Inside Dirt Late Model Racing
Column: Wells getting behind wheel of Infinity
Sure, Eric Wells misses the thrill that comes with driving a Dirt Late Model. He did it for a good 15 years — and more than half of that time on a national level — so he’s certainly had a void in his life since he ran his last race in the division late in the 2019 season.
But if you think Wells is making a return to the cockpit this year, at the still-young age of 36, because he regrets his decision to walk away or feels a sense of unfinished business, you’d be sadly mistaken. The Hazard, Ky., native is putting his driver’s suit and helmet back on for a broader reason: Dirt Late Model racing has literally become his business.
Wells heads the fledgling Infinity Chassis brand, an offshoot of the Wells Motorsports parts and chassis dealer enterprise that he launched with his father and former car owner David’s backing as he slowed, and then shut down, his driving career. Infinity has been in operation for just over a year and Wells admits that he’s yet to aggressively market his cars across the Dirt Late Model scene, but he feels the time has come for the industry to “see and here more about Infinity Chassis.”
In that vein, Wells and his staff have constructed an R&D car — “something we built a little different,” he said — that carries the No. 18 he used throughout his racing days. Wells is going to drive it in a limited number of events in an effort to bring himself more up to speed on today’s Dirt Late Model world.
“I do have some past experience driving the cars, and I think it’s better for the business and my customers as a whole if I can jump in the car again,” Wells said earlier this week from Wells Motorsports headquarters in Hazard. “I’m part of every bit of the (chassis-building) process, you know, so if I can relate with (customers) what they’re feeling in my product, I just feels like that helps everyone to develop and make a faster car.”
Wells concedes that he’s fallen out of the loop as far as communicating about the “feel” of a car because he’s gone such an extended period without driving one. Throughout the 2010s he was effectively a full-time Dirt Late Model racer, but he hasn’t run a feature in the class since Sept. 28, 2019, when he finished fifth in a Southern All Star-sanctioned show at Smoky Mountain Speedway in Maryville, Tenn.
After debuting in a Dirt Late Model as a teenager in 2006, Wells quickly advanced to national touring in 2010 with the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series. He spent three years following the Lucas Oil circuit (finished 12th in points in ’10 and ’11, 11th in ’12) before moving to the World of Outlaws Late Model Series, where he earned Rookie of the Year honors in ’13 and registered two sixth-place points finishes (’13, ’14), two sevenths (’16, ’17) and a ninth (’15) in his five years as a regular.
Wells never broke through in a big way, however, winning a single feature with the WoO on April 28, 2013, at Duck River Raceway Park in Wheel, Tenn. He stepped away from series racing in 2018 and made just a handful of appearances in ’19 as his father shifted to fielding his team first for Kyle Strickler of Mooresville, N.C., and then Brandon Overton of Evans, Ga., from late-2019 through the end of ’24.
A growing family combined with the struggle and grind that comes with trying to carve out a living as a Dirt Late Model driver prompted Wells to park his driving endeavors.
“We ran a national tour for several years, but two little girls come along …” Wells said, his voice trailing off for a moment as spoke of his daughters Nylla, 12, and Lennox, 10. “They’re involved in their extracurricular activities, so for the past several years my weekends have been consumed by either being at a volleyball court or softball field. And I really do enjoy that a lot.”
Of course, Wells didn’t disappear from racing once he stopped competing. He shifted to building the Wells Motorsports business as he strived to make a career in a different part of the industry.
“Dirt Late Model racing is really all I know,” Wells said. “I went straight out of high school to racing full time, and I did that up until 2018. Priorities changed, children come along, and I wanted to be there for them and what they enjoy doing while still maintaining involvement in the industry.”
Selling parts and assembling chassis as a Longhorn Chassis distributor went well, but Wells decided the company needed to branch out further. That meant designing and building a race car of his own.
“We did the third-party thing (with Longhorn) there for a couple years and that was all good,” Wells said. “But at the end of the day, it being my business and my livelihood, I want to be involved in all aspects.”
Plans to dive into the chassis game “started at the end of 2023, probably September, October,” he continued. “Just with the equipment we got and the facilities we got, it only made sense, if this is what I’m gonna do for a career, to go all in and kind of be in control of everything that we’re producing.”
It wasn’t a seamless transition to building chassis. Wells called it “a way bigger undertaking than I realized,” especially after word filtered out during 2024’s Georgia-Florida Speedweeks that Overton was running the first cars produced by Wells Motorsports — they didn’t even yet have an official name — and Wells started fielding inquiries about his new offering. He had to cool his firm’s jets as he eased into the game.
“It wasn’t long after the cat was out of the bag that there was demand for the cars,” Wells said. “I wasn’t really ready to sell cars. This whole last 12 to 14 months has just been a huge learning curve, just getting educated on every part and every piece that goes into this, all the processes and sequences and different material properties. There’s so much more that goes into building a chassis than people realize, and I spent this time just trying to make myself as informed as possible before we really start promoting what we’re doing.”
Wells and his staff — now numbering 10 employees after he started the parts business with person helping him — are certainly spreading their wings. Working out of a 40,000-square-foot fabrication shop alongside the original 15,000-square-foot parts warehouse, they’ve settled in and this week will have Infinity Chassis No. 33 come off the jig.
“We’ve got more equipment being purchased and on the way,” Wells said. “Not only are we building our stuff, I’m doing chassis kits for other chassis manufacturers in the dirt and asphalt world, so the fabrication side has really grown outside the Late Model industry. We’re also doing powder coating as well.
“These (Infinity) race cars, we pretty much take them from the tube rack to the racetrack here under our roof. Everything gets done here minus a few key components. The powder coating, the body, everything’s CNC cut and bent. We just really have a lot going on that a lot of people don’t know about. There’s some people who have stopped in and checked us out and seen what’s going on here and I think they were really impressed with what we’ve been keeping a secret.
“I feel like we’re at a point now with our process and our fixtures, just the way we do things, where we’re ready to put these cars out there. There was a lot of things done wrong to learn where we need improvements at, so I definitely feel we’re at a point in this where we’re ready to promote a little bit and get more drivers involved.
“With the equipment that we have here I feel like we can comfortably build 50 to 75 cars a year,” he added. “We really don’t want to do any more than that. The chassis deserve more than one day attention when we’re assembling them. Right now our process, it takes us three days to complete a frame, and we don’t want to get much faster than that.”
With Overton’s departure from Wells Motorsports, Ryan Gustin of Marshalltown, Iowa, has effectively taken the mantle of Infinity’s flagship driver with his Todd Cooney-owned team. The WoO regular enjoyed a career-best Dirt Late Model season in 2024 with most of his success coming after the team switched to Infinity Chassis. Teenager Tristan Chamberlain of Richmond, Ind., and WoO rookie Dillon McCowan of Urbana, Mo., are also carrying the Infinity torch on the national scene while a growing number of Super and Crate Late Model racers both regionally and locally are using the brand, including veteran Brandon Kinzer of Allen, Ky., who at 47 is returning to part-time Late Model action after several years spent focused on open-wheel modifieds.
Wells is working to adapt Infinity to the increasingly intricate Dirt Late Model division.
“Just finding people who have the knowledge to run the equipment and use the technology is a big part of it,” Wells said. “We have 3D scanners, five or six different softwares we can do simulation with. Welders, the guys doing the sheet metal, guys doing assembly … there’s a lot of different job opportunities that we’ve been able to feed here.
“I think that’s where Super Late Model racing, it’s getting closer and closer to NASCAR. The majority of your teams running a national deal have engineers either on payroll or they have access to engineers daily. That’s kind of what we’ve been doing here, low-key, under the radar, is studying our chassis and the changes we can make and how we can make ‘em better from an engineering standpoint.
“And we’ve built some different chassis just looking at some different applications and structures, trying to achieve the most we can get out of a chassis. There’s a lot of trick pieces we can bolt on ‘em and do a lot of stuff, and we can band-aid certain issues, but my focus has been, if I can get these drivers two- to three-tenths (of a second more) out of a chassis, then this extra stuff we bolt on ‘em, that’s an even bigger advantage.
“Just with that year of experience with cars that we built, we’ve learned so much,” he added. “I honestly feel like being out of the seat and working with so many different people has broadened my knowledge of what’s really going on. Everybody in the industry is trying to get better and that’s what we’re doing. We’re doing it quietly, but I promise you we’re working.”
Wells sees his driving comeback as being part of Infinity’s evolution. He’ll be more informed about his cars, a fact he’s already realized after spending a recent day testing at Smoky Mountain with other Infinity drivers.
“There were several guys there and we got some different input on a couple cars we built here, and I was able to make laps myself to see how the industry has evolved, how the cars are different and the technology is different from the last time I raced,” Wells said. “And it was definitely different. It was actually hard for me to give an honest opinion because we built a car that was a lot different, but it was fast and showed some serious potential.
“It just gives me a different perspective with the education I have in the industry now. I’ve learned so much over the last five, six years. I guess being in a car, I was looking for different things in say 2016, ’17, ’18. I was out there just to make my laps and go as fast as we could, whereas this time I was really focused on the changes we made, how it may or may not be different, and what we could do to make it better.
“With the customers, I’ve learned that not everyone can drive the same package. That’s across the board in any chassis you get. I don’t think there’s one setup that fits every driver. So me getting in the car, I want to be able to help my drivers that like a loose car, my drivers that like a tight car … and if I can feel that, it’ll help.
“I feel like going into that test, I had a clean slate,” he continued. “I don’t feel like as a driver I’ve run 30 races and developed habits this year that’s gonna make me manipulate the setups, so I can kind of give my guys that have been racing already this year some input. I’m going out and driving the car for what it had, not manipulating anything with my feet, with corner entry or doing footwork or anything like that. I really think it was beneficial for all us who were there at that test. I definitely think it gives us momentum going forward.”
Wells said he’ll likely restrict his competitive appearances to mostly regional-level events within a three-hour radius of the Infinity shop. He does, however, want to enter his R&D car in some biggest shows — crown jewels at Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio, for example — and he plans to enlist guest drivers to climb in it.
“We’re gonna put some different drivers in our stuff and just get feedback from them, hopefully use their feedback to build a better product and have them showcase what our capabilities are,” Wells said. “I have no plans (to run major races). I’m gonna do a few races just so I can relate and be able to have a better conversation with the drivers about the product we’re providing. I think me having that feel, and seeing what the drivers are talking about, that’s gonna allow me to adjust our process and our builds to further help them.
“I don’t want to base what we’re manufacturing off of one option, because like what I said earlier, one setup doesn’t work for all drivers.”
Wells thinks he’ll run his first somewhere within the next month. He’s excited to get his first taste of actual competition in years, especially with his daughters showing an eagerness to see him in action.
“The youngest (girl) was still in diapers when I was (last) racing (regularly),” said Wells, who recorded the last of his 10 career victories in a co-sanctioned Schaeffer’s Bonus Series and Iron-Man Series event July 3, 2018, at Tazewell (Tenn.) Speedway. “Now they’re old enough to take trips and go to the racetrack and they want to see me get back behind the wheel. They’ve really encouraged me to get back in a car, but I don’t look to do any full-time schedule, just choose here and there.”
The Eric Wells who will soon take the green flag again from the driver’s seat certainly has a different outlook from the younger version of himself who traipsed all over the country to race.
“I mean, it was fun, it was exciting,” Wells said when asked about his personal reaction to turning laps during his recent test. “I guess it felt more rewarding being in a car, in a product, that we manufactured start to finish in this shop. I’m proud to get the opportunity to drive something that we built, me and the guys here in Hazard.
“I just feel like at this point in my life, in my career, I want to see this (Infinity Chassis) do good. It’s not just as a driver or a somewhat car owner, but for the whole business in general. I have a different ambition for myself at this point in life.”
Ten things worth mentioning
1. Wells has no doubt that his return to driving a Dirt Late Model has his father David pumped up. “I think he’s more excited about that than I am,” Eric said. “We sent him a picture of the 18 ride and he was excited. He enjoys seeing me out there, just the time we spent together racing for a father-and-son relationship over 15, 16 years I done it. I think me not being the wheel, he still loves being a part of it, he loves being involved, he has so many friends and buddies at the racetrack, but I definitely think it’s more rewarding for him to see blood in the car.”
2. Calling his father “by far the biggest supporter behind the whole deal,” Wells said he hopes he can nab some solid finishes to “just make him proud.” He expects his dad to attend some of his starts, though David doesn’t plan to return to Kentucky from his home outside Sarasota, Fla., until the weather warms up.
3. One of the most notable new hires for Wells Motorsports in 2025 is Tim Douglas, the longtime crew chief for Californian Jason Papich who spent last season as Ryan Gustin’s head wrench. He’s come on in an Infinity customer support position that sees him split his time between his home in Missouri’s Lake of the Ozarks and trips to the racetrack. “He’s definitely had more at-track experience (with Infinity Chassis) than I have,” Wells said. “We talked daily when he was helping Gustin. He’s done this for such a period of time that he wanted a change of scenery and didn’t want to do the road life full time no more, so it was a good opportunity (to hire him) because he was already familiar with our product and had a really good record with Gustin last year. The knowledge he can bring to the table, I felt it was a good fit.”
4. After deciding to skip last weekend’s World of Outlaws action at Smoky Mountain Speedway because of predicted severe weather that he saw along his travel route from Robeline, La., and the likelihood that Saturday’s show would be called off (it in fact was cancelled), Cade Dillard is now officially off the WoO tour for 2025. He’ll pick-and-choose his appearances for the remainder of the season, hopping between Dirt Late Model and open-wheel modified action (he has a business that builds modifieds). Dillard’s next competition: this weekend’s $100,000-to-win XR Dominator event for modifieds at Salina (Okla.) High Banks Speedway.
5. While Jesse Stovall of Galena, Mo., hasn’t started a Dirt Late Model feature in nearly two years — his last competitive action was last September in a super stock race at Monett (Mo.) Motor Speedway — the 44-year-old is planning to climb into a modified for this weekend’s XR Dominator at Salina. He won’t, however, be entered in a car carrying his familiar No. 00; he’ll run a red No. 502 machine in a tribute to his late grandfather Gilbert Stovall, who preceded Jesse as a racer.
6. Tyler Bruening of Decorah, Iowa, joined Dillard in bypassing Smoky Mountain’s WoO meet because of the rough weather forecast, which also takes him out of the mix as a regular on the circuit this season. He’s planning to run this weekend’s Lucas Oil Series doubleheader at Atomic Speedway in Alma, Ohio, and Brownstown (Ind.) Speedway, but the 39-year-old who won his first-ever national touring series feature with Lucas Oil in January at Golden Isles Speedway near Brunswick, Ga., hasn’t yet decided if he’ll chase the Lucas Oil schedule full-time.
7. How about Rick Eckert’s look for the 2025 season? The 59-year-old veteran from York, Pa., revealed on social media that he’s bringing back the orange-and-black No. 24 scheme that he used 15 years ago, rekindling some nostalgia from his days racing with his late car owner Raye Vest. His first scheduled start in the car is this Saturday at Port Royal (Pa.) Speedway.
8. I took note of a social media post showing that West Virginia standout Tyler Carpenter’s 15-year-old daughter, Jaycee, recently made her first laps behind the wheel of a Dirt Late Model in a practice session at Tyler County Speedway in Middlebourne, W.Va. A video from an in-car camera caught Jaycee excitedly telling her dad, “Oh my God, this is so fast!” According to Tyler Carpenter, Jaycee, who has raced a go-kart for several years, will make her competitive debut in a full-fender machine in April 4’s season opener at Ohio Valley Speedway in Washington, W.Va.
9. Speaking of practice laps, Brandon Sheppard of New Berlin, Ill., spent Wednesday afternoon with the Rocket1 team tuning up for this weekend’s Atomic-Brownstown doubleheader — the team’s first action since Georgia-Florida Speedweeks — with a test session at Skyline Speedway in Stewart, Ohio.
10. Best wishes for a speedy recovery go out to North Carolina racer Chris Ferguson’s younger brother and crewman Brandon Conard, who underwent Wednesday heart surgery to have a mechanical valve inserted. Conard, who on Valentine’s Day married the former Shelby Watson in Las Vegas, Nev., was diagnosed with a heart murmur last summer during a routine checkup and later was found to have a bicuspid aortic valve, which was causing his aortic valve to leak 50 percent and letting the blood flow backwards into his heart and enlarge it. His wife reported Wednesday night on Facebook that the approximately five-hour surgery at Duke University Hospital was successful and doctors were planning to have him up and walking Thursday to begin his recovery.
