At that point, DeCaire’s on-track performance was suffering.
“I was running mid-pack with a terrible race car. Dick was starting to get real turned off and fired the mechanic,” DeCaire recalled. “Then we went on a tear and started winning races. I started taking care of the car myself, but I think it was too late. The whole ordeal turned Dick off because of everything … the motor issues, the mechanic, and me being gone all the time.
“In the meantime, Bobby Santos was working at a place next to our shop. He started talking to Dick a lot. They had worked a deal to go Silver Crown racing together. Driving for a car owner is like dating a woman. If you‘re not there every day they expect you to call them every couple of days to talk to them. If you don‘t, they start talking to other guys. But I was working a full-time job with a two-hour time difference. Sometimes I‘d go two weeks without talking to him. When I would show up, he felt like I wasn‘t engaged. Maybe I wasn‘t.
“By the time I had moved back and started winning, he already had it in his mind that he wanted to go Silver Crown racing. Bobby didn‘t have the issues I had, and his dad was his crew chief. It really sucks. If I would have been there the whole time, we would have been great together. We kinda parted ways. I think that‘s the only time I‘ve ever been fired, if you wanna call it that. I was just in a weird place. My mom was terminally ill on top of everything else.”
DeCaire’s relationship with Fieler came to an end after the 2014 season.
“I said, ‘To hell with pavement sprint car racing,‘ and went to work for Kevin Thomas Jr. and they started paying me a weekly salary. I was happy again. I was living in Indy but really wasn‘t racing. I‘d jump in a car here and there.”
During his time away from driving he began to work for a handful of teams, including late model legend Scott Bloomquist. In addition, he began advancing his knowledge in the craft of building shocks.
As a result, today DeCaire owns his own shock-building business: TDC Shocks.
DeCaire eventually returned home and would occasionally drive for Tampa car owner Lenny Puglio. With mechanic Todd Schmidt, the trio would win frequently, despite not being committed to running full time.
In prior years, Puglio‘s cars had won some of the biggest races in Florida with Dave Steele behind the wheel of the black No. 91. Steele had also taken the team to victory lane in the 2009 Little 500.
On Sept. 19, 2015, Decaire‘s mother, Sandi Phillips DeCaire, passed away at the youthful age of 56. DeCaire would not be denied a victory, and captured an open winged feature event that same night at DeSoto Speedway.
“It was pretty special. I made a last-lap pass on Mickey Kempgens for the win. My mom died at 2 a.m. and I went racing that night. Everybody asked me how I could race that night. If I hadn‘t raced, I would have been messed up. All you can do at that point is sit at home and be sad. I didn‘t wanna do that. I called my mechanic, Todd Schmidt, at 6 a.m. and told him it was business as usual and I was racing.
“When I got to the track everybody knew about it. I was thinking about the job at-hand before I fired off for the feature. It kinda hit me that my mom had just died. You only get one chance to race on the day your mom dies. I‘m sure there will be races on the anniversary of her death. When I win a race, I don‘t usually stand on the wing or anything like that. But for some reason I took a Polish victory lap. Everybody was on the backstretch there. I saw the faces of people who don‘t like me, and they were clapping.
“I got up on the wing that night. The win, I think, showed my family that it‘s gonna be OK. Things go on. I think it really helped them. It was really special. I couldn‘t have written the script any better.”
In the coming years, DeCaire was blessed with the birth of two sons, but then experienced the death of his mentor and close friend Steele in a sprint car accident on March 25, 2017.
To date, DeCaire has over 50 sprint car wins in the state of Florida. He has also captured numerous wins with Must See Racing, AVSS, King of the Wing, HOSS, and the Granite Super Sprints.
Just prior to the 2019 season, Tampa, Fla., car owners Ken and Theresa Statham purchased Lenny Puglio‘s entire sprint car team and immediately hired DeCaire to compete full time for the Southern Sprint Car Shootout Series championship.
DeCaire was on a mission last season, arguably the finest of his career. Plans for the 2020 season were to be even busier. DeCaire planned to head north to attempt to capture a third Must See Racing championship, returning to full-time competition with the series.
He also planned to compete in a handful of Granite Super Sprint events in the Pacific Northwest for car owner Mike Newman. After a two-year absence, he would return to the Little 500 driving a George Rudolph-wrenched car out of the PCS Racing stable.
DeCaire also planned to run select NEMA midget events in the northeast for Bertrand Motorsports. As with every racer, this year COVID-19 has challenged some of those plans.
But, overall, life is good for DeCaire right now. He is embracing his role as the father of two young boys. Girlfriend Brittany Chaplin travels to most of the races with him.
The early struggles he endured in racing are behind him. He is at the top of his game and winning with regularity.
And, perhaps most important, DeCaire has a renewed passion for the sport.