MOORESVILLE, N.C. — After a five-year motorsports partnership, Chad Boat and Corey Tucker announced Tuesday they will go in different directions for the upcoming season.
Boat will continue as a midget and sprint car team owner, rebranding Tucker/Boat Motorsports under the CB Industries banner, while Tucker returns to his fabrication business.
The parting of ways was announced on social media before Boat detailed the future for his racing operation in an exclusive interview with Sprint Car & Midget, noting the split between he and Tucker was “very amicable” and that the duo is on good terms going forward.
“When we set out and Corey and I first started our partnership together, it wasn’t necessarily about building this brand and this team and what it has all morphed into,” Boat explained. “That all happened as we went along here. But obviously this year has been a great year for both of us. We were able to win a lot of races and, of course, winning the (USAC national midget) championship with Chris (Windom) was a huge deal. We also got the Indiana Midget Week title with Kyle (Larson), so we checked off a lot of things that were on our to-do list.
“Just like for a lot of people, COVID-19 changed a lot of things for both of us. So I think it just seemed like the right time (to do something different),” Boat continued. “Obviously, ending our run together on a championship is a huge deal. And we still are good friends and Corey has a fabrication business on the side where we’ll utilize a lot of the parts that he makes for the team going into next year.
“It’s going to be a good deal for both of us, I think.”
Since Tucker/Boat Motorsports’ inception in 2016, the team earned numerous accolades, capped by the USAC NOS Energy Drink National Midget Series championship with Windom.
TBM entries also won the 2016 Belleville (Kan.) Midget Nationals, two Chili Bowl Nationals Race of Champions features, a Chili Bowl Nationals preliminary night feature this season, the Indiana Midget Week title and 18 USAC national midget main events.
“It’s something that, even as I was thinking about how to word our announcement, I looked at what we’ve done and I can say we’re both extremely proud of all the success,” Boat said. “This team didn’t exist before 2016 and I can’t thank Corey enough for all he’s done to help build it. It has been a hell of a ride.”
Boat admitted there was one box that went unchecked that he and Tucker hoped to accomplish this season, coming one position short of doing so with Christopher Bell in January.
“We definitely would have liked to check off the Chili Bowl (Nationals), but even to go to Chili Bowl and to finish second … yes, it’s disappointing, but it’s a huge deal with how many cars are there to run that well and perform like we did with Christopher,” Boat noted. “So we were able to accomplish a lot this year, for sure.”
Turning his focus to the future, Boat shut down any notion that he would call time on his career as a car owner because of Tuesday’s announcement.
That endeavor, he said, will continue in earnest.
“Honestly, it won’t even look very different,” Boat said in regard to the upcoming year for the CB Industries squad. “Our Chili Bowl lineup will be very, very similar to last year. Even when we go USAC racing, Chris will be back … and Ryan (Timms) is going to do the POWRi season for us. And then we have some other people lined up that are going to do some POWRi stuff, too. So we have a lot in the works.
“This has really been planned for quite a while,” he noted. “The idea was that we were going to end on a championship, and luckily enough, it all finished the way we wanted it to this season.”
In short, next year provides Boat with an even bigger opportunity than what he’s had before to leave a personal mark on the sport beyond the one that he did during his driving days.
“So CB Industries is Chad Boat Industries, and it has actually been on a lot of different things that I’ve been involved with, whether that’s micro racing or sprint car racing,” Boat noted. “It’s all stuff that’s come out of my shop, but now CB industries is going to be solely on me going forward. I always joke that it’s (wife) Casey Boat Industries, honestly, but you know, it’s Casey and I’s program and we’re going to build it starting with POWRi and USAC racing next year.
“Within that, we’re going to do some other things. We build some of our own components for the midgets that we also sell to other teams, like RMS and Robert Dalby (Motorsports). They all utilize our bodies or the body style that we run on our cars. So that all falls under CB Industries. It’s not necessarily just the race team.
“It’s a brand that we’re starting to grow into and morph into, and we look forward to extending that growth in 2021.”