Greenwood’s Brayton Laster finished 13th in his ARCA Menards Series debut at Daytona last month.
Submitted photo
To get what you want, sometimes all you have to do is ask.
That’s how Brayton Laster — a 2021 Greenwood graduate who has been racing on dirt and asphalt since he was 8 years old, wound up competing in an ARCA Menards Series race at Daytona International Speedway last month.
The longtime driver, who got his start racing go-karts at the Indianapolis Speedrome, responded to a social media call-out and earned himself a spot in the Lucas Oil 200, finishing in 13th place on one of racing’s most storied tracks.
On several levels, it’s about as unlikely a story as you’ll find in auto racing.
“People like me, we don’t make it to Daytona,” Laster said.
And yet, in part by not being afraid to ask for what he wanted, he got there anyway.
Anytime, anyplace
Laster has always been a bit of a racing outlier. After an early start in karting, he began running full-size cars at the Speedrome when he was 12 (“My mom did not approve,” he said) and has been driving just about anything he could get into ever since. He has even competed in the Speedrome’s famed figure-eight races — sometimes in a school bus.
“If it’s got four wheels on it, I’ll drive it,” Laster said.
His specialty is dirt racing — Laster was the super late model rookie of the year at Brownstown Speedway in 2018, and he has been competing on the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series, among other circuits. But when an opportunity to run on one of the world’s most legendary asphalt ovals, he couldn’t pass it up.
In December, Virginia-based Mullins Racing went on social media seeking drivers to try out for a chance to run one of its cars in the Lucas Oil 200. Brayton’s father, Dane Laster, saw the post and approached his son with a straightforward question: “What do you think about running the ARCA Daytona test?”
“It’s Daytona,” Brayton said. “Who doesn’t want to run Daytona?”
Knowing that the worst that could happen was Mullins either saying no or ignoring him, Laster emailed a résumé and waited for a response. Eventually, he found out that he was one of a half-dozen drivers chosen to do a test run at the Florida track.
Ready to fly
Fast forward to test day. At 6-foot-3 and 240 pounds, Laster was the last of the six drivers to get in Mullins’ car — the cockpit had to be adjusted a bit for his unusually large frame.
Though he had never gone more than 130 miles per hour or so in a late model car, Laster said the transition to going over 180 mph in a stock car was a surprisingly smooth one.
“We were flying,” he said. “We were consistently fast.”
Laster was 15th out of about 60 drivers overall on the second day and in the middle of the pack overall. Happy with the experience and not sure whether anything was going to come of it, he came back to Greenwood with a story to tell — except the story got much more interesting.
A few days later, team co-owner Dinah Mullins called up and asked Laster to drive her team’s second car at the Lucas Oil 200 alongside her husband and fellow co-owner Willie Mullins. Laster qualified 17th and wound up starting the race in the 15th spot.
However …
Looks like we made it
Laster gave up his enviable starting position pretty quickly. Not accustomed to a four-speed manual transmission, he skipped a gear when shifting at the start of the race and had to watch as most of the field passed him by.
“That was the most terrifying 150 feet of my life,” Laster said, “because I’m going 120 mph trying to get up to speed, and you’ve got guys on both sides going vroom vroom vroom vroom, just flying by you, and they’re stacked up behind me five deep, trying to push me and get me going. It was terrifying.”
Laster spent the first 6o to 80 laps of the race trying to make up for that start and get back onto the lead lap, but eventually he did — and he actually found himself in the top 10 with five laps remaining. As the racers started to get more adventurous down the stretch, eventually a yellow flag came, and Laster was in 14th place when the restart came with one lap remaining.
A free-for-all was coming. At that point, he wasn’t sure he was going to make it to the end.
“I expected us to wreck,” Laster said. “If I was going to come back around, it was going to be on a flatbed.”
Sure enough, there was a wreck on the last lap, and Laster had to call upon all of his crazy Speedrome experiences to navigate the carnage. As cars flew in all directions, Laster heard his spotter, Jesse Vaughn, implore him to “get low,” and he did — even clipping the infield grass.
Somehow, he made it through and got to see the checkered flag that he never thought he’d see; Laster finished the race in 13th, tops among all drivers making their Daytona debut.
“I could have retired right then and there, to be honest,” he said. “I made it to a point I personally never thought I would.”
Onward and upward
Laster’s maiden voyage was impressive enough that Mullins Racing decided to give him another ARCA run — on April 23, he’ll run in the General Tire 200 on another iconic stock car track, Talladega Superspeedway.
He’s going to continue to put most of his focus on dirt racing for the time being, but as he has throughout his entire racing life, Laster will continue to jump at any opportunity that could potentially open some doors.
Given how this latest situation has played out, why not?
“I’m like, ‘You know what? I’ll ask. What’s the worst that could happen?’” Laster said. “That’s how we got there.”
The Lasters have been taking similar risks for years and often found themselves the object of derision from various naysayers. Seven years ago, there were complaints that Brayton was too young to be racing full-size cars against grown men. This winter, some mocked them for going and shooting their shot at Daytona.
They didn’t listen.
“I was laughed at by several people along the way. I was told how foolish I was along the way,” Dane Laster said as he turned to his son and fought back tears. “They’re not laughing at you anymore, are they?”
“I just wanted to go down there and prove them wrong,” Brayton added. “I’ve always said if I had one chance, one opportunity, I’m not going to throw it away. We went down there, and I hit a 3-pointer. I hit the buzzer-beater to win the game.”
