A few years ago, Braeson Fulton was chasing his dream of becoming a Major League baseball player. When injuries curtailed that effort, he went racing. Now Fulton’s a winning late model driver looking for his first victory in the American All-Star Series Presented by PPM Racing Products.
Fulton grew up watching his father, Justin, wheel dirt late models in Oklahoma. However, when money got tight for the family, Justin encouraged his son to pursue baseball.
“I caught on pretty quick,” said Fulton, of Staunton, Virginia. “My junior year of high school, I talked with pro scouts from the A’s, the Giants and the Royals. I got a scholarship at 15 years old to go to JMU [James Madison University].”
Injuries, however, hurt his chances of playing in the big leagues. The final straw was when he tore a UCL. This requires the dreaded Tommy John surgery for any hope of returning Fulton back to the form that caught the scouts’ attention. That means a lengthy, months-long recovery process. Even catchers need to throw, but Fulton tired of going under the knife.
“I looked at my dad, I was like, ‘Man, I need something to do,’” Fulton said. “Racing has always been badass, so I wanted to be a race car driver.”
Just because Braeson Fulton is a third-generation racer, it didn’t mean it came naturally for him, though. He first got into a car in the middle of 2022, right after he got hurt.
“I didn’t know how to turn it on,” said Fulton. “I didn’t even know how to put it in gear. It was an eventful year.”
Fulton said that his elbow doesn’t cause him any pain while in a race car. Once he got into the swing of things, he did find parallels between catching and steering a late model.
“Just the sheer hand-eye coordination that comes from trying to catch a ball traveling at 95 mph every day, I want to say that helps me in a race car,” Fulton said. “You got to function at a high rate of speed, but you still got to be able to think through the chessboard of the [baseball] game. There’s a lot of comparisons to that to racing. At the end of the day, you get into the cockpit and do things at a high rate of speed, but you still got to be able to think through things. You got to anticipate what the guy’s thinking you’re going to do and be able to switch it up on the fly.”
That baseball training seems to be paying off in racing. He’s won four times this year and leads the point standings at Natural Bridge Speedway in Virginia. Braeson Fulton hopes to transition that success to when the American All-Star Series Presented by PPM Racing Products rolls into his home track this Friday, August 30. After that, he intends to follow the series throughout the weekend, racing at Beckley Motor Speedway in West Virginia on Saturday, August 31, and then Wythe Raceway in Rural Retreat, Virginia, on Sunday, September 1.
Outside Groove Note of Transparency: Outside Groove is a sponsor of the American All-Star Series. The American All-Star Series paid for the production of this article. The content is not subject to the approval of the American All-Star Series.
The Outside Groove Executive Editor has covered motorsports since 2000. His many awards include the 2019 Eastern Motorsport Press Association (EMPA) Jim Hunter Writer of the Year and the 2013 Russ Catlin Award for Excellence in Motorsports Journalism.
