Inside Dirt Late Model Racing
Column: Overton aiming to regain his confidence
Winning Jan. 30’s 14-car Hunt the Front Super Dirt Series feature at Needmore Speedway in Norman Park, Ga., didn’t cure all that has ailed Brandon Overton. Even the 34-year-old star from Evans, Ga., understands that he’s still working toward a return to his customary form.
But he’ll also readily admit that the $10,000 victory during Georgia-Florida Speedweeks is a good start.
“It’s just been a rough two years right here for me pretty much,” Overton said in the wake of his home-state triumph. “It feels good to just … win.”
Actually, it’s a difficult three-year stretch for Overton, who emerged as one of Dirt Late Model racing’s top talents in the late 2010s and became otherworldly in the early ‘20s. He reached double-figures in Super Late Model victories for six straight seasons from 2017-22, including 26 in ’21 and a career-high 31 in ’22 when he made history with a $273,000 sweep of the double Dreams at Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio (and added a World 100 win later that year as well). Overton’s checkered flag output in Super Late Model action over the past three years? A modest eight, nine and four.
That’s not up to Overton’s standards and he knows it.
“I’m good for a 50-grand a year or I’ll hit something around where I live at,” Overton said, assessing his recent performance. “But trying to run some of that Lucas (Oil Late Model Dirt Series) stuff and get out to different places that I ain’t run, I’m not winning 30 times a year.”
A regular on the Lucas Oil Series in two of the last three seasons with disappointing results — he finished sixth in the 2023 points standings (with three wins) driving for Wells Motorsports and seventh in ’25 (one win) running the Longhorn Factory Team entry for Riggs Motorsports — Overton is back on the national tour for a third time this year. He’s made a significant change, however; while he’s still racing for Riggs Motorsports, his run as Longhorn’s flagship driver has ended and he’s now overseeing the preparation of his equipment on a daily basis with the team based near his home in Georgia rather than Longhorn’s headquarters in China Grove, N.C.
Overton intimated that he’s “just kind of starting over again.” He’s getting back to the hands-on approach that’s always made him most comfortable, albeit this time with three full-time crew members supporting him. And he’s rebuilding the mental side of the equation — the aspect of his racing that he acknowledged has been lacking.
“My problem right now is that I have no confidence,” said Overton, a racer who’s never afraid to speak frankly about his mindset. “I have no confidence in myself, I have no confidence in my driving, my adjustments. You know what I’m saying?
“When you struggle, it beats you down. When you’re winning all the time, you don’t even think about it. You just go do it. Like, you don’t have to think about stuff … and the other night at Needmore, I was catching myself thinking.
“I remember when I was winning all the time, like, I’d go to Florence (Speedway in Union, Ky.), the North-South (100) or whatever, and you just go out there and it’s just another race. You just do what you always did and you make good decisions while you’re driving. Literally, there’s nothing going through your head when you’re winning all the time. You’re out there driving the hell out of having a good time, you know?
“At Needmore, I passed (Ryan) Gustin and I’m leading and I’m sitting there thinking, like, ‘Damn, am I hurting my tires? Do I I need to go faster? Do I need to slow down?’ ” he continued. “You start thinking about all this stuff in there, and that’s what I’m saying — I got to get back to my confidence in my driving for one, and then confidence in making the right adjustments, if that makes sense. Sometimes I think even if you make the wrong adjustment, if you have confidence, then you do better, as stupid as that sounds.”
Overton needed a reset after his ’25 campaign spent piloting the Longhorn Factory Team entry, a high-profile ride that not only accentuated any hiccups he experienced but also put him in the unnatural position of being a helmet-carrying driver. The cars were housed several hours away from Overton at Longhorn and prepped by veteran crew chief Anthony Burroughs.
“It’s almost … it’s just a lot of pressure off, honestly,” Overton said of leaving the house car driver position. “Like, that’s a tough car to drive. That’s just a tough situation to be in. Like, all eyes are always on you, and I think that’s kind of what hurts it. There’s so much pressure and you don’t want to do bad, and there’s a lot of smart people involved in it but it’s hard to put it all together, really.
“Everybody watches it, you know what I mean? When you don’t run good, everybody’s like, ‘Why does the Longhorn house car suck, and Bobby Pierce and Ricky Thornton are winning in Longhorns?’ But it ain’t always that simple.
“I think everybody understood that it wasn’t the right deal for me, it wasn’t the right deal for them,” he added. “So it was like, ‘Yeah, let’s just do our own thing and let’s just all be successful. If it takes us splitting up to make everybody happy and everybody to do good again, let’s just do it.”
Of course, the frustration of Overton’s 2025 season, which included a nearly six-month gap between his third and fourth victories, had him wondering if team owner Scott Riggs would even want to keep him in the seat. Overton was relieved that Riggs still had his back.
“I’m just glad I still have a ride,” Overton said. “I gave up a pretty big part of my life did to go do that (house car) deal if that makes sense — and so did Burroughs and everybody, it’s not just about me — so when it wasn’t going good, I kind of felt like I might be in a world of s---, you know? So kind of scary there, but like I said, it is what it is. And there’s no hard feelings between any of us. Riggs, (Longhorn’s Steve) Arpin, Burroughs, we all still talk, and obviously we still run Longhorns.”
Riggs has provided Overton the opportunity to run his team as Overton prefers, starting with basing it at a shop in Augusta, Ga., that’s on the trucking company property owned by the nephew of late Southeast Dirt Late Model standout Ed Basey, who was Overton’s childhood racing hero. And with Burroughs and Justin Tharp leaving the team to work for Ricky Thornton Jr. at Koehler Motorsports, Overton has assembled his own three-man crew that includes Ryder Cantillo, the lone holdover from ’25; Nick Hardie, a veteran mechanic who spent much of last season with Thornton at Koehler Motorsports; and Josh Zimpel, a successful WISSOTA Late Model racer from Minnesota who has signed on to handle the team’s tire preparation.
“I mean, obviously, I’m more comfortable being able to work on the cars, just because that's the way I’ve always done it, you know?” Overton said. “That's the key. I gotta have it down here, and you gotta have people to help you. Fortunately, Scott gives me all that. I got a good little crew, and it’s all back here.”
Overton even has a fourth set of hands helping him throughout Speedweeks in D.J. Williams, the young Maryland native who now lives in Georgia and operates his own consulting business after traveling the circuit for a couple years as a tire specialist at SSI Motorsports.
“D.J. went with us last year to Speedweeks when Ryder started,” Overton said. “The year before that D.J. was with Burroughs, so Burroughs wanted D.J. to kind of teach Ryder the ropes on the tires. So the guy that I have working for me this year (Zimpel), he’s never really done tires on this level, so I was like, ‘That worked out good last.’ Ryder's good as hell on them tires now, so I just got D.J. to come in for Speedweeks and go to all these races and he can help speed Josh up so then we don’t have to train him.”
Overton has put his full focus on rebounding in a big way this season. He bypassed January’s Rio Grande Waste Services Wild West Shootout at Central Arizona Raceway in Case Grande, Ariz., to make sure he was ready for Speedweeks.
“We committed to go to the Wild West Shootout before we all split up (with the Longhorn Factory team),” Overton said. “Well, then we split up, and then we had to build three cars. I didn’t even know where we was going to keep all this stuff, and we had to go get it out of North Carolina.
“And when we went tested (last month at Volusia Speedway Park in Barberville, Fla.), we really just had two cars ready to go. We weren’t even really ready. If we would have went to Arizona would have been so far behind. I mean, I wanted to go out there, but it’s just like, man, especially this year, there’s just no time. If we were going to go to Speedweeks and try to be competitive or whatever, like, I felt like we needed to just focus on getting all of our s--- back and organized in some kind of shop and try to try to get us some cars and stuff built up for the year.”
Overton didn’t start ’26 in especially memorable fashion at Volusia’s recent World of Outlaws Late Model Series-sanctioned Sunshine Nationals — he recorded finishes of 12th, 13th and eighth — but he saw positive signs underneath the final results.
“The only good thing about Volusia was that we can unload with speed again, you know what I mean?” Overton said. “Like, we’re fast as hell early (in qualifying), and that’s half the battle. I know it sucks going backwards in features, but like, just having raw speed, no matter where you go in the country, to unload and get on the front row of a heat, that’s important, you know? So we got that part down.”
Overton just needs to complete the picture. He’ll have more tuneups over the next two weeks — this weekend’s Southern All Star-sanctioned Winter Freeze at one of his favorite tracks, Screven Motor Speedway in Sylvania, Ga., and Feb. 9-14’s DIRTcar Nationals at Volusia — to hopefully be clicking when the Lucas Oil Series campaign begins Feb. 19 at All-Tech Raceway in Ellisville, Fla.
As lukewarm as Overton has always been about running a national touring series, he craves success on the Lucas Oil circuit to match what he accomplished during his prolific years that now seem so long ago.
“I’m not crazy about (national touring), but I never was crazy about it because I never had the (proper) help” until last year, Overton said. “So if you got a good enough team to give you some help, it’s not so bad, and it is fun, and it is … I mean, that's the cream of the crop and you want to compete against them, so if I got people that are gonna help me do it, I got to get serious about it and go try to win one.
“I know I know we can do it,” he added. “I’m going to be all right. I got to. Like, I’ve done it. It’s what I do. I’ll figure it out somehow.”
