CHILLICOTHE, Ohio — The saying “third time’s a charm” is one Tim Sears Jr. hopes works in his favor this year.
The Central Square, N.Y. native is coming back for his third full-time season with the Super DIRTcar Series, looking to improve on last season’s 11th place finish in points. Even though Sears Jr. hasn’t raced since the season finale at the World of Outlaws World Finals in Concord, N.C. in November, he is optimistic about the upcoming season.
“I’m excited for this year,” Sears Jr. said. “We’ve been to a lot of these places. Now we’ve built notes on them. I feel like we’re in a little bit of a better spot when we go to these places. We should unload with more speed, hopefully make the redraws, and we’ll just run upfront. I want to have good runs this year. That would boost our confidence a lot, too.”
His first taste of competition for the season will come March 31-April 1 at Atomic Speedway. It will be his first visit to the track and the series’ debut at Atomic. He plans to prepare his No. 83X machine with a simple approach.
“We’re just planning on bringing a neutral car,” Sears Jr. said. “We don’t really know what to expect. No one’s really been there before. We’ll just go with what we know. Hopefully we come out of the box fast.”
During the second half of the season, the series will return to his backyard for the second annual SummerFAST with three races in three days, exclusively in central New York locations. The event will kick off at Brewerton Speedway, one of his home tracks with which he is especially familiar, giving him a prime opportunity to excel in a series race. He notched a fourth-place finish there last year in the DIRTcar 358 Modified division and has scored two Big Block podium finishes in previous series visits.
“We always run good at our home tracks, and I’ve had a lot of good runs at them,” Sears Jr. said. “I’m definitely excited to have a big race at our home tracks.”
With the abundance of opportunities coming for growth and improved results, he remains keenly aware there is no secret formula for success other than hard work, repetition, and persistence.
“If you want to be one of the best, you have to race against them every week,” Sears Jr. said. “We’ve definitely made a lot of really good strides at our home tracks since we’ve started the Series. And I think just racing more, the more you do it, the better you are going to get. We just need to keep trying to get seat time and keep going to all these places and eventually results will come.”