Inside Dirt Late Model Racing
Fulfilling trip to Eldora for Juiceman
Some five months of racing remain on Dalton Cook’s 2026 agenda, so plenty of opportunities for memorable moments still lie ahead. But no matter what the 33-year-old driver from Columbus, Ga., accomplishes, he will have a hard time topping the soaring satisfaction of his recent trip to Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio, for Dream XXXII.
Cook didn’t even compete in Saturday’s Dream finale program — he opted to scratch and head home early because he was buried deep in a heat-race field after failing to turn a qualifying lap on his preliminary night — but he nonetheless was thrilled with his performance. That was perfectly clear from his glowing disposition following both June 3’s FloRacing Night in America event and his Dream prelim outing the next evening.
There was Cook both nights, standing behind his No. 44D machine in the emptying Eldora pit area, still wearing his uniform and just absolutely glowing over his finishes of 14th (from the 23rd starting in the 50-lap FloRacing feature) and 13th (from 21st in the 50-lap prelim).
After the Wednesday run, Cook, whose only previous visit to Eldora was for last year’s World 100 during which his lone feature start was a 23rd-place finish in a Friday prelim, spoke like a racer who had won the race.
“That’s what’s funny about it, is when you go into something, have no expectations,” said Cook, who was the only driver parked on the front side of Eldora’s infield pit area without a stacker trailer (he hauls a standard, single-car enclosed trailer). “You’re just like, ‘Just don't tear it up. Don’t knock the spoiler off. Just keep it clean.’ And it just ends up working out, and it’s just like, it’s great. I mean, you know what I mean? Like, I’m so ecstatic, so pumped. Stoked, man. It’s so awesome.”
The immediate thought that was swirling through Cook’s brain? A gratifying late-night dinner stop.
“I guess we’re going to get Waffle House, and man, that All-Star is going to be so good, man,” the loquacious Cook said, referring to the restaurant’s signature breakfast platter that includes a waffle, two eggs, meat, a choice of grits, hash browns or sliced tomatoes and toast with jelly. “It’s going to be so good, man. Like, I’m just going to be watching the replay (of the race) while I’m eating it. I mean, it’ll be me getting lapped, but I’m going to watch myself. It’s awesome, man.”
Twenty-four hours later found himself in an almost identical mood. His spirits might have been raised by the circumstances of his night, which began with a busted radiator during hot laps that caused him to miss time trials while making repairs.
“In a weird way, I feel almost higher than the high that I had last night, because I knew what I felt when that radiator situation happened. I said, ‘Oh, my Lord, you can’t not qualify. That’s terrible,’” Cook said after the Thursday action. “So, yeah, I mean, after being in that position and where we are now, one spot better than last night … I didn’t really think I could recreate that feeling. But I mean, I’m feeling just as good.”
The Dream was an uplifting, confidence-building experience for Cook, a true underdog who has dug deep over the past decade to build himself into a solid regional contender. A married father of a 4-year-old son, he’s said he’ll “do whatever it takes” to “grind and hustle a dollar” in pursuit of Dirt Late Model success. For Cook, that means making his living in the industry with his own wrap business and, more recently, his start-up technical consulting enterprise, Juiceman Speed, where he offers Fox Shocks service and works closely with local racers.
Cook has quietly built up a strong on-track resume, steadily stacking accomplishments: first Super Late Model win in 2020, first touring victory in ’21, first Southern All Star Dirt Racing Series triumph in ’22, career-high $20,000 Hunt the Front Super Dirt Series score in ’24 at Swainsboro (Ga.) Raceway, Southern All Star title in ’24, three overall checkered flags last year. And now he’s added more promise to his endeavors thanks to an association with Chris Mullinax, a longtime car owner from Birmingham, Ala., whose arrival in Cook’s realm has allowed the driver to broaden his horizons.
“It’s exciting because up to this point, it’s been all myself,” Cook said of his owner-operator status. “And I can tell, like, the way racing was heading and trending, like, dude, I’m starting to really run thin. That’s why I started building shocks because I had to find a supplemental way to keep it going.”
Now with Mullinax, 62, by his side, “we just kind of combined our stuff up,” Cook said, giving him “much more opportunity to do some other stuff” — like making a serious attempt at an Eldora crown jewel.
Cook met Mullinax through Josh Adkins, a racer from Talladega, Ala., who serves as Cook’s right-hand man in the pit area. Adkins, who typically makes the two-hour drive to Cook’s shop the day before they leave together for weekend races, drove for Mullinax in the past.
“We just got together (last year) and I still was running my Rockets because I was like, ‘Oh, man, I’ve had Rockets for a while,’ ” said Cook, who campaigned 2017- and ’19-vintage Rocket Chassis before acquiring a new Rocket XR2 last season. “Then at the end of the year, last year, we were just kind of like in a weird spot. Like, what are we gonna do? What are we doing? Well, he already had this (Longhorn) car and he was like, ‘Man, just try this car. I’m telling you, you’ll like it.’ And I was like, ‘OK.’ ”
Mullinax’s Longhorn Chassis is the same car that, during a Dream finale heat race in 2023, Joseph Joiner of Milton, Fla., was driving when he hit Eldora’s turn-one wall and was then clipped by Brandon Overton of Evans, Ga. He turned it over to Cook for some massaging and he ran it for the first time in last November’s Thanksgiving weekend event at Duck River Raceway Park in Wheel, Tenn.
“So I got it, spent some time on it, got a little basic setup sheet from Longhorn, and went over it and went and played with it,” Cook said. “We popped off in the Duck River Thanksgiving deal (finishing second) and then took it to the Ice Bowl (on Jan. 3 at Talladega Short Track in Eastaboga, Ala.) and got another second.
“We just kind of got some decent runs and I was like, ‘Man, I like it.’ ”
Mullinax’s Longhorn has become Cook’s go-to vehicle this season. He hasn’t put the car in victory lane yet, but he’s finished as high as second on two occasions and sits inside the top-10 in the points standings with both the Southern Thunder Super Dirt Series (fifth) and Hunt the Front tour (seventh).
Cook’s biggest problem this year has been the Southeast’s rainy weather, which has robbed him of numerous scheduled races. He had just 12 feature starts on his ledger entering the Dream weekend, preventing him from truly finding a rhythm.
“We’re going uphill and a lot of things are kind of popping off,” Cook said. “The only thing that’s been kind of a downer is like all the rain we’ve had. We lost a lot of good races, so it’s like everything's kind of being stalled to try to really get some laps, get the (setup) book better.”
Cook craves track time. As a guy who’s doing his own shock program, he needs the laps to figure out what his car needs.
“The issue is when you’re doing the shock deal like I am, I mean, the tech support side is not really there,” Cook said. “You’re kind of that black sheep guy. And I know that.
“But the rewarding thing is, you got more potential. If you can kind of crack code a little bit and find that groove, you really understand what’s making the car go or not go. So that’s what I enjoy about it. And that’s how I’ve always done it.”
Cook found some speed at Eldora. He arrived for the Dream Week uncertain of his chances because he had raced only a modest amount this season.
“The whole time I was like, ‘Well, we’re gonna go (to Eldora), but we should have some more races in,’” Cook said during the Dream activities. “I was like, ‘When we roll up here, I don’t know what we’re gonna do. We’re just winging it.’ We said, ‘We’ll just come up here and see what happens.’ I know the pecking order, how everything is, but I just love the atmosphere, man. I just love to come up here and do it. And so it’s like, why not, man? Take a stab and just get with it.”
Cook surprised himself right out of the gate at Eldora by claiming one of the 24 feature starting spots in the 84-car field for the FloRacing Night in America event. It was the last transfer position in a B-main to start him 23rd, but he proceeded to work the bottom of the half-mile oval in the 50-lapper to move forward and finish 14th.
“I’m like, man, we’re just going to get some laps. You know what I’m saying? Try to learn a little bit, be aggressive on some adjustments. and just treat it like a practice night,” Cook said. “But I feel like I got good breaks during the heat, B-main, it just kind of opened stuff up for us to get in.
“I’m not good at running the (outside) wall. I feel my strength is more the bottom, so when I found that rhythm and the car was yee-hawing with me and letting me do that, it’s like, I just kind of started settling in.
“I just never thought this was gonna pan out the way it did,” he continued of his strong performance. “Like, it’s just mind-blowing. It’s so wild because … I mean, I know you’re not supposed to think this way, but I don't feel like I’m on this class level of guys. This is a professional-level deal. But I'm like, man, we just finally kind of broke out, you know what I mean?”
Cook even learned a bunch about tires during his FloRacing Night run.
“We were supposed to be on soft tires because they worked the track and I was like, ‘Man, I could run that bottom, and that’ll give me something where I may not get lapped,’ ” Cook said. “And I'm sitting there putting my helmet on and I hear lug guns going off and I’m like, ‘What are y’all doing?’ They were putting hard stuff on. I had (three soft) 2’s and a 4 (hard right-rear), and they switched up and went 3’s and a 4 and I’m like, ‘If I was in the front, yeah, but I’m in the back.’ So I was a little bit unsure of that.
“But scrubbing the car when we rolled out, I’m like, ‘Hey, it ain’t that bad.’ And it was good that we done it because I got to see that real live situation, see what the tires do. It worked out. I was gonna make the wrong decision.
“Sometimes you just have a night and it’s like, statwise, it don’t look like nothing, but when you really know how hard it is … you know what I mean?” he added. “You’ve done it and tried, and it’s like, you know how small the margins are. So it’s like, ‘Dude, this feels like a win by a mile.’ I just didn’t get no (first-place) money, you know?”
Cook’s Dream preliminary night began disastrously when a hole in his car’s radiator during hot laps forced him to make a hasty switch. The work took longer than necessary because the spare radiator he had had along wasn’t in good shape and he had to borrow a replacement from fellow Southerner Zack Mitchell — and that radiator didn’t fit perfectly, adding some extra minutes to the work that cost Cook a qualifying lap. He rallied from starting at the back of a heat, though, to win a B-main and make the feature, though missing out on event points for time trials meant he ended up far down in Saturday’s heat lineups for a guy who tallied a 13th-place A-main finish.
The prospect of starting deep in a Saturday heat on a track that was juiced from heavy late-afternoon rain prompted Cook to scratch from the finale and save his equipment for another day. But the knowledge he gained from running two 50-lappers was immense.
“The only thing I wish is we’d have changed carburetors and restrictors, because seeing how that panned out, trying to be technical with my feet and trying to hit those spots, it’s got to be a consistent, steady way,” Cook said. “It’s one of them more deals to where if I could have been more consistent with the throttle, I could have been a little better about what I was trying to do. Working that bottom, you got to be slow, steady gains, and if you make that mistake and ain’t that consistent, it just ain’t quite as good.”
Now Cook just wants to fast-forward to September’s World 100. After the Dream, he’ll unload at Eldora with expectations for the first time.
“I can’t wait for the World,” said Cook, whose schedule this weekend features Saturday’s Hunt the Front event at Senoia (Ga.) Raceway. “I’ll definitely be back.”
