And, Steele also admits that he had some doubts, and regrets, about Dave‘s decision to attempt a fulltime career in racing. “I didn‘t object to it, let‘s put it that way,” he begins. “One time, early in his career, I said, ‘If you quit racing, I‘ll buy you a brand new Corvette.‘ He wouldn‘t do it. I was serious about it, too, because I knew how it could end up. To this day, I still can‘t believe he got killed in a race car. If he would have been driving down the highway and crashed, I could understand that.
“He stayed out of trouble for so long.”
In 1998, with Dave now focusing on racing up north fulltime, Steele hired driver Dude Teate to compete in Florida pavement shows and the duo instantly clicked. The team picked up feature victories at Inverness, Lake City, and Punta Gorda that season.
By the time the 1999 season rolled around, expectations for the team were high. Steele decided to make a run at the TBARA championship.
By the conclusion of the 16-race 1999 season, Teate had captured the TBARA driver‘s championship despite going winless. However, Steele narrowly missed winning the TBARA owner‘s championship. “I came in second in the owner‘s points. I didn‘t win the owner‘s championship. I had two cars and Jim Bradford was running the other. We were at Ocala one night and Dude thought there was something wrong with the motor, so he switched cars and I lost points. I never won a TBARA championship.”
During the 2000 season, Steele purchased a brand-new Beast chassis — just the second new chassis he had ever purchased — in order to do some non-winged racing up north and, in particular, USAC events.
“One day I got a wild hair and decided to get a Beast kit and put it together. I wanted to do some USAC stuff. I had a smaller motor, but I figured with the guys I‘d probably take up there, they were inexperienced and had never run those tracks before. I knew we weren‘t gonna win, but I was just going just to have fun. But we did win a heat race at Toledo that was live on ESPN with Dude (Teate) driving. That was a big deal to us. When Dude lists his accomplishments, he lists that heat race win,” Steele states with a smile.
Between 2000 and 2005 Steele‘s Beast cars made 10 USAC feature starts with drivers Teate, Brian Gerster, Brad Armstrong, David Slawiak, and Troy DeCaire. Steele reunited with his son for a FAST series non-winged sprint car event at New Smyrna, Florida on March 15, 2003 and Dave drove the car to victory.
Teamed with Charlie Ladner, the duo captured the 2005 Central Florida Wingless Sprint Car Association championship, Steele‘s most recent championship, to date.
Unlike most sprint car owners, Steele‘s mounts have suffered surprisingly few flips over his lengthy run in the sport. And, he is quick to share that one of those didn‘t take place on the race track.
“We were in Lake City racing one time,” he begins. “I had a suburban and open trailer. I had a couple guys that worked for me haul the car up there. After the races, me and my wife Carol stopped to get something to eat and they went ahead of us. Just as we got close to Tampa, it was about 2 a.m. in the morning and real foggy. I could see bright orange flares and traffic was being slowed. I was concentrating on driving, but I could see a sprint car on a rollback wrecker off to the side. I said to my wife Carol, ‘There‘s a sprint car over there. What number is it?‘ And she says, ‘Zero.‘ It took a second, but I thought, that‘s our car!
“Sam, the guy driving, had fallen asleep and flipped everything. It really didn‘t hurt the car that much, if any. That‘s only one of two times my cars have flipped. Stan Butler flipped one night at Palatka. Usually, they get piled into the wall.”
In 2013, Mac was pleasantly surprised to receive a phone call informing him that he was to be inducted into the Little 500 Hall of Fame later that Spring. “I couldn‘t believe it. I didn‘t think I‘d done anything to warrant that. If my car had won it six times, then I could understand it.”
Since Dave‘s death during an SSSS event at Desoto Speedway in Bradenton, Florida on March 25, 2017, things are different for Steele. Steele Performance Parts, the business Dave once owned, is no longer in operation. In addition, his three grandchildren and daughter-in-law, whom Steele once saw almost daily, have since relocated to the Midwest.