Corey MacQueen can now add driver to his racing résumé. At age 47, the longtime crew member and car owner raced his first feature last weekend at Eriez Speedway in Erie, Pennsylvania. The Russell, Pennsylvania, driver finished ninth out of 15 pro stocks.
“I always wanted to drive, but between jobs and work schedules, it never panned out until I met Wendy,” MacQueen said, referencing his wife whom he married in January 2022. “There seemed to always be the proverbial curveball thrown my way. Racing happened backwards for me. It was my wife who insisted that I put myself first and that she wasn’t going to let me give up on my dreams.”
MacQueen found a 10-year-old car built by Tobber Racing.
“This would be my fifth race car, and I never turned a lap in the previous four,” said MacQueen, referring to cars he fielded for others. “I was ready to sell it, but Wendy said, ‘No way!’”
He took an unconventional, yet quite traditional approach to his race car. MacQueen kept its leaf-spring suspension, went with a Ford 427-cid engine, and even had his car hand-lettered.
“My car [has] won more than 100 races,” MacQueen said. “I wanted to keep the leaf springs so I could focus on driving. I wanted to have Dodge power, but Jay [Ore, engine builder at 955 Automotive] steered me toward Ford … Fords have done well around here. I did not want vinyl [lettering]. An old-school car needed old-school lettering. Tim [Barron, who lettered cars in the 1980s,] was so excited to get the job.”
The first night for Corey MacQueen went well, considering.
“Because of how tall I am, I didn’t realize that I needed to adjust the pedals,” said MacQueen, who is 6′5″. “My leg cramped up. Then, my blower stopped working and my visor fogged up. I had to lift the visor to see.”
Corey MacQueen will give it a try again this Saturday at Stateline Speedway in Busti, New York.
“There are advantages and disadvantages in me starting to drive at 47,” MacQueen said. “What is better? To be young and energetic or be older and wiser? Both have benefits, and we have yet to see which one outweighs the other.”
Mike Adaskaveg has written hundreds of stories since the website’s inception. This year marks his 54th year of covering auto racing. Adaskaveg got his start working for track photographer Lloyd Burnham at Connecticut’s Stafford Motor Speedway in 1970. Since then, he’s been a columnist, writer, and photographer, in racing and in mainstream media, for several outlets, including the Journal Inquirer, Boston Herald, Stock Car Racing, and Speedway Illustrated. Among Adaskaveg’s many awards are the 1992 Eastern Motorsport Press Association (EMPA) Ace Lane Photographer of the Year and the 2019 National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) George Cunningham Writer of the Year.
