CONCORD, N.C. — Two months into his first year on the road with the World of Outlaws Late Model Series presented by DIRTVision, Logan Zarin is beginning to feel like he belongs.
Every newcomer to the tour expects to get kicked in the teeth on a regular basis, and Zarin was no different. The former regional racer in and around western Pennsylvania knew he was signing up for the toughest test of his career when he announced his bid for the MD3 Rookie of the Year Award, and he’s gotten exactly what he asked for.
However, the No. 1z team has been making modest gains as of late. Zarin’s finishes have started to improve as a result, including a career-best 13th in his debut at Senoia Raceway last Saturday night.
“It’s going kind of like what we expected,” Zarin said of the first 14 races of his rookie campaign. “We knew we were going to struggle a little bit down at these southern tracks, but we’re finally starting to hit on something. Our results are starting to get a little better, so we’re just taking baby steps and just seeing what we can do.”
If competing against the best drivers in Late Model racing wasn’t a tall enough task, he’s been doing it in unknown territory nearly every night. The only track Zarin has raced at this year that he had been to before was Volusia Speedway Park, but even then, the new dirt laid down last year meant his notes from 2024 only meant so much.
“I’ve been leaning on Vinny Guliani [Longhorn Chassis shock consultant] a lot,” Zarin said. “He’s done this, he kind of points me in the right direction. And then just watching races on YouTube helps me a lot, just to kind of see what I need to do as the night goes on. Honestly, we just go into these races and try to qualify good, that just sets our whole rest of our night up.”
That’s a goal Zarin has been achieving more often in recent weeks compared to the opening stretch of the season. In the first nine races of the year, Zarin was relying on Last Chance Showdowns and provisionals almost every night, and the results yielded an average finish of 20.2 and three DNQs.
But his 14th-place run at Smoky Mountain Speedway on March 14 kicked off a new chapter. Since then, he’s started every feature, improved his average finish by more than four spots to 16.0 and transferred out of his heat race at both East Alabama Motor Speedway and Senoia last weekend.
“We kind of hit on something a couple weeks ago,” Zarin said. “We’ve been fine tuning it, and then our results are definitely starting to show. Not having to run B-Mains all the time and getting decent finishes. Not what we want yet, but decent finishes in the Feature is starting to help. We’ve just got to keep fine tuning on this thing and eventually we’ll be up there at the front.”
It won’t be long until Zarin gets a break from constantly getting up to speed at new racetracks. The May schedule includes a five-night stint in the northeast featuring stops at Georgetown Speedway (May 13), Selinsgrove Speedway (May 14), Marion Center Raceway (May 15-16) and Bedford Speedway (May 17) – all of them being tracks the team has been to several times.
Zarin still has a few more new facilities to get through before he gets there, starting with Farmer City Raceway next Friday-Saturday, April 10-11.
The Illinois weekend will be especially big for Zarin, as it will be his first time racing around one of the Midwest’s signature quarter-mile, black-dirt bullrings. He knows it will be a whole new ball game, but one he’s embracing with open arms.
“Honestly, just do our best,” Zarin said on his goals for Farmer City. “We don’t have nothing to prove to anybody. We’re just out here racing, having fun. Just make the Features, run competitive and we’ll call that a win.”
