Beyond the Cockpit: Landen Lewis on Niece Motorsports & His Mentors

Landen Lewis is an up-and-coming racer that has come up to the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series through traditional means. He started in go-karts, won championships at that level. He raced Legends cars and did a year of dirt modified racing, which he still regards as very important to his career.

More recently, he has had a decent amount of success in the zMAX CARS Tour and in ARCA competition. That caught the eye of Niece Motorsports, where he is now running full-time in their No. 45 Chevrolet. Our own Phil Allaway was able to catch up with Lewis at Lime Rock Park in July.

Phil Allaway, Frontstretch.com: It has been a real start-and-stop season for you. It’s gone well when you’re using the car, but it’s July, and its Race No. 4. How does it really shunt your development here in the Truck Series?

Lewis: Oh, no, it’s been really good to be a part of the JF Electric/DQS Niece Motorsports team. Cody [Efaw], Phil [Gould], and everyone over here at Niece Motorsports has done a really good job of making me comfortable. I do get to race, and this is my fourth start.

It’s kind of been a little off and on, but now from now on, from the rest of the year, I’ll be in the truck. So, [I’m] just looking to just get good consistent runs, you know, week end and week out. San Diego went really well for us and came away with the top-five [finish]. I was happy with that, and hopefully that can transition into here for this weekend.

Allaway: You were strong in San Diego. You were strong in St. Petersburg in February. Street racing is not usually in the playbook for someone who comes up from go-karts, dirt modifieds and late models. Just how do you adjust to street racing so well?

Lewis: Honestly, I don’t really know. At the end of the day, I think it’s something that I’ve honestly kind of enjoyed doing just because I feel like it’s different. It kind of changes it up throughout the year, right? We’re typically used to racing on ovals and big road courses like Watkins Glen, places like that. Going to the street courses, they’re a lot tighter and a lot less room for error.

I feel like the biggest thing that’s helped me transition to the road course side well is the dirt background that I do have. In dirt racing, you have to search and find different grooves in order to make the car faster and make it feel more comfortable. Road course racing is honestly kind of the same thing, in my opinion. You’re looking for different brake markers. You’re looking for different shift points, all the time, every lap searching for more. I feel like the dirt side has helped me a lot to transition into the road course side, but again, it’s been really enjoyable.

Allaway: A quick look through your resume shows that you did one year of dirt racing in 2018 in UMP modifieds. What kind of power do those cars have and what’s it like to actually race them?

Lewis: They have really big power. Everyone says that the modifieds are actually harder than to drive from the dirt late models just because the modifieds have a smaller tire than the dirt late models. They’re definitely tough to drive, but again, I feel like it’s helped me a ton to adapt well as good as I can to the tracks that I’ve ever been to before. When you’re dirt racing, you only have three laps and typically that’s qualifying and practice altogether, so you have to learn how to adapt really [quickly].

I feel like on the truck side, I have to do a really good job with that just because there’s a lot of places that I’ve never been to before. So, I’m looking forward to the rest of the year and getting to places I’ve never been to and try to adjust and adapt as quickly as possible.

Allaway: Right now, before we came in here, Ron Hornaday Jr. rode up out here on an e-bike. He’s a fairly big deal in your racing career. How has he helped you along over the years?

Lewis: Ron is obviously just big in motorsports in general, not just to me, and to have him here to support me [and] support the team is a definitely a bonus for sure. Ron has helped me a ton with interview help, how to deal with fans. Again, without the fans, we wouldn’t be here. We wouldn’t be racing if it weren’t for them. So he’s helping a lot off the track. You know,

He tells me all the time, it’s hard to help on the track now just because of how things have changed a lot since he raced. So, he tries to help me whenever he can, just in my racecraft and things like that. 


But the biggest thing is off the track. I feel like that’s more important, sometimes now … to be professional. I’ll have my suit up when I need to support all my sponsors that allow me to be here.

Allaway: In addition to a lot of the racing that you’ve been doing, you’ve been running in the zMAX CARS Tour, and you’ve been fairly successful there. You have six victories there, including four last year. What’s your biggest takeaway from running late model stocks these days? 


Lewis: Late model stock racing, I feel like right now, is more competitive than it’s ever been. There’s 20 cars that can win on any given weekend, you know, from 1st to 25th is a tenth to a tenth-and-a-half or two-tenths off each other. That’s kind of an understatement of how competitive this series is. I think it’s helping a ton to transition to the truck side just because the trucks are really competitive as well.

You have to be on your A game every single moment that you’re behind the wheel or [when] you’re not behind the wheel, you have to give the right feedback to your [crew] chief, things like that. The late model stuff is very competitive, and I think it’s helping a ton, honestly, helping me a lot with Keelan as well. I’m actually helping him and driver coaching him. Now that he’s going to start transitioning into [the CARS Tour], it’s going to help me a ton to be able to relay information to him and help him out as much as I can.

Allaway: The CARS Tour, they race on larger short tracks. They also race on three-tenths of a mile bullrings. Obviously, there’s going to be setup differences, but do you have to bring a different mentality to race at a place like North Wilkesboro, where you went flag-to-flag last year as opposed to a place like Newport?

Lewis: I feel like that’s every racetrack you go to in the country. Every racetrack requires something a little different. 
You know, when we do go to your low-grip places like Langley, Va., you know, everything has to be a lot slower, but when you go to your high-grip places like North Wilkesboro, you actually have to be on the wheel quite a bit and hustle it because the track can handle it. It has the fresher asphalt, so it requires more driving and harder driving, because it can take that. So, definitely there’s a lot of differences, but at the end of the day, every race track requires something a little different wherever you go.

Allaway: Is the plan to hopefully go full time in Trucks next year?

Lewis: Yeah, I mean, obviously that’s, I think, every person’s goal is you want to, you want to race on a full-time basis. This group and the Truck Series in general was so awesome to be a part of. I want to race full time. But, you know, at the end of the day, I have to do as best as I possibly can right now to try to help that situation.

Allaway: Being in a place like Niece Motorsports, you get a lot of teammates. You have Andres Perez, who is full time, but you also have people like Ross Chastain and Tyler Reif. How’s it been bouncing information off your various teammates so far this year?

Lewis: Honestly, it helps because you have so many different driving styles and feedback differences. So when we sit down and talk about things that we’ve been struggling on, you kind of get a lot of different aspects and things that, you know, what they think are that needs to be better and what I think needs to be better. So having different teammates is a good thing just because you learn so much from all the different ones.

Ross has obviously been a huge part of Niece and got it to where it’s at now. He’s been really helpful for me when I go to the racetrack and when he’s racing, I can ask him any questions that I need. He provides that information that I’m asking for. If I call him right now and had a question, he’d answer it. Just having that to fall back on, I think it’s really, really huge. And it definitely doesn’t hurt for sure.

Allaway: In late models, you’ve been helping out Keelan Harvick. Kevin’s obviously around there as well. How has he helped you out? 


Lewis: [Keelan] actually was racing today at Wake County Speedway in Raleigh. So, I was there last night with Kevin trying to get him prepared. Kevin’s obviously been a huge part of my life, just like Ron has. It’s kind of a full circle moment because Ron obviously raced for Kevin, and they kind of grew up in the same area and now we’re all best friends. We go over there every Sunday to his house and grill out and just have fun. 


Kevin has been huge for my career. Also, his wife, Delana, has been huge as well, as far as interviewing and things that I need to do better off the racetrack, I think, like I said earlier, it’s sometimes it’s more important, the things you do off the track versus inside the truck. So, Kevin’s been awesome to my career and just obviously thankful for that.

At Lime Rock Park, Lewis was able to cap off a great day with a second-place finish. He has three top-five and four top 10 finishes.

At this point, Lewis is up to a tie for 22^nd in points with Corey LaJoie and Kris Wright despite missing 10 races. He is averaging over 29 points per race, which would put him in between Gio Ruggiero and Ty Majeski if he ran all the races.