When Mike Hayes sets up Jimmy Owens’s souvenir trailer at Batesville Motor Speedway in Locust Grove, Ark., for this weekend’s 23rd annual Comp Cams Topless 100, memories of his first year handling Owens’s T-shirt sales in 2007 will come flooding back to him.

Stifling, sweaty memories.

“The way we were doing it back then was brutal,” said the 41-year-old Hayes, who joined with his wife, Amy, to take over Owens’s merchandising efforts the same season the Dirt Late Model superstar from MORE