One man’s trash is another man’s treasure, they say, and that holds true for Josh Cain. On used tires, he raced his way to a national USRA stock car championship.
“I like old tires,” Cain, of Rio Rancho, New Mexico, said. “I collect used American Racers wherever we go — I just look near the trash cans. The USRA modifieds, B-mods, and stock cars all use the same tires. Some racers throw them out after one race.
“I clean them, groove them, and sipe them the way I like them to be. I base my setups around old tires. Old tires don’t fire off like new ones, but they are good at the end of the race. There’s no better feeling knowing I just beat a driver using his old tires.”
Cain didn’t just win the national championship because of participation. He won 31 of the 38 features he entered in USRA competition. Cain also won the track championship at Vado Speedway Park.
“I realized stock car is the most competitive [division] driver-wise,” said Cain. “Money won’t win you races in a stock cars. Even the drivers that are not as fast are hard to beat.”
He added that he typically doesn’t point race, but in August he realized he had a shot at the national title.
“Then there was a 100-point bonus if you competed in the [USRA] Nationals at Lucas Oil Speedway — and we won the nationals last year,” Cain said. “They say don’t go back after you win a big one, but I did go back to get the bonus points.”
Yes, Cain won the USRA Nationals again and earned that 100-point bonus. The USRA national championship goes by a racer’s best 20 features. Once Cain nabbed 20 wins, he still did what we normally does.
“I race to win races, not to finish second,” said Cain. “If you are afraid to tear your stuff up, then you might as well quit racing. I’m not on the track to be a nice guy. When I got into the lead in championship points, I raced harder. I forced my way in wherever I could, threw sliders whenever I could.”
For 2025, Josh Cain will move into modifieds, racing a chassis from DeVilbiss Racing Chassis.
“Stock cars are fun, but you are racing for $350 to win,” Cain said. “Next year, I will race wherever the money is — in the modified division, both in USRA and USMTS. I’ll race my late model, and I will race a few stock car events, but I won’t dedicate the season to the stock car like I did last season.”
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.
