ron.brown11

Kaden ran an ARCA West race last night ate the Bullring in Las Vegas. That was a surprise to me that he was running that race. He finished 9th. I don't know of the team that he ran for, so have no idea the quality of that team. But I'm glad that for him getting that shot. Hopefully he will get more chances. I also didn't have a chance to see the race, just the highlights today. Dylan Cappello won the race. He's a many time winner in the Spears Modified series, and has either 1 or 2 championships there too. That was a 1 off ride for him too. After he stopped running the touring Spears Super Late models & modifieds, he's been running both late models & mods there at the Bullring when he's in town. He works full-time for Front Row Motorsports, working on Zane's Smith's team. He's a really good young driver, and who knows, FRM has a history of hiring young talent.

It's been out there for a little while now, that Haillie is going to drive the Xfinity car for them in 2024. I wasn't surprised that AM Racing added an Xfinity team this past offseason, but I was surprised that Austin Wayne Self wasn't going to drive it. Their truck team seems to now be a rental, which isn't a bad thing, as it helps generate funding for the Xfinity start up. I haven't seen AWS behind the wheel much in the last 18 months it seems. Moffitt has done a decent job so far this season, considering that it's basically a start up team in its 1st season, in a new series. I know that Deegan is a contracted Ford driver, and they need a seat to put her in. But in 3 seasons in the trucks, and 2 in ARCA, she hasn't been "all that". Yes, she has 2 wins in ARCA, but she wrecked the leader on the last lap in both. In the truck series, her best seasonal finish was 17th, in her 1st season, and 21st in her second. If she tracks out the rest of the season as she did in the first part of it, she'll finish maybe 19th. I get that she is marketable, but so was Danica. Look at how many bad races & temper tantrums that brought. Hell, I'd love to see a really good/great female driver make it big, because it will be great for racing. I've seen nearly 6 years of Hailie's career, and great talent hasn't shone through unfortunately. What I truly worry about is this. If Haillie fails too, will teams and sponsors stop looking at female drivers? I hope not, but that's a real concern. As most drivers/teams at any level know, without sponsors the wheels stop turning. After Danica left Cup, Go Daddy seemed to drop off TV. It wasn't until about 5 months ago that they started showing up on TV again. And it isn't on a race car either. When trying to attract sponsors, drivers/teams usually face 2 obstacles. First is trying to show them how you can help them. If they've never looked at motorsports as a way to market, you have to make it very clear for them the benefits. Second, if it's a company that has been a sponsor in the past in motorsports, have they been burned by previous drivers/teams? When you look at the amount of money that Ford has spent on Haillie, there has been very little return on investment. ROI is the biggest concern that companies have when spending their marketing dollars. There are a couple of female drivers that I've been watching for the last couple years. First is Katie Hettinger. She has been very good in late models, and is sitting 2nd in the CARS Tour Pro Late Model series. She's very fast, wins, and doesn't tear up equipment. She's good enough that she's already in Chevy's driver pipeline, and she just turned 16. The other is Isabella Robusto. She's in Toyota's driver pipeline, and even in their TV commercials for TRD. Unfortunately she suffered a bad concussion going for the win, running a CARS Tour Late Model Stock race back in April. She hasn't made another start in the series since. Hopefully she'll be back soon. She too is fast, wins, and doesn't tear up equipment. There's a couple more that I've been watching, but the sample size has been limited. They aren't running full time, so time will tell if they can get funding to run full time. Ford doesn't really have a good driver pipeline system in place. Unfortunately they just let their best lower tier driver, Zane Smith walk. I think that will turn out to be a big mistake for them. He's fast, he wins, and he doesn't tear up equipment. Sound familiar? We shall see..

The CARS Tour "Old man" Deak McCaskill won the 125 lapper for the Late Model Stocks. Deak started second but led every lap in winning. What a drive. Pole sitter Layne Riggs, driving Kevin Harvick's #62 was second, and he had several times where he could have dumped Deak in the late going and didn't. Very classy in my book. Bobby McCarty finished third. Brendan Queen finished fourth, and Carson Kvapil finished with. Kvapil still has the points lead over Queen, but by a couple of points less then what he started the night with. There were a 3 cautions for accidents, but thankfully none that were severe. But 2 of them did have drivers looking for retaliation. Thankfully cooler heads or tough officials kept it from getting out of control. The first half of the race had Chad MCCumby running 4th behind Deak, Riggs & McCarty. All 4 were driving Ford Mustangs. McCumby was the only one that couldn't hang there at the front. Queen was in his Toyota, and Kvapil in his JR Motorsports Camaro. To add some fun to the night, the State Fair was very visible right behind the back stretch all night.. Being that this was a CARS Tour race, I was really disappointed that Kaden Honeycutt wasn't there for the race, bummer.He was listed in the 9th position in the points prior to the start of tonight's race Hopefully there isn't any issues between Kaden & Mike Darne. In the CARS Tour Pro Late Model show, what a race!! Nick Loden has been taken out of 4 races this year, especially the spectacular crash at North Wilksboro. This guy was in third or higher all race, after sitting on the pole. Go to FloRacing's site and can watch the highlights without being a subscriber. The top five finishers were all right there together at the finish, This was an awesome race!! The late model race was good, but the Pro Late Model race was even better,Loden wins; Cole Butcher 2nd, Kvapil 3rd and Katie Hettenger finished 4th. Unfortunately she has lost the points lead to Kvapil. She3 put on one hell of a drive to get that 4th too. While running 5th, she and another car got together and it dislodged her hood.She dropped to last after going pitied to have it reattached. She made a hell of a drive to get back up front

I forgot to post last weekend for the Late Model Stock Car class. It was the Valley Star 150. Kaden started about 12th. He was running in the top 12 most of the laps. He made it up to 8th for a few laps, then dropped back to 17th. He got tagged and spun, dropping back to about 26th. He then climbed on his horse, and drove it back up to 11th, and that's where he finished. #77 Ward & #22 Landon Huffman finished 1st & 2nd respectively. The last 2 laps were worth the race. It reminded me a lot of the Darlington finish between Kurt Busch & Ricky Craven, as they were both leaning on each other A LOT!). And nobody was looking for a fight afterward, There were 84 cars trying to make a 40 car starting grid. It was a good race too. The qualifying heats were a blast, as 42 cars had to go home if they didn't make a transfer spot. The guy I thought was going to win, Brendan Butterbean Queen started 4th, but had some moments, but made it back to 10th, just in front of Kaden,

Well Big Money Matt Hirschman may have missed 5 weeks with a broken arm, but he sure didn't didn't forget how to win a race. Austin Beers lead about the first 50 laps, and then a caution come out, Hirschman was running 3rd. He pitted and just screamed back to the front, about 19th position, then taking the lead for the rest of the race. With 4 caution flags in the last 20 laps, he schooled them all for the win.

Hey Nick Holt, in this you mentioned PECU. Is that Public Employees Credit Union? If it is, do you know when he left that employment? Depending on that, it's possible that my son worked for him. My son re-did all of PECU's hardware & software systems about 15 years ago. He was hired directly by the president of PECU, at the downtown Austin main office. For some reason the McLemore name sounds familiar, but my memory isn't that good anymore. I only saw this after I found out about the passing of your brother. I was looking to see if there was anything on this site about John's passing, and just after I texted you. As I said in my text, may God Bless you and your family.

That was a fun race to watch, as I hadn't ever seen one from there. It's very near the ocean (moisture), the surface is 20+ years old, and because of the ocean, there's a lot of sand on the track. Tire wear was significant to say the least. Queen was the pole sitter, and within 5 laps he was running 1.5 seconds a lap slower, as were most of the front runners. If a driver had the itch to lead, just move into the second lane and drive around everybody in front of them. Said driver would surely be passed sooner or later. You really had to pay attention to all of the comers and goers. Thank goodness the leader board tracker worked the whole race. For the second race in a row, Kaden had ButlerBuilt seats as a sponsor. Glad to see someone giving them some backing. He also ran the 02 truck again last week. Haven't read anything to indicate that was going to continue. Too bad he cut down a right rear early, and I think he ended up last. I can personally attest to what sand does to race tires. We ran Goodyear slicks at Tucson Raceway Park, and yes that's in the desert. We didn't have an ocean beach sand, but there was sand none the less. Drivers had to be very careful if they were among the first to hit the track, as it was normal to see rooster tails of sand coming off the tires. If you rented the track, you always hoped that there were others that would do so too. One car would take forever to blow off the track, and no matter how many would be there, there wasn't any emergency services available (ambulance, fire truck, flagman, or wrecker). Occasionally the track would host a weekday event, aimed toward some of the local high school auto shop students. To get some race cars there for the students to see up close, they would entice teams to bring their cars out by allowing free track time. We would usually have some of all the classes, ie supers, limited LMs, mods, factory stocks, and hornets. There were no designated class practices, as it was basically a free for all. Everybody out there at once, and no flagman, or somebody operating the caution lights. Most never had spotters either. The good thing about it was that in just 5 minutes the track was blown off. The bad thing was the drastic differences in lap times. The closure rate for the supers and mods, over the factory stocks & hornets was crazy. It was wild to see the way some of them reacted when the fast cars went by. On more than 1 occasion I would see them go agricultural racing. Luckily I never saw anyone crash. The first time I ever did one of those track days, we had 4 mods show up. I think we pissed off a few of the super drivers, because we could nearly out run them. They ran 10" wide tires, while we were on 8" tires. They were only faster in the corners, we killed them on the straights. It was a lot of fun for sure.

Well the 125 lapper at American River. Queen started on the pole, but immediately dropped as low as 14th. to conserve tires. With 30 laps to go, Butterbean took the lead. On the last lap, Ronnie Bassett Jr nearly took Queen & himself out in turn 3. Bassett ended up 3rd, as Connor Jones made the pass when Bassett nearly spun while trying to get by Queen. Connor Jones is a teammate for Kaden Honeycutt, racing for Mike Darne Racing. Kaden Honeycutt started 9th. and fell back to 16th at 1 point, drove back through the field to finish 6th. Mason Diaz finished 4th, and Caden Kvapil in 5th. There were 3 cautions, two were competition, and 1 for a spin. The starting field consisted of only 20 cars, and that was the smallest field this season. The track calls itself a tri-oval, but for all intents & purposes it's a circle. It has good side by side racing, sometimes 3 wide. I really enjoyed the show....

Kaden is on the entry list for this weekend's CARS Tour race @ New River All American Speedway. He'll be driving the Mike Darne entry. Although he sits 9th in the points, realistically it's starting to look like Brendan Queen is going to be the only driver that has a chance of beating Carson Kvapil for the championship this year. I also read that Kvapil is getting to race a truck series race soon. Queen is 41 points behind Kvapil, and Mason Diaz is 100 back. I think that they only have 5 races left in the season. I received my Sept issue of Speedway Illustrated this week. Brendan Queen is on the cover. I hope that doesn't turn out to be a curse. There are only 20 cars listed on the pre-registration list. If that's all of the entries, this will be the smallest number of cars for a CARS Tour race this season. There have been some heavy crashes in the last 4 races unfortunately. Over half of the races this season, they have sent cars home that didn't make the field. I've never seen a race from New River, so I don't know anything about it, other than it's a 4/10 mile track. Hopefully it will be a good show, and more cars.

I was bummed to see that Honeycutt wasn't on the entry list for the Locked In 150 @ Florence Speedway Friday night. The winner of that race will get to start on the pole for the South Carolina 400 there in Nov. He also didn't race the show @ Wake County last Sat. I don't know if the Mike Darne race team didn't plan on running these shows, or if something has happened to keep them from running. Darne had the team car (Andrew Grady) at Wake Co. and is also not on the entry list for this race. I know that this race isn't a CARS Tour sanctioned race, and hope that they are going to run this show. If my memory is working today, Kaden ran the SC 400 last year for Darne. Hopefully the track & the local area won't have flooding in the area from the hurricane. This race was scheduled for tonight, but moved to Friday because of it. More than anything, I hope all those folks are safe. The race can always be rescheduled.

I was really surprised, as there were 6-7 cars that ran out of gas. There wasn't an exorbitant amount of caution flag laps. I really don't think Landon Huffman had anything for Honeycutt if that didn't happen. They were allowed to add fuel during the controlled caution, so I don't get it with so many running out. Top teams too! I wasn't able to watch last Saturday night's CARS Tour race live. I wanted to watch Daytona instead. I had forgotten just how bad those rollover crashes there could be there. Unfortunately Ryan Preece reminded us all. I have been following his career for several years now, and absolutely love seeing him run a Tour type modified. I'm pretty sure that I didn't breathe until he popped his head out of that car. My wife doesn't like racing much, and was sitting at her computer in the living room. I said I thought to myself, this is bad. "What" she said, which surprised me. I really didn't think that I had actually voiced it out load. Then they showed the replay. "Oh no" was all she said. I can't tell you if she breathed, but I'm pretty sure I didn't until he got out. I'm sure that the sprint & midget drivers/fans will say "So what, that happens all the time at our races", and that's true too. But inertia is quite a bit different when a car weighs 1100 pounds vs 3500 pounds.

Haden took the lead, and with 6 laps remaining he too ran out of gas. Landon Hufman went on to win it BUMMER!

The yellow is out with 9 laps to go. Kaden is leading, but he and Landon Huffman have beeb side by side for 7 laps. Coming to the green flag

With 20 laps to go, McQueen was leading, and then ran out of gas. Your new leader is Butterbean!!

35 laps to go and Honeycutt is up to 3rd!!!

With 40 laps to go, Honeycutt is back upon to 7th. What to roll Kaden!! He's up to 5th now, with 38 laps to go. Another yellow.

It just got worse. With cars going 3 wide, Kaden Brown spins. Honeycutt got squeezed into the wall and spun. Funny thing is, he passed those 3 cars that spun, so he's now scored 3 positions higher then before his spin.

Well that re-start didn't go good for Kaden. He re-started 8th, and got shuffled back to 19th. Hopefully he can climb back up there.

With 113 laps down, Kaden is running 8th. Mason Diaz took over the lead 5 laps ago. On the second controlled caution, Brendan Queen got put to the tail of the field, for taking about 30 seconds too long on pit road. No mater, he's running 6th at this controlled caution. For these past 2 controlled cautions, Kvapil has needed a push to get restarted. Not sure what's going on, but the car seems to be running ok once it re-fires. We'll see if it makes all of the laps.

Kaden started 15th in the 200 lapper at Tri-County. Sixty laps in he running 6th. So far, Carson Kvapil has led nearly all of the laps.

Unfortunately Matt broke his arm in the Thompson 150 race on Wed night. He was involved in a 5 car crash on the backstretch. The video didn't show any of his impact, and his car showed no damage on the left side. So I'm guessing that he got into the outside wall, but nothing looked askew as it rolled to a stop. But he didn't drop his window net once stopped. the announcers never followed up. He broke his ulna bone, and is going to have surgery on Monday. I love watching him race, very clean & cerebral. In all of the races that I've seen him run, only 1 time did I ever see him get into a back & forth situation with another driver. That was at New Smyrna back in Feb. I think Patrick Emerling was trying to impress a new car owner, and decided he was going to move Matt, and did so blatantly. I was surprised that Matt took the opportunity to repay the favor. Then on a restart, Emerling did a huge slide job in turn 1. Matt rolled out of the throttle a bit, then gassed it up. He didn't put him in the fence, but let's just say that Emerling didn't get close enough to try anything again. Matt won, as he did every single race there in Feb. Hopefully he won't be out too long, but the ulna is a bit harder to heal, as it's the bigger bone of the two.

I just read an article on Frontstretch.com. It was titled "Three Drivers That Deserve A Better Look". Number 1 on that list was Kaden Honeycutt. I wasn't surprised, and was also very happy for him. Second was Layne Riggs, and third was Matt Mills. I watched a lot of Layne's national championship races last season, he's really good too. I haven't seen Matt Mills run much, but what I've seen was very positive. I hope that they all will get decent rides, to see if they do have what it takes to get to the top. From what I've seen of Kaden & Layne, I think they do. They just need someone to take a chance on them.

Kaden is running the CARS Tour race at Tri-County Speedway on Sat. That would be a great payday for them. Jared Fryar will be there too. Layne Riggs will also be there in the Harvick #62 again. As there are 35 entries for that race, somebody probably isn't going to get to race. The track is a 4/10 mile in length, so I'd be surprised if everyone starts. If they do start them all, traffic will be a constant all race long. Hopefully it will be a good clean race.

I can't say anything to that. I don't think I've seen him race, but I could be wrong. But the fact that he supports Kaden so much, that would lead me to believe that he was a racer. Because it sure doesn't sound like Kirby is 1 of those rich daddies that can afford to buy Kaden a ride. I wish he could, because I believe Kaden has the talent to race at higher levels. He always seems to run upfront, doesn't tear up his equipment, and wins some. Too bad I didn't win that $1.5 billion last week!!

But there is 2 businesses that use the same address, and he's listed as the manager of both. The other place is Trailertech LLC.