Circle City Raceway
Harris trying to rekindle Speedweeks magic
By Bryan Ault
Special to DirtonDirt
Clay Harris (heathlawsonphotos.com)
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. (May 1) – A dejected Clay Harris stood next to his Longhorn Chassis on Friday evening in the Circle City Raceway pit area. Qualifying last, requiring a provisional to transfer into the A-main and finishing 20th in the 50-lap feature won by Ricky Thornton Jr. of Chandler, Ariz., had the 25-year-old driver from Jupiter, Fla. in a state of disappointment.
“Sucked,” Harris said. “That’s it. We qualified dead last. We heat-raced dead last. We didn’t make it through the B-main out of five cars. Terrible. Like I told you earlier, I just put this car together, and it looks like it ain't worth a s---.”
The Hoosier State’s greatest pastime, basketball, has often been called “a game of runs” — a reference to teams being able to score quickly and, likewise, experience scoring droughts that seem to never end. Dirt Late Model racing can be like that, too, and Harris has experienced both so far in 2026, his third season on the competitive Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series.
“Obviously, I wish I would have won a race by now, and I probably should have a couple times, but, I don't know,” Harris said before the outing at Circle City. “To me, I think it's going good with what I got. I'm not going to say I don't have as much or anything like that, but I feel like it should be going better.
“We had a full offseason to prepare everything, and all the guys helping me out (during Speedweeks) knew how to do the job and just everything went my way, and then after that, nothing really seemed to go my way, but that's just how it goes.”
Harris certainly has reasons to feel perplexed. He launched successfully in his native Sunshine State during Speedweeks, recording three top-fives at All-Tech Raceway in Ellisville, Fla. He followed up those strong showings with finishes of third and fifth at Ocala (Fla.) Speedway. Back-to-back fourth-place runs at Golden Isles Speedway near Brunswick, Ga., had Harris off to the best start of his national touring career.
“That gave me some confidence,” Harris said. “I felt like I figured something out down there, so I'm kind of trying to apply it up here at some of these racetracks.”
But Harris has slumped since Speedweeks, culminating in Friday’s outing at Circle City. In the tour’s return to the Midwest, Harris finished 13th in the Indiana Icebreaker at Brownstown (Ind.) Speedway and 14th at Atomic Speedway in Alma, Ohio. Last weekend’s Mid-Atlantic events at Georgetown (Del.) Speedway and Hagerstown (Md.) Speedway netted finishes of ninth and 23rd. Ahead of the series stop at Circle City, he was seventh in the points, trailing series leader Devin Moran of Dresden, Ohio by a 410-point margin heading into the season’s coming summer grind. The position would mark his best — he finished 13th in points in 2024-25 — but he’s trending the wrong direction.
Key to Harris for the rest of the season will be setup changes as the night goes on, which caused him to finish well-below expectations last weekend.
“I knew better, on what to run, and didn’t run it and the results showed,” he said of his Georgetown performance. “There's things you know what to do and you just sometimes have a brain fart or you just want to try and keep running what you're running because you know it's good and then it doesn't go that well. We’ve just got to stay smart.”
And Harris wasn’t expecting Hagerstown to be as tacky during the feature after heavy rains drenched the surface and juiced the track’s speed.
“Like Hagerstown, I thought it was going to be better than that, but the track ended up being way faster than I thought it was going to be,” he said. “So I wasn't ready for that. The track last year, when we went there and looked the same as it did when we went there last weekend, but I guess it rained a lot more. It made the track have a little bit of character.”
Making matters worse after Speedweeks was the loss of two crew members. Replacing one of them is 19-year-old Talan Carter from Fleetwood, Pa., and 25-year-old wrench Kameron McGauley. Both remain fully behind him and believe Harris can develop into one of the sport’s top-tier drivers.
“We've been improving a lot together since I first started with him,” McGauley said. “We did really well together last year. It was the first year on the road with him, so he taught me a lot last year, and I'm looking forward to doing it again this year and hopefully we get something out of it, like a win or a top-five in the points.”
Carter, freshly hired, has been on the trek with Harris over the past month and enjoys being on the road so far.
“It's fun, being with these guys going up and down the road,” Carter said. “So I'm enjoying it so far. I come from a Northeast modified background, so this is a little bit different for me. He’s pretty good, just need to get the car dialed a little better some nights, but I got faith in him.”
Throughout the crew changes and recent disappointing finishes, Harris and Co. believe there's still plenty of time to get back to finishing on the podium, and hopefully pick up his first tour victory.
“There’s just tracks I don't like and tracks I just don't feel comfortable at, I guess,” Harris said. “I don't know. I just don't have the car to where I like to drive at some of these racetracks. Like I said, everything just has to go your way and make sure you keep all your ducks in a row.”
Harris finished 16th at the Sunoco North-South 100 in 2025, the tour’s last stop at Florence Speedway in Union, Ky. ahead of Saturday’s Ralph Latham Memorial. His team feels confident about their chances at the May 21-23 Show-Me 100 weekend at Lucas Oil Speedway in Wheatland, Mo., and they’re also excited about July's Silver Dollar Nationals at Shelby County Speedway in Harlan, Iowa.
“We struggled the beginning of last year,” McGauley said. “And towards the end of the year, last year, we got a little better and we kicked off Speedweeks really good. Just hoping to get a little better at these tracks that we're not really familiar. I mean, we're a little familiar with them, but we want to try and get a good notebook.”
