To say Brayton Carter had a busy year would be an understatement. He raced a total of 110 features in his sport mod and stock car.
“All I did this year is work, race, eat and sleep,” Carter, who makes a living as a Musco Lighting project engineer Monday through Friday, said. “I make it to most tracks within in a two-hour radius after work.”
He also won, too. Carter took 49 trips to victory lane, with 44 in the sport mod and five in the stock car. He also won two sport mod track championships, one at Marshalltown Speedway, the other at Stuart International Speedway. And Carter’s efforts earned him the IMCA sport mod national championship.
“More racing builds a driver’s confidence level,” Carter, of Oskaloosa, Iowa, said. “Sitting on the grid, you are worried less, less hyped up, less anxious. For me, the pressure doesn’t seem as high the more I race.”
A confident driver isn’t the only thing that makes a champion, though. Races are won in the shop, too. Carter said of the 70 times he raced the sport mod, he only experienced two DNFs, and only one resulted from a mechanical failure. The other came because of cutting down a tire.
“We work on the car every day,” Carter said. “Having good friends, Grandpa there all day doing all engine maintenance, is key. I do the gear, maintenance, and shocks. Lake Heaton is my tire man. We do 80% of the work on the car at night, after the races.”
A new chassis helped, too, with his sport mod. After campaigning a 2015 LG2 chassis, he switched to a new one from VanderBuilt Race Cars. Carter said he kept the setup primarily the same, with his major changes being gear.
“[The VanderBuilt] was very similar to my old chassis as far as grip level,” Carter said. “The difference for me is that the VanderBuilt steered better, making better corner entry while maintaining speed. Keeping momentum up is important in sport mod racing.”
Despite all this going for Carter, the championship wasn’t a cakewalk. His cousin Dylan VanWyk challenged his lead all year long. At the end of the season, VanWyk came within three points of the championship. The two competed at different tracks on Fridays–Carter at Marshalltown and VanWyk at CJ Speedway. Saturdays, though, they battled head to head at 34 Raceway. Carter said he beat VanWyk there six times, citing that as the difference maker.
“It was a lot of racing this year — it was kind of stressful,” Carter said. “Who is racing and where are they racing? How many nights in the season are we at? How many nights are left? Did it take the fun away from racing? Honestly, it did a little bit.”
For 2026, Brayton Carter will be racing a bit less. Maybe.
“The stock car was sold at the end of the season,” Carter said. “I don’t expect plans to change for us in the sport mod division next year — we’ll pick up where we left off. You never know — if I get offered a stock car ride, I may be back in that division.”
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.
