Jeff Fultz isn’t any good at this retirement thing.
Of course, if you ask him, the long-time short track notable never retired in the first place. Instead, he just wears many different hats over the course of a given season. The three-time NASCAR Southeast Series champion most often serves the role of crew chief and consultant for FURY Race Cars but still likes to make the occasional start when it makes sense.
He opened the 2018 season with a third-place result in the Meltdown at Greenville Pickens Speedway and now he wants to be two spots better when he makes just his second CARS Tour Super Late Model start on Saturday during the $10,000-to-win Baker Distributing 200.
“I’ve always loved the slick racetracks where you can slide around,” Fultz said in a press release. “Myrtle Beach and Greenville are definitely two of the places I love and always enjoy going. We ran a modified race there not too far back and made up three laps, ran fifth or sixth until those guys took tires and we didn’t have any left. Plus, this is a CARS Tour race, and we really like to support what Jack and Chris have going on when we get the chance.”
READ MORE: Complete Super Late Model coverage
The car Fultz will pilot this weekend is no stranger to Myrtle Beach or the CARS Tour. Walker Motorsports has fielded an entry for A.J. Frank each time the Super Late Model divisions has visited the famous South Carolina facility.
The No. 54 Furniture by Walker Chevrolet will pay homage to Fultz’s All-Pro days when he raced the number to wins and championships, including his three series wins at Myrtle Beach Speedway.
“It’s hard to believe this is our first race together,” said Chris Walker of Walker Motorsports. “We’ve been friends for years, but Fultz wanted to run Myrtle and everything worked out with his schedule at Fury. He even wanted to run the No. 54, so we made that happen, too.”
Fultz is a definition mainstay of asphalt short track racing.
Once the Southeast Tour/All-Pro shut down, Fultz continued racing sporadically, winning races in ARCA and the Pro All Stars Series. Even now, he continues to spend pretty much every weekend at the track, serving as crew chief for the likes of Steven Wallace and Chrsitian Eckes at FURY.
“I wouldn’t say I’ve retired by any means,” Fultz said while cracking a smile. “I just don’t get to race as much as I’d like with everything we have going on at Fury. I don’t like competing against a lot of our customers, plus they often need us at the track, so that makes it hard to pick races to run.
“I don’t want to have an effect on their success because I’m at the track competing, too. It just all worked out this weekend to come to a place I love and I feel like I have a shot to win if everything goes right.”
It could be the start of a longer-term partnership, too.
“If all goes well, we’ll be back and doing this more in the future,” Walker said. “We recently sold one of our chassis, and now we have a brand new FURT car to go attempt to win races with. With Fultz behind the wheel, I feel like we have as good of a shot as anyone to win. I hate he can’t run every race for us, so we’ll be looking for drivers to run the ones he doesn’t, but we know when we unload we have a shot to win.”
The Baker Distributing 200 at Myrtle Beach Speedway is the second event on the calendar for the 2018 CARS Response Energy Tour. It marks the first time Super Late Models have hit the track and offers $10,000 to the winner of the race with some of Super racing’s biggest names expected to compete. With a live broadcast on carstour.tv., the event takes the green flag at 3:30pm ET with qualifying for both divisions starting at 2:00 p.m.
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