DU QUOIN, Ill. — Brian Tyler, one of USAC Silver Crown racing’s most prolific drivers in terms of victories and starts, will return to the USAC Silver Crown National Championship after a two-year hiatus for this Saturday night’s Ted Horn 100 at the Du Quoin State Fairgrounds.
Tyler will drive the Curtis Williams-owned No. 81 that had been wheeled by Shane Cottle for the past seven seasons. As previously announced, Cottle will finish the dirt portion of the series this season for DMW Motorsports.
Cottle and Tyler are good friends and competed as teammates for Contos Racing during the Little 500 at Anderson (Ind.) Speedway on nine occasions.
“Shane told me, ‘I might get the seat out of the dirt car, and you can use the one out of the pavement car because I might have a ride for Du Quoin,’” Tyler recalled. “I said, well, ‘I hope you’re there because you’re really going to feel bad when you get beat by your old car!’ That’s just the way we joke back and forth.”
The Curtis Williams team sits third in USAC Silver Crown entrant points with three races remaining. The plan is to have Tyler finish the season with the team starting Saturday at Du Quoin, before moving onto the final two races on Sept. 24-25 at Ohio’s Eldora Speedway and on Oct. 10 at Toledo (Ohio) Speedway.
Running the final three races would put Tyler at 201 career USAC Silver Crown starts, which would tie him for the most all-time series starts with Dave Darland.
One of Tyler’s 17 Silver Crown victories came at Du Quoin in 2008.
“We’re going to do this race-to-race,” Tyler said. “I’m going to run it and we’re going to see how we get along, how well we work together and see what happens. I love the Silver Crown cars and I really like the miles. I’m looking forward to going back.”
Curtis Williams’ crew chief, Malcolm Lovelace, has long admired the skills of Tyler, the 1996-97 USAC National Sprint Car champion.
“We’ve tried to get Brian before when Shane (Cottle) stopped running the pavement for us a few years ago,” Lovelace explained. “But he had other racing commitments during the races we were trying to get him for. I raced against his brother, Bill Tyler, in USAC back in the 1970s and 1980s. We knew Brian a little bit anyway but, I called him up and we put that together last Monday.”
Despite being two years removed from his most recent USAC Silver Crown start in 2019, Tyler hasn’t a bit of rust on him as he’s stayed busy as a full-time competitor on the National Auto Sport Ass’n trail. Tyler earned his road racing license just last year and has been competing regularly in road course racing events over the past couple of seasons.
Tyler has been a driver in the NASA Super Unlimited class aboard a Gold Crown car, the former USAC-sanctioned machines designed for superspeedway use that competed on the pavement tracks of the USAC Silver Crown series between 2006-’07.
“I race against Vipers, Corvettes, Mustangs, Camaros, Daytona Prototypes and old IndyCars. It’s a run what you brung class; there’s no rules,” Tyler revealed. “We’ve been first or second just about every place we’ve been at when we didn’t DNF. We’re as fast as anybody there most of the time.”
Saturday’s Ted Horn 100 features the USAC Silver Crown National Championship along with the 27th annual Bill Oldani Memorial Prelims for UMP Modifieds.