Circle City Raceway
Driving on back burner, but brother behind Rice
By Bryan Ault
Special to DirtonDirt
James Rice hugs his brother at the North-South 100. (heathlawsonphotos.com)
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. (Aug. 21) — James Rice on Friday returned to Circle City Raceway, the site of the biggest victory of his Dirt Late Model racing career four years earlier, wearing a hat in support of his younger brother, Josh, rather than a helmet.
The 33-year-old Rice captured the inaugural C.J. Rayburn Tribute race honoring the late Hall of Fame chassis builder from Whiteland, Ind., on a night when a poor qualifying effort stacked the deck against him facing standout drivers like Ryan Gustin of Marshalltown, Iowa, Ricky Thornton Jr. of Chandler, Ariz., Billy Moyer of Batesville, Ark. and Tyler Erb of New Waverly, Texas, who Rice overtook with five laps remaining for a career-high $10,000 payday.
“I told my dad, I was like, ‘Let's just get our start money and go home,’ you know, and we bolted an old tire on that night,” Rice said. “And we just we got going there and we started passing cars and passing cars and I was like, ‘Damn, we’ve got to be getting close to the front of this thing.’ And they had to restart there with like 10 or 12 to go, and we were in third. It was unreal, really. It was the biggest part of my career at the time, so it was pretty cool.”
This year is was younger brother Josh winning Friday’s C.J. Rayburn Tribute with decidedly less drama in a flag-to-flag Northern Allstars Late Model Series victory.
And in the pits was James, whose days behind the wheel are mostly behind him. Along with being a full-time engineer at Toyota with a part-time graphics gig, his three young children — Blake, Josie and Miles — him busy.
“I don't want to put it all on my wife,” Rice said of parenthood. “The amount of work these things take anymore, it just hasn't been in the cards, but they tried to talk me into running this race this weekend. We still got an old Rocket car at the house, and they tried to talk me into putting it together, but it just didn't work out.”
James has no ego about Josh’s success. He’s rooting for the driver he knows has more natural talent behind the wheel. All of James’s current efforts go toward whatever it takes to help 27-year-old Josh shine as a rookie on the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series. The Crittenden, Ky., pair have been inseparable since the start of Josh’s racing career – James served as Josh’s crew chief before landing the JRR Motorsports ride prior to this season – and James today serves as a helping hand on the crew, doing whatever is needed.
“Me and Josh live like 500 feet apart from each other, so I still help him through the week when I can,” James said. “But with my kids, at the age that they are right now, I don't have the time to do anything anymore.”
Two weeks ago, the younger Rice reached the pinnacle of his career in a thrilling last-lap, last-corner pass to edge Jonathan Davenport of Blairsville, Ga., in the Sunoco North-South 100 at Florence Speedway in Union, Ky., the Rice family’s home track. Thousands of fans cheered, hugged, and spent long hours with the Rice family in the pits as they celebrated watching their hometown driver finally capture a $75,000 checkered flag that eluded him for so long.
James, there with a congratulatory hug for his brother in victory lane, soaked it all in.
“We talked about it on the way up here, actually,” James said. “Me and a couple other buddies rode up, my mom, and we talked about it on the way up. The last lap watching it, it's kind of like surreal because you're watching him and (Davenport) side-by-side, and you're watching the fans. When he got into (turn) three, he like hopped the cushion, and then J.D. got back beside him. I didn't know if he could get traction coming down the hill, but he did, and I was an emotional mess. It was awesome, man. I don't know if we'll ever top that one. It's something we talked about doing forever. What (Josh) said in an interview is true. Like, when we were kids, we used to have like little cardboard checks and we'd write North-South 100 on it and race four-wheelers in the backyard. It was awesome.”
“It's kind of a relief,” James added. “Just a dream come true, really, is the only way you could put it. We didn't want the night to end either because I think I was up till like 7:30 in the morning and just trying to talk to everybody that you can and just trying to take the whole experience in. Other than the birth of my kids, that's, like, the greatest night of my life in a different aspect of things.”
The older brother is also amazed to see how quickly Josh’s career has taken off at the national level in such a short span. Two victories for Josh in 2025 really stand out for James: his victory at Brownstown (Ind.) Speedway on May 31 and a Dream preliminary win at Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio, at $30,000 his then-richest victory.
“He definitely showed a lot of patience at Brownstown last year,” Rice said. “Like, you could see he was getting more patient. He really was impressive just being able to hit that bottom. And then going to Eldora, when Bobby (Pierce) got back by him that night, he never got rattled and just drove straight back to him. I've seen it because I raced with him every weekend. Like, I know he could do it and get it done, and hopefully this is just the start of things.”
“I told somebody the other day, Jimmy Owens was kind of like one of our heroes growing up, him and J.D.,” Rice added. “I kind of feel like this might be the start of like a 2013 Jimmy Owens run. He's showing that kind of speed.”
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