This past week Brayton Carter earned win No. 100 and 101 in the IMCA sport mods. Most of his career wins came in one type of chassis — a 2015 LG2.
Carter started out racing his older brother Cayden’s Victory sport mod. Cayden Carter earned 30 feature wins with it. Brayton Carter, then 15, wrecked it hard in 2012 at Lee County Speedway in Donnellson, Iowa.
“My brother’s car is the only one I ever destroyed,” Carter, of Oskaloosa, Iowa, said. “In 2013, I got an old FR-1 chassis sport mod with leaf springs, and did not win a single race.”
The following season he got another Victory chassis, a hand-me-down from cousin Carter VanDenBerg. With it he won eight races.
“When Cayden bought a VanderBuilt modified chassis, I acquired his 2015 LG2 and chassis builder J.D. Gresham helped me convert it into a sport mod,” said Carter. “That’s when things started going well. I still have that chassis as a backup. It has more than 500 race nights on it.”
With it, the wins quickly accumulated, passing the 50-win milestone mark with ease.
“I liked that chassis so much, I found another 2015 LG2 in 2022, sitting in a barn with hardly any races on it,” Carter said. “The old chassis finally wore out, and the newfound 2015 replaced it, winning 15 races in 2022, and 31 in 2023.”
With a 2015 LG2, Brayton Carter has won five track championships, including three in a row at Stuart International Speedway in Iowa.
“It fits my driving style well,” said Carter. “I set it up and it wins. Why change?”
His most recent victories, No. 100 and No. 101, came at a pair of Hawkeye State tracks — Independence Motor Speedway and Southern Iowa Speedway in Oskaloosa. Brayton Carter plans to race his current 2015 LG2 chassis for as long as possible.
“The last [2015 LG2 chassis] was raced about 500 times — I drove it five years,” Carter said. “We’re about halfway to that with the new chassis. Hopefully, it won’t wear out too soon. I will try to find another o[2015 LG2 chassis]. I know as time goes on it won’t be easy.”
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.
Photographers
Scott Weber started photographing races while as a Lafayette County Speedway track official in 2012. In 2017 he went behind the camera full-time. You can find him in his signature black hat covering events in Iowa, such as at 300 Raceway and Independence Motor Speedway, and the Pro Late Model Series.
