langley to overcome. Although the duo did not obtain the desired consistency in 2022, Yeoman said Langley took a noticeable step forward with his confidence inside and outside the car.

Being more comfortable with his driving ability and communication is why Yeoman believes Langley has been so strong through four races at South Boston.

“[Carter] provides really good feedback,” Yeoman said. “He ran in go-karts and the Charger class before jumping into Late Model Stocks [in 2021], so it’s amazing he can provide the feedback he does. He is very respectful and races how he wants to be raced.”

As a Late Model Stock driver himself, Yeoman has passed down his knowledge to Langley on how to approach different tracks in the southeast, particularly when it comes to saving tires and not making careless decisions when racing other drivers.

Despite this, Yeoman admitted he had plenty questions of his own while he and Langley prepared for the 2023 weekly schedule at South Boston. Not only has Yeoman never raced at South Boston, but last year’s Thunder Road Harley-Davidson 200 was the first time he had even seen the facility.

The first four races of the year have offered Yeoman answers on what Langley can accomplish against South Boston’s seasoned regulars. Yeoman is optimistic they can fend off Sellers for the title while also tallying wins in crown jewel races like the Thunder Road Harley-Davidson 200 and August’s Italian Delight Family Restaurant 280.

Yeoman said Langley would be a perfect addition to South Boston’s prestigious list of champions like Sellers, Philip Morris, Lee Pulliam, Frank Deiny Jr., David Blankenship and others, adding Langley evokes the same old-school approach he and many other short-track competitors have used to find success.

“Carter reminds me a lot of myself,” Yeoman said. “He’s not someone who just shows up to the racetrack, but he actually works on these things. When I was coming up, I was told if I didn’t work on the car, we wouldn’t go to the track. He’s not scared to get his hands dirty, and he offers tremendous help at the track.”

Langley is no stranger to blue collar work, as he balances out preparing Late Model Stocks with assisting his girlfriend’s family on their farm.

While the farm work is part-time for Langley, the hectic schedule has resulted in plenty of long days and nights. Yet the relentless, methodical pace of both jobs has only offered Langley more motivation toward perfecting his equipment.

“It’s definitely a lot of work,” Langley said. “I’m doing what I can to keep my car ready every week and try to do what’s best for me and my team. I want to make sure everything is in order so we’re 100 percent when we get to the track.”

Holding his own as the South Boston Late Model Stock points leader doesn’t intimidate Langley, either, even though Sellers is well within striking distance.

Langley has dealt with inverts and heated on-track action to score his three victories so far this year, but he also understands the task at hand with keeping one of South Boston’s best drivers behind him for 10 more weekends.

With an old Philip Morris car at his disposal, Langley does not doubt he will have the speed to contend for the championship. Achieving that goal will come down to whether Langley and Yeoman can consistently adapt until the final night of racing on Sept. 2.

“I definitely have a target on my back right now,” Langley said. “Hopefully we can keep having good runs, but I honestly like having a target on my back. It makes me feel good about our team and our efforts at the track. Personally, I’d like to keep that target on me.”

Langley has set the benchmark for the rest of the South Boston regulars to follow. He does not expect anything to come easy, but he’s determined to hold his advantage and become immortalized as a champion at one of Virginia’s most cherished tracks.