Three years ago, Monrovia, Ind., sprint car driver Justin Peck was at a crossroads, in his career and in life.
Then 19, Peck failed a World of Outlaws NOS Energy Drink Sprint Car Series drug test that July at Ohio’s Eldora Speedway — testing positive for marijuana metabolite.
Peck was suspended from DIRTcar-sanctioned competition for 90 days and quickly realized he had a lot of soul searching to do if he wanted to continue chasing his racing dreams.
“During that suspension, I figured out that I had to grow up and handle things in a bigger way than I had been,” Peck told SPEED SPORT. “Otherwise, I wasn’t going to be around for very long.”
Now 22, Peck has largely risen from the ashes of his misstep to become a well-regarded competitor, learning the ropes of racing for a career and building his résumé brick by brick.
He’s landed with veteran team owner Tom Buch and is campaigning the Buch Motorsports No. 13 sprint car with the FloRacing All Star Circuit of Champions this season. It is his first true touring opportunity after various broken stints on the road in the past 18 months between his family-owned No. 5x car and the Premier Motorsports No. 70 entry owned by Pete Grove.
It’s a remarkable journey that Peck believes has been, in part, fueled by his desire for self-improvement after the suspension that changed his life.
“When you get knocked down to rock bottom, you really have to self-reflect and see where you’re at,” said Peck. “It gave me a lot to think about, as far as what got me to that position and what I was going to do to get out of it and where I was going to go from there.
“Once I figured some of those things out, I started pushing because I knew I couldn’t stay where I was. I knew I had to make changes for the better, not just for myself, but for everyone in the sport who believed in me and felt I still had more to do behind the wheel.”
While he was suspended and on the sidelines in 2018, Peck admits — after a long moment of contemplation — that he thought his career might be over due to the failed drug test.
“Initially, I did think, ‘What if this is it?’” Peck recalled. “Right off the bat when it happened, I was definitely concerned, but it took a couple of days of just collecting my thoughts and figuring out where I was at. Ultimately, I just kind of decided that I wanted my life to go in a direction that was for the better compared to where I was … and I still saw racing in that future.
“I just put my head down and started grinding and I figured out what I needed to do to try and put the past behind me as much as I could and put myself back on top,” Peck added. “It has been a lot of hard work, man, and it really has meant a lot to me that I’ve gotten back to where I am now. I had a couple of guys that were pretty good to me and willing to stick with me, who still let me run their cars here and there as I was rebuilding.
“My family all still stuck around me and was there every step of the way as I worked through the hurdles. We had our own sets of challenges that we had to work through, but at the end of the day it’s still family and I knew we had each other’s backs and they wanted what was best for me.”
After putting together a handful of races at the end of the 2018 season, Peck kicked off the 2019 campaign with his family team before landing a midseason opportunity driving Grove’s familiar, baby-blue No. 70 sprint car.
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