MIFFLINTOWN, Pa. — Right in the heart of sprint car country, an open wheel dirt modified chassis business found it’s new home. It took two years of planning to pick up and move Lethal Chassis from Mooresville, North Carolina to Mifflintown, Juniata County.
Last April, former NASCAR driver David Stremme and his wife Ashley, took just two weeks to pick up and move everything in the middle of a pandemic. Why Mifflintown? Ashley is a Juniata County native. The couple has been wanting to start a family and wanted to be close to family. In the summer of 2021, they found out they were expecting their first child.
As the business nears it's first year in Central Pa, the racing season continues to stretch. As the off-season, their busiest time, continues to shrink.
“Granted, we don’t race a ton out of the year. We maybe hit 30-races a year and with our off-season, that’s our busy season because that’s when our customers are ordering cars. So, we’re building,' said Ashley. 'Our race season never ends but I think even more so, if you look at schedules. Race tracks are starting earlier than ever. They’re racing later than ever.”
And that makes the winter, crunch time. Especially, for teams looking to kick off their season in Florida at the DirtCar Nationals.
“I go to Florida to one, get out of the cold weather and I enjoy the Daytona Beach area. The other is, when you look at racing here, in the north. Normally the racetracks are very rough. Conditions are extremely hard on the cars so I try to skip that," said David.
Although, Stremme’s own car is always the last to get done. Florida gives them a jump start to the season.
“We have customers, too, from all over the country that kind of come in there and we work together as a group to try and get better. It puts us a little farther ahead of, what we look at, the regular season around April or May. Somewhere in there when guys get going. We’re able to work of somethings and come back, refine it and see what we need to improve on," said David.
The company has over 220 cars racing nationally and internationally.
They won't have to make too many changes after a week at Volusia. David picked up his third career gator in the 4th feature at the 51st DirtCar Nationals; York's Rick Eckert finished 5th in that feature.
World of Outlaws
All of the All-Star’s shows were cancelled because of the rain but the Outlaws were finally able to race at Volusia. The 10-time champ, Donny Schatz won the opener Thursday night, with Pa Posse drivers Anthony Macri finishing fifth and Logan Schuchart seventh.
Friday, a heck of finish with Sheldon Haudenschild just forty-four thousands of a second over David Gravel. Hanover's Jacob Allen finished fifth.
Saturday, Gravel redeemed himself. He captured the big gator with Brent Marks, running a true outlaw schedule this year, has his best finish at Volusia in P2. Schuchart picked up the hard charger; moved up 13-spots to finish 9th.