Brenden Queen, Lee Pulliam Running it Back in 2024

There will be many more Waffle House celebrations in the future for Butterbean and Lee Pulliam Performance.

Brenden Queen will continue to drive for team owner Lee Pulliam across CARS Tour and other Late Model Stock events after a successful inaugural campaign together. This is a partnership that has already produced seven wins over the past calendar year with three in CARS Tour plus victories in the South Carolina 400 at Florence and the Battle of the Stars at Coastal Plains.

With one more CARS Tour race on the schedule, next weekend at Caraway, the pairing still has an outside shot to unseat Carson Kvapil in the standings. No matter what, they’ll have a chance at a championship and more victories next season too.

“From the start, we built a good working relation and we just kept tabs throughout the year,” Queen told Short Track Scene. “He said he would like to have us back and we said we would like to back. We always kept the door open for the right opportunities if something in NASCAR came along but we definitely wanted to be back here again.”

Queen, 24, has been in the Late Model Stock game for a decade but rarely ventured away from his home track at Langley Speedway until the past couple of years. As a result, he had never raced most of the tracks on the tour until this season and the chance to run it back with experience excites both Queen and Pulliam greatly.

“Take Hickory and Ace, never seen them before,” Queen said. “I went from qualifying outside the top-10 to the front row and leading laps. It sounds crazy but we don’t get a lot of practice so I was just a little behind.

“We built a new car for this season too, so Lee would tell you we were probably a little behind on getting a notebook figured out too. But we’ve really come around the second half of the year and a lot of that is just me seeing these second tracks again.”

Pulliam says Queen is one of, if not the most positive people he has ever met, something very much on-brand for anyone who has ever met Butterbean. Case in point is that they likely would be leading the championship standings if not for running out of gas in the $30,000-to-win Old North State Nationals at Tri-County — a byproduct of an unbelievable number of caution laps.

“The most impressive thing to me, is just how he carries himself,” Pulliam told Short Track Scene. “I’m sure he wanted to throw up at Tri-County but he never said anything negative at all. The car could be in left field but he would apologize to us and say he needs to be better when we probably needed to be better on that night.

“He keeps everyone’s morale up in a way that I just haven’t seen in racing. He is extremely talented but never lets it get to his head and is always thinking about ways he can be better.”

The partnership will continue with support from veteran racer John Staton’s Best Repair Company, Inc. in Virginia. Queen started racing Staton’s dirt car last season and the relationship expanded to this Late Model Stock program.

Paired with Pulliam, the combination has become one of the best programs in Late Model Stock racing.

“You think you know how hard Lee works when you race against him,” Queen said, “but them you join his team and you realize its next level beyond your wildest thoughts. He never stops working or thinking about how to make his team better.

“It’s like, no wonder he kicked our asses over the years, and now I get to race for that guy. His work ethic is incredible.”

In his first CARS Tour season, with Pulliam, Queen has also taken advantage of the FloRacing broadcast partnership with a series of video blogs. Winning at North Wilkesboro on NASCAR All Star Week was a national coming out party.

His merchandise is starting to be seen more and more at races throughout the region as Queen works hard both on and off the track to create a brand that can get him to the highest levels.

“We call ‘em Bean Nation,” Queen said. “The support is like a dream come true. You always dream about being a racer that people cheer for, and want to hang out with you after the races, signing stuff. I feel very fortunate to have that kind of support. I can’t thank Flo for what they do, with the blog and coverage too.”

Like he said, Queen hopes to race at the highest levels someday and is working on deals to maybe race in NASCAR next season as well.

“That’s the plan,” Queen said. “We really want to get in a Xfinity car next year. I wouldn’t turn down a good Truck Series ride but we really think those cars will be the best ways for me to shine. It comes down to support but we’re working really hard on that too.”

For now, Queen just hopes to win as much as he can over his final three starts, at Caraway in the CARS Tour final and return trips to the Thanksgiving Classic at Southern National and South Carolina 400.

“I’m very confident we’re going to have good cars,” Queen said. “Lee has been one of the best and (crew chief) Doug Powers has done a great job coming over to these Late Model Stock Cars.”

Look for Queen and LPP at a Waffle House near you for the next 15 months.

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