After a decade of building race cars at FURY Race Cars, which followed decades of winning races and championships at the highest levels of NASCAR, Tony Eury Jr.’s next act will come building Super Late Models at upstart chassis developer GMS Race Cars.
With the same foundation as GMS Fabrication and the former GMS Racing, Eury joins longtime racing everyman Mike Beam in the creation of a new platform for short track racers to compete nationally against the likes of FURY, HAMKE, Port City Race Cars, VanDoorn, Senneker, GARC and Toby Nuttleman.
Short Track Scene conducted a brief conversation with the racing legend on the day of the announcement which has been transcribed and edited for clarity below.
STS: What was the first conversation with GMS and what made you decide to make a change?
TEJ: I guess there were really several chats with Mike because they’ve wanted to get into the Super Late Model world for several years so we just had several conversations. We had a lot of success at FURY Race Cars but then Jeff (Fultz, who co-founded the company with Eury and Darius Grala) left (for Port City) and we just got to a place where growth stopped. I was looking to do something different but we explored maybe trying to merge GMS and FURY and when that wasn’t going to work out, I just felt like after 13 years doing this that I knew what it took to do this on my own. We have some loyal customers already and we’re hoping that a lot of them are going to want to join us on this journey. But I’m just looking forward to building something new at this stage of my career.
STS: On that note, what can you do to build something new when the Super Late Model platform is such a known commodity?
TEJ: There are a lot of things we can stilldo with these cars. But really, the (Port City) Phase II is a copy of the Hamke and vice versa but I really feel like we have the opportunity to do something different. We can offer more quality support, more data and analytics. We have CAD modeling, and while everyone does these days, we’re going to take it to the next level. But then you look at what they already have in place there, building ARCA cars and Trucks, you add Super Late Models to that pipeline, and no one else can offer that complete process for racers who want to progress within the same pipeline.
STS: How many cars do you expect to have on the track by Snowball Derby time?
TEJ: We expect to have around 10-15. We don’t want to go full ball But within three, maybe two-and-a -half months to manufacture the car, trailing arms and all the parts and components. Have a Prototype developed within three to four months, and that’s the thing, that we want to make sure that when we go to market, that we’ve worked everything out and have done the R&D legwork so the cars are ready to go and we’re ready to support those teams.
STS: Rackley WAR is already in house there at Statesville; are they going to be part of this?
TEJ: I would love for them to be part of this. Willie has a big following, especially at (Fairgrounds) Nashville in that area. I would entertain any conversations they want to have. It would be really exciting.
(Editor’s note: The Bolens in Alabama have a personal relationship with Eury and that is likely to carry over to GMS too)
STS: Any interest in playing in the tightly controlled PASS playground up north?
TEJ: We’ll play anywhere where the rules let us. We’ll take a look at their rule book, and I know they do some different things up there, but we’d love to explore those opportunities. We’re going to explore every opportunity for us to take our race cars to where the racer wants to run them.
STS: (Matt Weaver) and Chase Elliott, a bunch of us, we want to see Dale Jr. in a Straight Rail. Can you make it happen at GMS?
TEJ: We talked him into a test last year but it didn’t happen because Spencer (Davis) only had one car and we didn’t want anything to happen to it, but I think he wants to. I’m going to push his buttons and I think we have a good shot at getting him in a car. If nothing else, I think we can get him into one of our Pro Late Models so he can run a CARS Tour race in that kind of car.
