By 2010, Grant had done enough work in a sprint car to be named USAC‘s Rookie of the Year. Two years later he scored his first USAC win at Lawrenceburg, but in time the sport had nearly drained the energy out of him.
To a select few, Grant would refer to himself as just a washed up Silver Crown driver, and he was actually emotionally prepared to give up sprint car racing for good.
Then he got a boost from a somewhat unexpected source.
“Oddly enough, Casey Shuman may have saved my career,” Grant recalled. “He saw me somewhere and said, ‘Dude, you‘re miserable.‘ I was like, ‘Yeah, I am. I‘m slow and everything sucks.‘ Why wouldn‘t I be miserable? Casey said sprint cars are supposed to be fun, and I told him that I would like for it to be fun again. So, he said ‘I‘m going to find you a ride. Come run some WAR races. Get out of Indiana so no one can see you and just try to have fun.‘
“Then he helped get me a ride in Dave Korte‘s car. I would ride to the track in the back of Shuman‘s wagon; it was an old UPS-like truck that they stickered up for WAR. There were cabinets slamming around and I would sit in the back in a lawn chair. I had an absolute blast. I won a couple of races and a couple of nights I blew it off the track while leading or going for the lead. But, even if I would go sailing off the race track and spin out, we would drink beer and laugh.
“Then it was fun again.”
More fun quickly translated to better results. Late in 2016, he landed a ride with McGhee Motorsports and truly re-launched his sprint car career. He scored a win at Bloomington Speedway, then topped his USAC foes at the 4-Crown Nationals at Eldora.
In 2017, he was on top of his game and battled Chris Windom all the way down to the final race for the USAC sprint car championship. A move to TOPP Motorsports brought continued success. He won five races late in the season in 2018, and in 2019 he finished fifth in the final standings, with three wins to his credit.
Grant no longer thought of turning his back on sprint cars.
Even in the darkest of his racing days, Justin always looked forward to the Silver Crown season. It is easy to be upbeat when you have success, and early on it was clear that he had what it took to get up front in the series.
While on-track performance certainly produced a measure of contentment, there were other factors at work here as well. One key was the relationship he developed with his Silver Crown chief mechanic, Dennis LaCava.
LaCava has seen and done plenty in his racing career, punctuated by his long association with IndyCar owner Ron Hemelgarn.
In his days on the Indy car trail LaCava earned the respect of all, and was once honored as the Chief Mechanic of the Year.
LaCava is as old school as they come. In today‘s world, where everyone seems obsessed with new technology and so-called next generation statistics, LaCava can still be found standing stoically trackside recording lap after lap with a stopwatch.
Some among the younger set seem nearly amazed by the display, and a sense of wonderment grows when they realize how closely LaCava‘s old=world method produces data that matches up favorably with more modern conveniences like Race Monitor.
One thing is for certain, these two men just click.
“Dennis is Dennis,” Grant said with a laugh. “He is about 60 beats a minute, no matter what is going on in the world. I think we have the same goal. We want to have the fastest car and we want to win the race, but we are both pretty mellow. Plus, Dennis does a really, really good job. I know everything he touches is going to be proper and is going to be right. I trust everything Dennis puts a wrench on, and that is obviously important in this field.
“I think it is reciprocated because I think he has trust in me. If I say ‘Hey, I think we need this,‘ he is open to it. If he has concerns, he voices them and we work through it. We try to come to a good solution to where we want to get. Dennis is just cool.”
Few things are more important to a driver in this high-stress business than knowing that the person charged with giving them the tools needed to win has confidence in their ability.
LaCava rarely has a lot to say, but when he does speak it is generally wise to listen. It is a hard business on his end too, but it makes it worthwhile when one feels certain his driver is committed to the task at hand.
He can recall when this all began. There had already been some conversations between the two when LaCava approached Ron Hemelgarn with the idea of bringing Grant into the fold.
When Hemelgarn asked his right-hand man if he was certain this was a prudent move, LaCava said it all depended on whether the owner was interested in securing the services of a driver who could actually win races.
Four years later, there is little question that this has been a marriage that has worked.
When asked to ponder why their partnership has been so productive, LaCava noted, “I can‘t say it is this or that, but I can say Justin works for me, so I guess I work for him too. It is a really good fit. He gives it all he‘s got. He is involved, so he knows what is going on. He likes to talk about it and have input, so we discuss things and off we go. He‘s quiet and I‘m quiet. But we are very serious about what we are doing. He is doing this for himself, he is doing it for his family, and he is trying to make a living out of this thing.
“It is the same for me. I do this for a living; it is all I want to do. I have had the opportunity to work with a lot of drivers, a lot of good drivers, and Justin is as good as them, if not better. So it fits. At one point I thought I would like to work with this guy, and now here we are.”
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