The zMAX CARS Tour made its return to Hickory Motor Speedway at the end of July for the annual Throwback 276, the series’ highly-anticipated version of NASCAR’s throwback weekend.
Among the drivers in attendance was Landon Huffman, making his return to the series after some time off with a throwback to his father Robert Huffman‘s racing career.
Huffman wound up 11th in the running order following an eventful return that included the contact with Andrew Grady and two separate drives from the back half of the field.
The event was spotlighted by a spat between Huffman and Grady, which led to a post-race brawl between Grady’s crew and another team, along with the infamous “Trash Panda” comments that Grady directed towards Huffman.
In the end, Huffman – who’s team was not involved in the post-race scuffle – landed a sponsorship deal with the Rocket City Trash Pandas Minor League Baseball team which came to life at North Wilkesboro Speedway.
Frontstretch caught up with Huffman on July 27, prior to the events that transpired at Hickory, where Huffman talked about carrying on his father’s racing legacy, his current and future CARS Tour status and more.
Chase Folsom, Frontstretch: Landon, you’ve got a beautiful throwback here with us tonight in honor of your dad, Robert Huffman. For those that don’t know, (can you) just give us the backstory on this throwback and what it means to you, why you wanted to run it?
Landon Huffman: Yeah this event is always really cool for me just because it’s at Hickory – my home track – and dad ran a lot of cool racecars here and won a lot of races. So each year I kind of have a laundry list of schemes that I sort of go through and figure out what fits that year best.
This year we get to do, it’s actually the 31st anniversary of dad’s last Late Model Stock win, which came here at Hickory in 1993 driving for Wilson Sigmon and Sig’s Tire Centers. So now we get to recreate that car. It looks beautiful, it came out almost identical.
We have Sig’s Tire, the original sponsor onboard which is neat, we’ve got them here in the stands, Wilson is actually gonna come down during the fan fest and take some pictures with the car and a lot of the original crew. So just another cool way to kind of honor my dad and his racing career, the people that helped him and the people that still continue to help me.
Folsom: What was it like growing up with your dad on the road and racing all the time and how has it helped you in your career?
Huffman: Just like a lot of second, third generation drivers that are similar to my same background, it’s really all we know. So you’re at a racetrack from the time you can remember and you’re there every weekend, at the race shop with dad. You know (as) I grew up, dad made it pretty adamant from the beginning that if I wanted to race I was going to have to work on the cars and be out there with him and learn them.
That’s the path I’ve taken, more heavily some years than others. You go through high school and college and different things and it always seems to lead you back to here. But getting to do it now with my dad every weekend and figuring out a way to be able to do this and find the sponsors to do it and get to do it alongside him and a lot of the people that helped him, and a lot of the same crew guys and their kids are helping me as well.
So kind of a family deal, its always been our same little group and we enjoy coming to do it, it’s pretty special to be able to come to the racetrack with dad still and continue to race.
Folsom: Another way you’ve carried on his racing legacy is actually racing out of his old race shop. You’ve documented the progress that you’ve had to make with the renovations, so what all have you had to do and how far has the shop come along to get to where it’s at now?
Huffman: Man when I first started in that thing it was pretty much falling down. When I grew up racing we raced out of a small shop down at my dads house, the race shop was there but it was more of a storage unit and not kept up like it needed to be, just because when dad stopped running the Goody’s Dash Series in 2003, everything kind of moved out of there.
It’s actually my grandpa’s building so he sort of used it for whatever he needed to do at the time and that’s just how it sat. Got back in there and got everything cleaned out, it’s been a group effort. My grandpa’s done a lot for me to kind of get racing back in there and so has my dad and all my crew guys.
Now we’ve got four racecars and a Modified sitting in there, so five racecars, four that I own. We’ve redone the paint booth, got heaters going in there, the first time it’s had working heat since ’03. Still got a lot to go, a lot of progress still to be made but still very cool to be racing out of it.
Folsom: The way you’ve documented that is through your YouTube channel…how did the idea for the YouTube channel come about and how has it helped you along with your career with sponsors and all sorts of stuff?
Huffman: I kind of started all that when COVID happened, I was spotting full-time and COVID comes along and sort of derails that. Everybody is inside so I started streaming iRacing on Twitch and just doing whatever I could do to interact with people.
Then I realized that people actually enjoy that type of thing, especially when they’re sitting around at home with nothing else to do. So I sort of built up a following doing that and then started the channel just strictly with the race shop. It kind of led into being able to build back into the racing scene and find racecars of my own again and get back rocking and rolling with all that.
One thing leads to another and here we are now with racecars in the shop and doing a vlog every weekend, enjoying it, providing a platform for my sponsors and hopefully can continue to grow it.
Folsom: You mentioned earlier how much this racetrack means to you here at Hickory. What would it mean to you to get another CARS Tour win here tonight, in a throwback race at a track that really started everything for you?
Huffman: Well CARS Tour at Hickory has been sort of, I guess rough for me in my time racing here. In 2016 we sat on the pole in my original car which I still have back now, it’s really old. So we sitting on the pole then was a great accomplishment for us, you know kind of the same small town team then that we are now.
Obviously this weekend I’m racing for Carroll Speedshop so a little bit different atmosphere, but I still have a lot of my guys here helping me on the racecar just like we normally would. Great opportunity, I think this is one of my better opportunities to go to victory lane here at Hickory, I think we have a good racecar.
Tri-County was special but I’ve always wanted to win some of the bigger races here, this being one of them at my home track. So I think we’ve got a good piece, just hopefully we can keep all four tires and wheels on it.
Folsom: You’re racing for Carroll Speedshop here tonight but you fell off the Tour full-time a couple weeks ago, you were racing an R&S Racecar for Jimmy Mooring. How did that deal fall apart and what does your CARS Tour future look like?
Huffman: Right now it’s week-to-week. I’ve got racecars of my own, I’d like to maybe run them some, I was actually going to run one of my own cars here this weekend until this opportunity came about. So taking it week-to-week, I’m racing weekly but the deal with Jimmy just didn’t work out in the end. Me and Jimmy are still on good terms, he just decided he needed to have somebody else go through the racecar and we were keeping it in our shop at the time.
I was working on it weekly and I really didn’t have the means and the help to do it like I needed to do it properly. So it was a mutual separation, no hard feelings or anything like that. Just happy to be back here again with another opportunity. I learned a lot the first part of this year, adversity always teaches you things that you didn’t realize you needed to learn, and I feel like that was definitely a good learning experience for me no matter how low it may feel at the time.
Happy to be back and excited for the opportunity tonight, hopefully we can have a good run and maybe put this No. 37 in victory lane.
Folsom: People may not understand what the financial struggles are like in late model racing. In NASCAR if you wreck a racecar there’s just another one next week, but that’s not always the case in late model racing. What are the financial struggles like and how do you balance it week to week as a family owned race team?
Huffman: Well when you race like we do, there’s very few of us left especially at this level, even at the CARS Tour level I would say there’s hardly none. So it’s tough, I mean when you lose a racecar or even you tear one up, even if it’s not super detrimental but damage cost money and money is a premium in our camp.
So fortunate to have the sponsors that we do and the partners we do that help us do it every weekend, but it is still a struggle and you’re racing against teams in this CARS Tour that are spending tons and tons of money to do this. Racing is an expensive sport so naturally, those with the money are always going to have a leg up.
If you don’t have the money, you’ve got to figure out how to even the playing field in other ways and a lot of people do that with knowledge. I feel like I have a good group behind me with my dad, even here this weekend the Carroll Speedshop guys, these guys know what they’re doing. Justin Carroll and I have been friends for a long time so it’s a great opportunity for me. So there’s other ways to sort of level the playing field but money is always king.
Folsom: In your time off from the CARS Tour you actually went up and ran a late model race in Montana. How did that deal come about and how was your time up there in Montana, different part of the country for late model racing?
Huffman: Oh it’s beautiful up there. I told the Racing Dynamiks team which I drove for – Travis and Amanda Sharpe – awesome people, great program up there in the northwest. They asked me actually over the offseason if this was something I’d be interested in coming out there and doing.
It was a lot of fun, the track was awesome, the people were incredible. We ran really well, ended up getting banged up there on a late race restart and lost power steering but still ended up eighth in one of their premier races up there. My first time ever in a Super Late Model so I was happy with it, obviously a little disappointed you want to go up there and win the race but, I think for my first time in one of those cars and given the scenarios, I was happy with the performance, and I would love to do it again.
Folsom: Have there been any talks with anybody about coming back full-time next year or any other time in the future, is that something you’d want to do?
Huffman: Yeah, absolutely. Obviously like we talked about just a minute ago, it comes down to money and funding. If I can put together the financials to do it I’d love to be on the tour full-time, I enjoy racing the CARS Tour. It’s great people, some of the best racing all over the world happens right here in the CARS Tour Late Model Stock division.
It’s definitely a goal of mine to be here, but if it doesn’t work out financially, I’m going to race where I feel like I can win and be competitive and keep my sanity. So we’ll see what happens but we’ll take it one week at a time.
Chase began working with Frontstretch in the spring of 2023 as a news writer, while also helping fill in for other columns as needed. Chase is now the main writer and reporter for Frontstretch.com's CARS Tour coverage, a role which began late in 2023. Aside from racing, some of Chase's other hobbies include time in the outdoors hunting and fishing, and keeping up with all things Philadelphia sports related.