Peoria Speedway
Family urging him on, Unzicker stays in the gas
By Matt Skipper
DIRTcar
Ryan Unzicker with wife Michelle and son Brody.
Ryan Unzicker enjoys racing as a family sport, not as a full-time living.
While he works 10 hours a day, five days a week as the owner of RJR Transportation, the El Paso, Ill., Dirt Late Model racer spends his weekends behind the wheel of his No. 24 while assisting his young son, Brody, set the foundation for a future career in the sport.
Despite the stresses of the commitments to work and racing, Unzicker doesn't want it any other way.
“That’s all I’ve ever done for the last 20 years,” Unzicker said. “I have a lot of friends and family say all the time to me, ‘I couldn’t juggle it all, I have to have me some downtime.’ We’re just grinding, and I feel blessed to be able to do it. I’m approaching 45 pretty quickly this summer, and I didn’t think I would race this long, but we’re still winning races. My wife and son didn’t want me to quit, so I got to keep going.”
Unzicker began racing street stocks in 2001, then moved up to Dirt Late Models by the 2005 season. Growing up, there was one tour he desired to attempt: the DIRTcar Summer Nationals.
“Growing up, Summer Nationals was what I knew prior to even racing,” Unzicker said. “I was like, ‘How do these guys do it?’ and how they raced 30 nights and 30 days. Then the racer side of me came to play, and it’s like, ‘I got to do that. I want to do that, that sounds fun.’ I think it’s more of a challenge than anything.
“The very first week was extremely hard for me. Because my normal sleep schedule was getting up at 6:30 AM, go to work, work all day, then go to the race shop at night. Well, that changed because you’re pretty much up all night, then sleep through the morning. You get in a rhythm through the weeks, then come the last week, and it was back to hell because you’re tired.”
Unzicker raced in scattered “Hell Tour” events from 2005-2008, then tackled his first full campaign in 2009 for a 12th-place result in the standings. One year later, he collected his first career tour victory at Spoon River Speedway en route to his first top-five points finish.
In full-time series competition from 2010-17, Unzicker collected nine victories and never finished outside of the top five in points. Despite missing out on winning a Summer Nationals crown — his best finish was second to Shannon Babb in 2014 — Unzicker remembers the hard work that he endured each night.
“It was hard, really,” Unzicker said. “What you thought was gonna happen, nine times out of 10, was not gonna happen like you expect to. When we got done, it was either thinking about the drive to the next track, wake up, and get to work.
“Well, that always changed because if we got into a wreck, we’d have to fix it that night while people were still around, and things changed so much. I feel like I’ve grown as a team over the last 10 years, I wish I could do Summer Nationals again.”
Unzicker’s most cherished memory in his career came in 2013 with the Hell Tour at Fairbury (Ill.) Speedway. With his bank account on fumes upon arrival at the track, he overtook Kevin Weaver and Brian Birkhofer en route to a $10,000 victory.
“We were penny-pinching just to get going,” Unzicker recalled. “Hell, I remember in 2013, my wife and I went to Fairbury with our newborn son, and we literally had $27 or $57 in our checkbook. We couldn’t even write this check to Fairbury for $100 pit passes, and we can’t cash that check until we got some money from tonight. Then, we were gonna have to head home because we couldn’t go any longer, but we ended up winning $10,000.”
Since 2020, Unzicker has been an active racer on the MARS Championship Series. He finished third in points from 2020-2021, then captured his first title in 2022.
In the last three seasons since clinching the title, Unzicker has played second fiddle to Jason Feger. Though he’s seeking to one-up his friendly rival in 2026, Unzicker credits the regional Series as one of the reasons why he continues to strap on a helmet.
“I feel blessed to be able to say that I’ve come close to getting Jason for that championship,” Unzicker said. “We were pretty well down to the wire. So, I’m fortunate to be able to do that with my small team. MARS is very close to my back door, and I’ve told many people that if it wasn’t for MARS and a little bit of the winnings and the merchandise sales, I would have quit a long time ago.”
Beyond his Late Model efforts, Unzicker and his wife, Michelle, have been setting the groundwork for Brody Unzicker to race on dirt. After former racer Nick Lyons offered a seat for the 13-year-old to climb aboard one of his Kid Modifieds at Tri-City Speedway in 2023, the family prepared for Brody to compete in the division for the following season.
“I always said that he wasn’t going to race because I was going to make him do better than that,” Unzicker said. “He had never drove anything. He didn’t even own a helmet, gloves, firesuit or anything. So we were making some phone calls, and by the time we got to the racetrack, he had everything. I haven’t bought him the best of cars, but I was just trying to get him on the track. It wasn’t about winning to me, it was letting him go have fun and learning the car.”
In 2025, the Unzickers shared an unforgettable night at Peoria Speedway when Brody earned his first career feature win, and Ryan won the MARS feature.
“This has been a family affair for my wife and I since Day One,” Unzicker said. “I think she’s missed maybe four races in my whole racing career. Then Brody, he might have missed two or three races. Wherever I go, they go. Having that family connection is one of the reasons why I still race.”
