Grant’s story is not unusual. Being a professional racer is hard. It can produce great highs, but it can also be physically, mentally and emotionally demanding. Which brings us to the 2023 season.
Grant won 11 USAC sprint car features and successfully defended his title. Notable moments include the sweep of Kokomo Smackdown and a lucrative victory in the FallNationals at Lawrenceburg.
Grant overcame a troublesome Silver Crown season to win at the Du Quoin State Fairgrounds, and then there was the tale of his midget program.
Nothing was going right, and Grant’s body language suggested defeat. Then, his team pulled into The Dirt Track at Indianapolis Motor Speedway. He won a preliminary feature and followed it up by dominating the prestigious BC39. He was in the zone.
Grant’s run was noteworthy by any standard but what made it so remarkable was that it was totally unexpected. No one doubted Grant’s talent, but over the course of the season it seemed that he had lost his way. There were unexpected crashes when he seemed to be pressing and other moments when he just blended into the pack. Oddly enough, there also seemed to be a clear demarcation point when things turned south.
Consistent with his sprint car performance in recent years, Grant came out of the gate red hot. In mid-April he notched a win at Tri-State Speedway in Haubstadt, Ind., a place where he had struggled in the past. Then, on May 5, he was the best in the first round of a two-night show at Eldora. The Ohio track had always been kind to him, and he was a clear favorite the following day. Chasing down C.J. Leary, he seemed to be in a good position to score again when disaster struck. An accident unfolded in front of him leaving him nowhere to go.
Up until this moment Grant seemed to be riding the momentum from 2022. Then for a long spell nothing went right. Had the racing gods turned their back on him?
“It wasn’t bad luck,” he said. “I just wasn’t very good for a while.”
There was more. He later admitted the jolt he took at Eldora banged him up a lot more than he realized. “I lost a whole lot of confidence,” he said. “I remember rolling around at Grandview and thinking I might never win another race again. I know it sounds dramatic, but it had been two months since I had won a race. Then, I won two nights later at Port Royal, but that race was right in my wheelhouse. Then, right after we won that race at Port Royal we went right back to struggling again.”
To add to his woes, longtime crew member Dylan Cook left for a new opportunity. Grant knew he needed help. He called Jeff Walker.
“I wasn’t going to do it,” Walker acknowledged. “I had just gotten fired from another team. I had been there for three and a half years, and I wanted a break. Justin is just really persuasive. He was saying come on Jeff, I need some help. He sounded down and he talked me into it. I told him I would do it for the rest of the year.”
Walker joined the team for a pair of races at Macon (Ill.) Speedway. It didn’t go well.
“We went to Macon, and we were terrible,” Grant said. “I qualified poorly, and we crashed both nights. He showed up and it was like, ‘Well, here is our program.’ It was trending the wrong way, and I was doing a worse and worse job. It wasn’t Jeff’s fault; he had just stepped on to a sinking ship.”
It may have been Grant’s lowest point, and he felt the only thing to do was lay it all on the table.
“We talked a lot on the way home and I said: ‘Man, my eyes are struggling to keep up and I can’t feel the race car.’ I told him that I didn’t know if I had hit my head too many times, but I just felt lost,” Grant explained. “I told him I felt lost in the car and I don’t know what I am doing. He just listened and said that I was fine and we would figure it out.”
To get the arrow pointed north Walker employed a time-worn tactic.