Inside Dirt Late Model Racing

Column: Satisfying MARS title for Unzicker

October 16, 2026, 1:51 pm

One primary goal was on Ryan Unzicker’s agenda from the start of the 2026 season. Anything else he accomplished would be gravy.

The 45-year-old veteran from El Paso, Ill., wanted the MARS Championship Series title, the second of his career — he previously won it in 2022 — but first with Matt Curl and Jonathan Clayton at the helm of the circuit.

“That’s been the goal the last few years really,” Unzicker said. “MARS, a lot of it’s right in our backyard. It’s the perfect series for us.”

It also happens to be a regional tour that has kept Unzicker in the Dirt Late Model game.

“I tell a lot of people this — I might have hung up the helmet a few years back if it wasn't for the MARS,” Unzicker said of the series, which has become Illinois-based in recent years after having its epicenter in Missouri throughout the 2000s and much of the ‘10s. “Just having the ($)5,000s in the backyard rather than the 2,500s or the 1,500s, it makes a big difference. We can’t operate at 1,500 bucks, you know?”

Unzicker relishes the opportunity to run roughly two-dozen shows paying at least $5,000-to-win close to home under the MARS banner. He considers himself a budget-minded “regional/local” racer who has to avoid going overboard with his racing schedule lest he wear out himself, his equipment and his all-volunteer crew, and MARS provides him the forum to tackle different tracks without long hauls, chase points and race for sufficient money to keep his self-funded program rolling.

And winning a MARS crown, which Unzicker did this year to end fellow Illinoisan Jason Feger’s three-year reign as champion, is an accomplishment that’s deeply satisfying both personally and financially (it was worth $25,000 in points-fund cash). As a business owner — he operates RJR Transportation after acquiring it from his father just over one year ago — he’s never going to pursue a national tour and even his days of running the whole DIRTcar Summer Nationals are long over, but MARS gives him something substantial to fulfill his competitive desires.

“I only have two cars, two motors,” Unzicker said. “I only have so much equipment, and I only have so much manpower from my boys because we all work, so you gotta pick-and-choose what you do because there’s just no way for us to race much more than 40 nights. We don’t run hardly any local shows, just only when it makes sense, and we focus on the MARS and it works great for us.”

Unzicker’s “longest journey” of the 2026 season was a six-hour haul to Lucas Oil Speedway in Wheatland, Mo., for last weekend’s season-ending MARS doubleheader. It marked his first-ever visit to the showplace, 3/8-mile oval that annually hosts the Show-Me 100, which presented him a challenge as he attempted to preserve his 36-point lead over Feger in the MARS standings.

The Wheatland weekend didn’t go well for Unzicker, who finished ninth in the opener and limped to a 19th-place finish in the finale after his car sustained significant rear-deck and right-front suspension damage in a midrace wreck. But he held on to capture the MARS title by a mere five points over Feger, who tallied finishes of fifth and seventh as his late-season rally to catch Unzicker fell short.

Unzicker let out a sigh of relief after narrowly escaping Wheatland with the title. It would have been a crushing defeat after most of his MARS campaign went so well with five victories among 17 top-five and 19 top-10 finishes in the 21 features leading into the season finale.

“We had an awesome summer, we really didn’t break, really never got in any crashes, and you’re sitting 80-some points ahead with the last two weekends left and you’re thinking, Well, shoot, we just got to finish top-10s and not have anything stupid happen,” Unzicker said. “Well, guess what? We had a couple stupid things happen, and it settled into a good battle between me and Jason, something I didn’t want to have to stress over.”

Unzicker ceded ground with a DNF in Oct. 3’s FALS Frenzy finale at Fairbury (Ill.) Speedway that was won by Feger. Then came Unzicker’s involvement in a multicar tangle on lap 29 at Wheatland that left him unable to control his own destiny.

“The deck, and the whole right-front … I’m not so sure I don’t have to take my car to Longhorn over the winter and get it looked at,” Unzicker said of the damage to his car. “It banged up the right-front pretty good, suspension and everything over there. Once I got in that crash, I was just hanging on trying to salvage whatever position I could get.

“I could see Jason on the (score) board, and I could see him ahead of me, and I was definitely counting car positions. I was trying to count them under cautions and stuff. I had a little cheat sheet in my cockpit I taped in there so I knew kind of what I needed to do if he finished in whatever position.

“It’s $25,000 for the title and $10,000 for second, so that was nerve-racking because $15,000 (difference) to my little team is pretty massive,” he added. “And to lead it all year and then lose it on the freaking last night would be devastating. It would’ve been a long ride home.”

But Unzicker survived and celebrated a title, one that he craved to top off what has truly been a superb season for him. With only this weekend’s DIRTcar Fall Nationals twinbill at Lincoln (Ill.) Speedway and Dec. 3-5’s Gateway Dirt Nationals at The Dome at America’s Center in St. Louis, Mo., remaining on Unzicker’s schedule, he has nine victories, including a $10,000 Summer Nationals score on July 10 at Crystal (Mich.) Motor Speedway. He’s also enjoyed a couple noteworthy stretches of success, recording 14 straight podium finishes from May 15-July 17 and six consecutive top-four runs from Sept. 3-26.

And Unzicker’s average finish this season? An impressive 4.5, which means he’s generally always kept himself in the money.

“The consistency is probably the biggest thing,” said Unzicker, who is running Lincoln’s doubleheader in hopes of preserving his third-place standing in the DIRTcar weekly points race. “I mean, our highest (single-season) win count was 17 in 2011, but that’s when we ran a lot of local shows at that time. We’ve done over $100,000 in income from races in our 43-race schedule, so we average $2,700 right now every time we hit the racetrack.”

Unzicker will admit that he’s been contemplating walking away from racing because of its rising costs for a good decade, but a year like he’s just had, and the support of his wife, Michelle, and the couple’s 13-year-old son, Brody, prevents him from selling out.

“People keep kind of asking the same thing: ‘You know, I know you’ve been wanting to quit, I know it’s been getting tight (financially),’” Unzicker said. “But with my family wanting me to keep digging and going and us winning races and being competitive, it’s kind of hard to quit.

“We still have a lot of nice sponsors, too, so, between that, winning races and our (pre-season) race party, it’s been financially stable enough to keep going.”

Unzicker compares his racing program to “maybe someone like a Rusty Schlenk, you know, where you pick-and-choose your battles a little bit and you do what makes sense,” he said, referring to the Jackson, Mich., native who runs a budget-minded schedule. “I have a business, yes, and I’ve got good (team) supporters, but, you know, I can’t go to all these $15,000-, $40,000-, $50,000-to-win races and expect to be successful for my team now.

“Now, could I could I pop one of those off on any given night?” he continued. “I don’t doubt myself. I don’t doubt my team. But boy, those (national touring) guys are fast. They just really know what’s going on, and they do it for a living, right? So everything has to go perfect for a regional/local guy like me to win one of those races, and looking back, I would say 10 years ago, you would see a local guy come in and win a (national) race more often. Nowadays, it’s very rare that you would see a local/regional guy win a national tour race.”

Unzicker has flirted with victory in national touring competition even though he’s entered only a limited number events throughout his career on the World of Outlaws Late Model Series (36 feature starts) and Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series (15 starts). He’s finished as high as second on both tours with a Lucas Oil runner-up in 2018 at Macon (Ill.) Speedway and bridesmaid WoO runs at Farmer City (Ill.) Raceway (2016 and ’21) and Fairbury (’17 Prairie Dirt Classic).

“I was leading an Outlaw show at Farmer City on a Friday night (Illini 100) prelim (in ’16) and I had a straightaway lead on Josh Richards with like four or five to go,” Unzicker recalled. “I had that thing in the bag and the caution come out and Josh ended up passing me there with one or two to go and I ended up second, so that was disappointing. But honestly, I just don’t race that many of them to really have a serious chance, and in today’s world of those traveling guys, they’re just on a different level.”

Unzicker understands how expensive and technical it is to compete at Dirt Late Model racing’s highest level. His budget won’t allow him to go buy the newest chassis designs as soon as they are rolled out — in fact, he said he cuts costs by buying “probably 75 percent of his tires” used from bigger teams —and he hasn’t made the financial outlay it takes to hire a technical consultant that might bring him that extra insight into what “the top touring teams have been winning on.”

“That makes it tough on us regional/local guys,” Unzicker said. “That’s kind of what our point is, that you gotta have somebody in your back pocket to where you can get the latest and greatest to try to keep up with the national touring people.”

Unzicker doesn’t employ a full-time crew member, let alone a paid consultant. He does his racing with his trusty team members, meeting up with them at the shop to work on the car or head to races after all their work days are done. He’s personally been extremely busy with RJR Transportation since assuming ownership last year; he oversees 45 employees and a fleet of 35 trucks that specializes in flatbed and refrigerated freight hauling throughout the Midwest.

“I go to work at 6:30 and don't get off till 5, 5:30,” Unzicker said. “And then there’s a lot of times I don’t even go home. I go straight to this race shop to change and then go to work (on the cars), so it gets pretty exhausting through the summer.”

The possibility of burnout — for him and his team — keeps him from overdoing his racing schedule.

“That’s why I kind of just stay in my lane,” Unzicker said. “I stay with what makes sense for my program. A lot of people are like, ‘Well, why didn’t you go to the Flo race at Lincoln?’ Or, ‘Why didn't you go to this race or that race?’ And it’s like, ‘Guys, I race 45 times a year, you know? I can’t start adding all that other stuff in. I’ll be at 60, 65 races.’

“I just don’t have the equipment. One of my (Longhorn) cars is a ’22 (purchased) from Bobby Pierce, it’s probably got 200 nights on it. The other car is a ’24. Yeah, they’re in great shape and I keep them up nice, but I only have two cars, two (Pro Power) motors. You just gotta do what makes sense.

“I say that all the time going to the Prairie Dirt Classic, I would have more fun just watching as a spectator. Eldora (Speedway’s Dream and World 100 crown jewels) is another perfect example. I just enjoy going and being a fan, and then every time I go out there I get 10, 15, 20 people asking, ‘Why aren’t you out here racing?’ It just doesn't make sense, you know?

“We’ve raced long enough now that I gotta make it fun to continue to go, right?” he continued. “And it is a lot about the money, but it’s also a lot about having fun, because if you don’t have fun then why the hell go?”

And 2026 has “been a very fun season,” he said. “It’s been one of my more enjoyable seasons that I’ve had. Our guys are clicking really nice and we’ve just been enjoying each other. And of course, when you can be up front and sniff a win, it’s a lot better than going to a bigger event and barely making the show or something.”

Unzicker also has his teenage son’s burgeoning racing career bringing him added joy. Brody made his debut this season in a pro modified, getting his feet wet behind the wheel. This weekend’s DIRTcar Fall Nationals at Lincoln will bring his ’26 starts to 10.

“I’ve drug my son around to the racetrack since he's been born and it’s in his blood, and now he wants to do it,” said Unzicker, who noted that Brody has become his signal-sticks guy this season. “Yeah, I haven’t let him race a whole lot just because he’s so young and we’re still racing hard with the Late Model, but every time he gets on the racetrack he really does impress me quite a bit on his ability to do what he does at 13 years old. I wonder how he learned it, but you know, with the iRacing and the SIM rigs these days, and he’s probably been at 900 Dirt Late Model races, he picks it up.

“So I’m looking forward to that, racing with him. I actually enjoy not racing and going to the track with him and helping him on the modified and watching him race. There's a different level of satisfaction there for me as a father watching him do it.”

Added Unzicker on his son’s future: “I would imagine here soon, you know, next three, four, five years, I’ll probably get booted out of the seat.”

But not yet. Dad’s still winning features and championships.