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For Coulter’s part, he admits the list of drivers he was interested in hiring to drive his race car wasn’t very lengthy. If Overton hadn’t agreed to drive the car, there was a good chance nobody would have been driving it.
“When we decided we were going to go find a driver there wasn’t a whole lot of shopping around,” said Coulter, who at press time hadn’t set a schedule for the Rum Runner Racing team this year. “He was our first phone call and there probably wasn’t going to be too many phone calls after that if he had said no.”
Coulter believes the addition of a driver of Overton’s caliber will greatly improve the performance of the Rum Runner Racing entry, which has struggled a bit with Coulter as the driver.
“It never hurts when you can get that kind of success on any team,” said Coulter, who himself plans to run between 10 and 20 dirt late model races this year. “That’s the thing for us, it’s a family-run operation, but it’s a business. The way we have been running with me driving has been good, we’ve made an insane amount of progress over the last two years, especially.
“The results just haven’t quiet been where we want them,” Coulter continued. “So getting Brandon over there and getting things going the way we think they will is going to bring the results. At the same time, it’s going to give me better access to him and his experience and, hopefully, it’ll get me up to speed.”
While Coulter has big hopes for the partnership between himself and Overton, his new driver wants to curtail expectations a bit. Overton wants to win, he says, but the most important thing is to make sure his new boss is happy.
“I don’t try to set a bar,” said Overton. “I want to go win. I want to help Joey. If we win races, we win races. If not, we’re just going to work like hell until we do. If Joey and them are happy, then I’m happy, that’s the biggest thing. I want to win, everybody knows that. I don’t really try to set a bar, it is what it is. It’s going to play out how it’s going to play out. We’ve just got to work hard.”
Based on the way 2018 ended, Overton thinks there are good things on the horizon. The key is not to putting any added pressure on himself.
“I’ve kind of figured out if I don’t have any pressure and I’m happy and everything is going good, that’s when I’m at my best,” Overton said. “If there is something that’s bothering me and I don’t really know how to talk (about it) or I hold it all in, I hold stuff in and I get all bottled up, I make the wrong decisions. I put so much pressure on myself that I actually do worse. If I just be me and go and race and don’t damn worry about it, I do way better.”
Editor’s Note: Overton won the second World of Outlaws Morton Buildings Late Model Series race of the season at Georgia’s Screven Motor Speedway.
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