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Chad McCumbee Builds On Successful 2015, Turning Left and Right

NASCAR fans remember Chad McCumbee as a former Camping World Truck Series veteran. Road racing fans recognize McCumbee as part of a championship-winning team in the Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge in 2015. To fans at Dillon Motor Speedway Saturday night, he was one of 19 competitors set to take the green flag for a 60-lap Late Model Stock feature.

McCumbee would eventually win the night’s race, driving his McCumbee Elliott Racing machine to a convincing victory. He did so with a car that was at least 15 years old, loaded up at the last minute for a good time on a weekend away from the sports car scene.

“We’re just wanting to come have fun,” said McCumbee before the race at the 0.400-mile facility just south of the North Carolina/South Carolina border off of Interstate 95. “We’ve got a good group of guys at our shop. Everybody at Robert Elliott Trucking, Robert Elliot and his guys, we’ve rebuilt a really old late model we had. The thing is 15, 18 years old.”

Despite the scheduling demands that come with his career in sports car racing, McCumbee still maintains a passion for short track stock car racing. Saturday’s race allowed him to show support for Dillon Motor Speedway promoter Ron Barfield, as well as scout the Pro All Stars Series (PASS) South Super Late Models on hand for the South Carolina Clash 125. McCumbee hopes to add Super Late Models to his oval racing fleet within the next year.

“We had a good opportunity to support Ron at this race and have a little fun,” said McCumbee. “No pressure, just having a little fun and testing the old piece and looking at these Super Late Models and figuring out how we can get one of these.”

“It’s something we’ve talked about for a while,” added McCumbee about possibly running Super Late Models. “With my schedule, and driving for Mazda and ModSpace Motorsports, it’s not a whole lot of free time. But any free second I can get, I want to be in a car. We’ve discussed what we need to do to get one of those and have a little bit of fun, maybe at the end of the year or next year.”

McCumbee’s racing endeavors experienced incredible success in 2015. In Late Model racing, he won a NASCAR Whelen All American Series (NWAAS) race at Myrtle Beach Speedway, while teammate Sam Yarbrough dominated at the historic Myrtle Beach half-mile. Yarbrough won 13 of the 19 NWAAS events at the speedway, as well as the Championship Auto Racing Series (CARS) Late Model Stock Tour 100-lap race at Myrtle Beach. That success propelled Yarbrough to his fourth Myrtle Beach Speedway track championship.

Meanwhile, McCumbee partnered with Stevan McAleer to win the Continental Tire SportsCar Challenge championship in the Street Tuner class. The duo piloted a CJ Wilson Racing Mazda MX-5 to class victories at Watkins Glen International and Lime Rock Park en route to the title.

McCumbee and McAleer also collaborated to form McCumbee McAleer Racing. In January, that team was first in class in a six-hour endurance event at the famed Sebring International Raceway.

Despite his remarkable success, McCumbee and his teams are not complacent. That showed in their strategy in Myrtle Beach’s opening race for 2016, the Icebreaker 200, when McCumbee elected to experiment with his car’s setup for the event.

“We ran last week [at the Icebreaker 200] and ran both cars there. We tried a normal package with Sam and I was on a completely different developmental package. It ended up not necessarily working out, but that’s what we’ve got to do to keep getting better. Everybody’s going to catch up, we’ve got to keep trying different things and making sure we’re on top of our game.”

McCumbee also understands that success is fleeting in motorsports, regardless of discipline.

“We had such a successful year. We’re very blessed. Last year, we had a great year with our Mazda program, and we had a great year with our Late Model program. That doesn’t happen often. There’s a lot more downs than ups in motorsports. We’ve got to count our blessings on that.”

In 2016, McCumbee and Yarbrough plan on spending more time traveling around the southeast and competing in larger Late Model Stock races.

“This year, we’re not going to stay in one place,” McCumbee said. “We’re going to move around, we’re going to travel around a little bit. We’ll try to spread it out this year and run a number of different places. We’ll run some of the bigger races with Late Models, have Sam travel some. Maybe come down here [to Dillon] some and support Ron. I don’t know that we’ll see Myrtle Beach much this year.”

If 2015 is any indication, that could be bad news for the competition beyond the reaches of Myrtle Beach Speedway.

Zach Evans is in his second season covering short track racing, A 2012 graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Evans is a proud alumnus of The Daily Tar Heel, the school's award-winning independent student newspaper.

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