MESA, Ariz. — After penciling out his 2024 race schedule, Chaz Baca figured he had a pretty good shot at winning a second straight Friesen Performance IMCA national championship.
And after racing to a confidence boosting IMCA.TV Winter Nationals crown, he did just that.
“It was a goal from the start this year. We saw the weekly schedules that we were going to be able to do in Arizona and thought we’d have plenty of races to be able to do it again,” explained the Mesa speedster, who’d become the first driver from Arizona to win an IMCA national crown last year. “After the way Winter Nationals went, we thought we had a pretty good shot at it and we just ran for it right away.”
Baca totaled a single-season best 28 feature wins in his ninth Modified campaign while adding his fourth Shaw Race Cars Western Region crown in five years and fifth straight and career seventh Arizona State title to his IMCA resume.
He also won Modified track titles at Central Arizona Raceway and Deuce of Clubs Thunder Raceway, and the IMCA Sunoco Stock Car prize at Show Low. Baca’s 140 career wins puts him 31st on the all-time wins list for the Modified division.
“The highlight of the year was really Winter Nationals at Cocopah. We won that deal on the last night, passing Tim Ward in the last few laps to win the championship, which was pretty special,” said Baca, in the same 2021 Harris car as last season. “We ran third most of that race and when we passed him for the (feature) win it also gave us the series championship. It was a big day for us at the end of Winter Nationals.”
The national points leader from mid-January right through the end of September, Baca racked up 47 top-five finishes on the year. A study in consistency, his longest streak without a win was six starts.
“Our season started strong and then we had an oh-for-six streak in there. I finally got my notebook put back correctly,” Baca said. “We were able to win that eight in a row from May to the end of June. That definitely helped our situation and gave us the boost we needed to get our points back up before drivers in other parts of the country really got started racing hard.”
He tossed dirt with those drivers from around the country over the course of the 35th annual Dakota Classic IMCA Modified Tour. While the on-track results weren’t what he was hoping for, the lessons learned were successfully applied when he got back home.
“We learned some out-of-state stuff, which in turn makes us faster at home. We learned more in a different way, because of the travel we were able to do,” said Baca. “The Dakota Tour taught me, basically, how to get more traction built into the car set-up wise. The dirt is so much more different out that way versus what we have at home. It seems like here we have more grip so we’re constantly trying to free the car up where out there, we’re trying to tighten the car up.”
“I do feel our game was stepped up from last year and we were a little bit harder to beat, especially at home, and I felt pretty good about that. It showed we were definitely going in the right direction,” he added. “Going out there I feel like I’m trying to get enough grip into the car to be able to compete with the guys who have been running there multiple years.”
While continuing his own success, Baca also helped teammate Mitchell Ferguson find his footing in the Stock Car division, serving double and triple duty as crew chief and mentor to rookie and Central Arizona and Cocopah track and Arizona State champion.
“It was really cool to be able to watch him grow throughout the year, especially because he really had no background in racing,” Baca said. “There’s been so much growth and it’s been cool to be part of that.”
By The Numbers
Wins-28
Top Five Finishes-47
Starts-60
HIS CREW: Father Chaz Sr. and mother Dawn; uncle Dennis; and Alex Berdge.
HIS SPONSORS: Baca’s Customs of Buckeye; Moff’s Mods and Rods, Steven Duffy Real Estate and DRD Graphics, all of Mesa; Yuma Insurance of Yuma; Hatch Toyota, High Country Auto Glass and Corrina Hilton with HomeSmart, all of Show Low; Integrity Drilling Services LLC and Jason Babyak and Schaeffer’s Lubricants of Queen Creek; Trail Transmission, Torco Race Fuels, Hooch’s Bar and Roof Werks, all of Apache Junction; Kyler Repella Motorsports and Arizona Differential, both of Phoenix; IDT Landscaping and Scottsdale Muffler, both of Tempe; Swift Springs of Chino Hills, Calif.; CPT Manufacturing of Chico, Calif.; K1 Race Gear of Carlsbad, Calif.; Superior Fuel Cells of Creswell, Ore.; Bassett Race Wheel of Burlington, Wis.; Slick Stick Shocks of Marshalltown, Iowa; Harris Auto Racing of Boone, Iowa; Fast Shafts of Des Moines, Iowa; and DirtStars Racing Products of Taylor Ridge, Ill.