You shouldn’t be embarrassed over missing the three-time CARS Late Model Stock Tour champion because there isn’t a lot to recognize this weekend in advance of the season opening race at New River All American Speedway.
For one, McCarty stopped drinking beer and is down 52 pounds from where he was in November after making a commitment to his physical and mental health during the off-season but there is also a completely different racing operation behind the 32-year-old as well.
McCarty is now driving a family-owned No. 6 after a decade driving for the likes of Nelson Motorsports and R&S Race Cars where has won a second-best all-time 12 victories on the tour en route to the championships.
But now, everything is different, including his physical appearance.
“I made a lot of changes this off season,” McCarty told Short Track Scene before practice on Friday afternoon. “I just want to make sure I am mentally and physically right. We didn’t cut any corners with this car either. We took all the right steps to be successful and it’s just going to be about putting pen to paper on Saturdays and making it count.”
Even the chassis for McCarty is completely different, this being the first time he has driven a Forrest Reynolds Race Cars platform.
“There were a lot of reasons,” McCarty said. “It was about making sure we had support and help but Forrest and I have had a relationship prior to this, maybe not from a business standpoint, but we’ve always hung out at the racetrack and were always talking.
“It comes down to costs too in that this isn’t a brand-new race car but it is a new one and it was about how can I get the best deal on a car where when I show up to race, we can compete for wins and this car is where we landed. I’m really happy with it so far. It does everything we ask it to do so I just need to clean everything up on my end and be there at the end.”
‘When I show up to races’ is also new for McCarty as he says he is not going to chase a fourth championship under any circumstance this season. For what it’s worth, McCarty also previously said that this could change if the appropriate funding presents itself.
But McCarty did not sound like that really was an option when asked on Friday.
“I’m not committing to the CARS Tour, nope,” McCarty said.
It’s also worth noting that McCarty isn’t full-time this season because he says the cost to run this series has escalated from the range that he could afford on his personal budget based on the family auto parts business in Guilford County, North Carolina and his partners.
He has pushed back on the series exploring expanding its scope to Florida, Georgia and Central Tennessee. Ultimately, McCarty is a weekly series racer that won championships at a time CARS Tour was a hyper-focused Carolinas and Virginia series.
“You know, the series has changed and is changing and I’m not saying its for the good or bad, you know what I mean,” McCarty said. “It’s just not at a point where I am comfortable with it and what I believe it should be. I’m just a short track racer and I don’t want to be anything more than that.
“I think CARS Tour is changing from that way and maybe that growth can be a good thing but I personally just can’t commit to that, man. It’s a lot. It’s a lot of money when you have to start looking at the travel, the hotel rooms and now looking at going nine hours to Cordele, Georgia, it just adds up and adds up to a lot. That just doesn’t make sense to me as a weekly short track driver.”
McCarty said he is grateful for his partners ‘and the village it takes to run one of these things’ but that he can no longer commit to more than the nine or so series races he is running this year and the other non-series events he will race instead.
He doesn’t want to burn out his help either.
“We’re just trying to keep it simple and have fun,” McCarty said. “I’m here to have fun. And when I say fun, I mean win, right? To me, winning is having fun but beyond that I want this to be enjoyable and for us to have a good time because we’re going to lose more than we win.
“When you start racing three or four weekends out of every month, that gets brutal and people get burned out and I just don’t want to do my guys like that. We’re going to keep it nice and relaxed this year and I’m just excited, man.”
McCarty said, halfway through this conversation, that he recognized that he was coming across as negative and that wasn’t the point. He just said he needed to be a realist about what his team and program needed to be under the McCarty Motorsports banner.
And to that point, he just kept using the word ‘excited’ because it feels like his earliest days racing alongside his dad and veteran racer Troy.
“We got Graphix Solutions, Jackson Construction, a lot of people that have stepped up and been a part of my whole 27 years of racing or whatever I’m at now,” McCarty said. “I have my parents shop on the car, which I haven’t been able to have for the last several years, and to be back doing this with my family is going to be a lot of fun.
“I have people that I know are going to bat for me, that I can trust, and we’re just trying to simplify some things this year. It’s going to be relaxed and I just want to focus on winning races.”
Matt Weaver is the owner and founder of Short Track Scene. Weaver grew up in the sport, having raced himself before becoming a reporter in college at the University of South Alabama. He also has extensive experience covering NASCAR, IndyCar and Dirt Sprint Cars.
