Mini’s Mission is everyone’s responsibility in CARS Tour

The race and charity is called Mini’s Mission but it has been embraced by literally the entirety of the CARS Late Model Stock Tour pit area.

Backstory: Ella Day, a childhood friend of CARS Tour contender turned NASCAR Truck Series rookie Mini Tyrrell was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2010. Tyrrell was six-years-old at the time and couldn’t comprehend the enormity of the diagnosis.

He just wanted to do what any kid who sees a friend in pain would do. Help.

“Ella was my father’s best friend’s daughter, and my dad and her dad grew up together, so we’ve all known each other forever,” Tyrrell told Short Track Scene last weekend at Michigan International Speedway. “We had a get-together at their house one day and I had overheard her parents talking about how hard it was that she was sick all the time.

“Again, I’m six-years-old so I’m struggling to process what’s truly going on, but I knew they were hurting. So I sat down with dad and wanted to know more about it, understand what was going on. He tried his best to explain what brain cancer was and what they were doing.”

Tyrrell was already kart racing by that point and asked if he could use his racing to help them in some way. That was the genesis of Mini’s Mission: Burn Rubber to Help Another.   

“I started doing beat the streets for donations,” Tyrrell said. “I would wear my fire suit at the grocery store and did lemonade stands in my drive way. I just did little things to get spare change in a jar that I could add to the pot.”

The awareness raised was so substantial that Tyrrell was eventually featured on the NBC Nightly News for his efforts. That caught the attention of Cup Series superstar, still active back then, Jeff Gordon back in 2015. Gordon brought Tyrrell to Richmond Raceway that season and conducted a joint press conference to boost their shared imitative. Gordon would eventually pitch in and match every dollar Tyrrell raised.

By the way, Ella Day was pronounced cancer free in 2015, too, making that year especially meaningful for a driver who was then turning laps in a Late Model Stock Car. Through Gordon’s charity, Tyrrell also began raising charity through a kickball tournament.

But again, Tyrrell has always been about raising awareness for pediatric cancer through his other passion, Late Model Stock Car racing.

“Jack McNelly (CARS Tour founder) was still running the tour come 2023 and said ‘Hey, we haven’t done a kickball tournament in a while and we still have some ideas’ and pitched to him the idea of bringing families that have a child that’s battling or recovering from cancer or other underlying conditions and bring them to the race track,” Tyrrell recalled.

“Let’s do a whole weekend and that’s how the Mini’s Mission 125 started. We started with 12 because back then CARS Tour had the Touring 12 program.” Tyrrell treats the families to a lake house, post-practice dinner and provides them pit passes and a race day experience for the annual race at Dominion Raceway.

What really makes the Mini’s Mission 125 work is how many of his peers in the pit area have embraced participating. A vast majority of the field will be paired with a family and kid this weekend and giving them a wonderful time is something they put a lot of emphasis on while in Virginia.

CARS Tour executive director Kip Childress says the series itself places a lot of emphasis on the event as well.

“I think, first and foremost, I’ve been super-impressed with Mini’s dedication to this,” Childress told Short Track Scene. “When I first came on, of course I had heard about it, but this will be my third year attending out of the four years it has been going on and to see the effort that Mini and his family puts into this I remarkable.

“And then from a broader perspective, I’m really proud of how much the teams, drivers and the Tour itself has taken ownership of it.”

For perspective of why it’s important for the entire community to nail this event for families, look no further than this race last year. The kid paired with Chad McCumbee lost his life during the drive back from the race that Saturday night. His name was Lincoln.

“He touched all of us in that short period of time, what we got to spend around him,” Childress said. “And to get that message a little bit after the race was over, we just really hope that we gave him a little bit of an opportunity to enjoy the last moments he had here with us.”

Brandon Pierce, who will soon become the all-time leader in CARS Tour starts when he takes the green flag on Saturday, says serving these families is more important than anything else that weekend.

“We all look at it as Mini’s charity but Mini and his parent, everyone makes it well known we all have an important role to play, buying into this and being on board to make this a special weekend for these families,” Pierce said. “I’ve told everyone who asks about this the same thing.

“Our worst are nowhere near as bad as what their best days might be. So it’s just very important to me that we reflect and realize a bad race, or bad year, a slump or whatever … we need to look outside of the race car and look at life, and how important it is that we are healthy and have a family, and not be battling a terminal illness.”

Pierce says he looks forward to meeting these families and actively communicates with them for weeks or months in advance of race week. For him, this is about so much more than just what happens in Spotsylvania, Virginia.

“I want to talk to the family or the kid and get a feel for how I can make the biggest difference when we meet up at the track,” Pierce said. “I want to know what they enjoy and what they find interesting. They’re used to getting in a car to go to a doctor’s appointment so I want them to get in a car and do something that is truly exciting and memorable.

“For at least one weekend, I want that family to be thinking of just taking pictures, making a positive memory and have back-to-back good days because I know those are hard to come by. I just hope I can give them a little hope, something to look forward to, or at least make not be so focused on the reality that they are a child with a terminal illness.”

Landon Huffman echoed that mission.

“There are so many things we as racers take for granted, like everyday life,” Huffman said. “This weekend is always a nice reminder that what we get to do is a privilege. I enjoy being a small part of the experience for these kids and most importantly, watching each of them smile and forget the battles they may be fighting daily.”

While the Mission is growing more with each passing year, Tyrrell hopes that his growing stature in the NASCAR community will also help this event continue to grow in equal parts. He now has Cup Series teammates in AJ Allmendinger and Ty Dillon but also veteran racers in his own shop like Corey Lajoie and Justin Haley.

Another teammate, Brenden Queen is actually already making his CARS Tour return this weekend and will be paired with a family as he has done for the past three years now. There may even be a universe in which this race could become something similar in stature to the old Denny Hamlin Short Track Showdown.

Childress certainly hopes so.

“I don’t know that we’ve seen the full potential of this, right,” Childress said. “Just because of what you stated there. And I think then it becomes a responsibility of all of us to see if we can make maybe this date fall on a more appealing date for some of the other national tours to maybe be a part of it.

“Obviously, the Tyrrells and the CARS Tour have a great partner with Dominion Raceway in putting on this event. So maybe with Richmond being right down the road, maybe it’s an opportunity to try to put it somewhere around that Richmond date kind of like the way Denny’s event used to be.

“But certainly, we have not seen the ceiling on this for sure but it is all of our responsibility for making sure that we take care of it, and encourage it to grow.”

Tyrrell spent last week in Detroit at the Stellantis and RAM headquarters where he first made them aware of his initiative to. There’s interest in the manufacturer joining in the mission as well. But Tyrrell really liked the idea of a modern Denny Hamlin Showdown.

“That’s a phenomenal idea,” Tyrell said. “And I think that as I continue to be in the Truck Series, and hopefully come back next year and do this again, that’s the goal. I want to make this a career, but also use it to build relationships to see if we can bring some star power to the Mini’s Mission 125.

“The more attention we can drive to the race, the more donations we’re going to get, and the more money we’re going to raise. Then, we can bring out more families and do some really special things for them. So I would love for this to become the next Denny Hamlin Showdown, but make it the Mini’s Mission race.”