What did it take Justin Whitehead to win two USRA national championships this year? Three cars a division and two crew chiefs, that’s what. He certainly didn’t take the easy road to his limited mod and factory stock titles.
Whitehead owns chassis shop Outlaw Racecars. He built himself a limited mod and a factory stock to start off the year. When Whitehead started winning races with them, people came calling wanting to buy them.
“People like buying proven used cars,” Whitehead, of Texarkana, Texas, said. “I found they are not interested in spending new money, so I built, won, and sold my factory stock cars through the season.”
He did the same for his limited mod in May. However, he didn’t build another one for himself after that.
“I found friend Andrew Rossum had a car without an engine and I had an engine,” said Whitehead. “We partnered up. I was just trying to get 20 races in to get some of the points money. We won the first three nights out.”
After winning his fourth race ever in the car, Whitehead bought out Rossum. Then, bad luck hit.
“My engine broke — I was ready to call it quits,” Whitehead said. “I saw I was running up there in national points so I asked my cousin, Bailey Turner, if I could drive his modified. I did and in the next three races I had a win, a fifth, and a second.”
The limited mod championship came down to the final race with Derick Grigsby at Sabine Speedway in Many, Louisiana.
“Derick had to win to be champion,” Whitehead said. “Unfortunately for him, a broken water pump sidelined him.”
As much attrition Whitehead had with cars, he also had with crew chiefs. Competing for a national championship isn’t easy.
“I went through two crew chiefs,” said Whitehead. “The first one, Ben Gilliland, quit halfway through the season. Andy Taylor then became my crew chief. Through the rest of the season my crew was just Andy and my wife, Haley Ann.
“There are not a lot of racers dumb enough to run in two divisions. It is terribly stressful. Unless you win, then it’s not too terrible.”
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.
