Factory stock racer Blake Hull proves teenagers with $300 and big dreams can go onto becoming champions. He spent his first paycheck at 15 years old to buy a Monte Carlo in 2018. Seven years later, Blake won the DIRTcar factory stock national championship.
“I was interested in driving since I was 12,” Blake, of Butlerville, Indiana, said. “When I got a job as a shop boy at Harmon Construction, I knew what I would spend my paychecks on. My dad and I stripped that Monte Carlo down and stood that frame up against the wall of his shop.”
However, his father, Seth, had another idea. Seth gave Blake his car to race. In 2020, Blake sold his father’s factory stock to move up to street stocks. While he won a couple of features, Blake always thought of that Monte Carlo he bought years ago, still leaning against the wall.
“In the winter of 2024, I realized I had never fulfilled my dream to build a car from the ground up and race it,” Blake said. “I told my dad, ‘It’s time to get that Monte Carlo frame out.’ We bent bars, searched for a stock floor pan, sandblasted and powder-coated everything. We built our own body and ordered all the bolt-on parts we needed.”
Blake debuted the car in March at Brownstown Speedway. The factory stocks shared the card with the headlining Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series.
“Our goal was to go out and have fun,” Blake said. “It would be cool to be racing on the same night as Lucas Oil. Not only did we have fun, but we also won.”
That started of a string of three wins, two at Brownstown and another at Circle City Raceway. The success right out of the box got Blake thinking.
“The [DIRTcar national] championship was in the back of my mind,” Blake said. “I knew it would be a long reach. Those Illinois boys can race a lot more nights than I could. I knew I had to get at least 20 nights in.”
Blake raced Circle City on Fridays and Brownstown on Saturdays. By midyear, he earned eight feature wins.
“I knew I had to be very, very consistent in my 20 best finishes,” Blake said. “Just racing 20 races would be tough for me. I actually raced only 21 points races, so those top threes really counted.”
By year’s end, Blake Hull earned 14 wins and 20 top-five finishes in 21 races, giving him a 200-point advantage over runner-up Hayden Lamax, of Lake Village, Indiana.
“Since I was a little kid, I said one of these years I would get a big check with my name on it,” Blake said. “Now I feel very lucky. The championship’s meaning to me is that me and dad won with a car we built ourselves — we did everything in our own garage. We built the car, and assembled our own engines.”
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.
