It was a little over a decade ago now that Cole Bruce went to Martinsville and decided he really wanted to do this.
It was the Kroger 250 and his dad, veteran Late Model racer Robert Bruce was making his Truck Series debut for Mike Harmon, and the experience just really resonated with the nine-year-old in a way that hasn’t yet subsided.
The younger Bruce made his own Martinsville debut last year, finishing 11th in his heat race and narrowly missing a main event transfer, leaving him feeling more resolute than ever in his return trip this weekend.
“Last year was about getting comfortable, learning the line and my braking points,” Bruce said. “I learned just how aggressive and intense the heat races can be. But we’ve got some good notes from the other TORP Chassis cars, and I have experience, so we’re really looking forward to the experience.”
Bruce has come on strong in the second half of his season at Langley Speedway with a fourth-place finish in his most recent race on September 9. They skipped out on the finale to prepare for this weekend but it ended a stretch of races where Bruce routinely raced near the top-5 against the likes of newly crowned NASCAR weekly series champion Connor Hall and six-time track champion Greg Edwards.
In hindsight, an incident in the CARS Tour race at his home track back in June, may have helped them find something. They had to reclip and really came away impressed with their new front end.
“It was a mixed season,” Bruce said. “That big crash in the CARS Tour race made us work on some things but we came away learning a lot about these TORP Chassis and I feel really confident going into the weekend.”
The Bruces are a definition family team, throwback in an era where more and more multicar teams are emerging as contenders at even the weekly level, and that they’re so competitive is a point of pride to the second-generation racer.
“So Connor dominated this year, and they obviously have learned a lot from Chad (Bryant) and they have access to more or less resources than we do and we just can’t pay for the information that some teams do,” Bruce said. “That puts us behind the 8 ball but that new front clip has improved us tremendously.
“Really, my goal is I want to be a driver for one of those big teams. I want to make it to that point but at the same time it means a lot that I can race this family car and doing it with dad, we make a lot of memories. It’s special.”
Bruce says he doesn’t have so much expectations as a checklist and it’s just a matter of trying to cross off as many goals as possible. They would absolutely want to win and that’s at the top of the board, then a top-5, top-10 and so forth.
“We want to make the show and a top-20 would be like a win to us,” Bruce said. “We finished 11th in a heat and we were good enough to make the race. So we want to have a good run and that starts with qualifying within the top-45, realistically, and then we can go to work from there.”
But again, so much about the Bruce operation and this weekend is about the tradition and experience of racing at a place like Martinsville, a chance for Cole to live out that little boy’s dream of racing at the paperclip like his dad did before him.
“It’s about family ties,” he said. “I don’t know that I have the words to describe what these opportunities mean. We get to race here once a year and that makes it kind of sacred.”
And for Saturday, it’s even more special as Bruce is dedicating this weekend to a family friend, BF Caricofe, who recently passed. Bruce also made a point to emphasize the support from partners Caricofe Towing and Auto Repair, Heflin Family Farms, Carlisle Home Inspections, Bryant Garage, Mid-Atlantic Towing, TORP and DP Performance.
