CONCORD, N.C. – Tony Stewart was a big influence on Danny Lasoski.
The three-time NASCAR Cup Series champion helped Lasoski throughout his career and helped him claim a World of Outlaws NOS Energy Drink Sprint Car Series championship.
That gratitude inspired Lasoski. The 2001 series champion and 122-time series winner knew when he retired from sprint car racing he wanted to do the same for another young up and coming driver.
Enter Mason Daniel. Lasoski was still racing at the time when he met the teenager and not yet ready to retire. However, he saw Daniel’s passion for wanting to be a World of Outlaws Sprint Car driver. It was the same passion he had when he was younger.
“Every driver, they’re not going to plan their retirement,” said Lasoski. “It just seemed to happen. At this stage, to run with the Outlaws, you have to have every single duck in a row and every single aspect covered.
“It just so happened I got introduced to the Daniel family and the second that I met them, I thought this is what I wanted to do. At the time I wasn’t ready to retire, yet. But now I think it’s the best thing I’ve ever done because now I have the fire back to win again and we have all of the resources to get it done. Now it’s up to me to get this get this kid going and get our whole team better.”
Daniel, who only has about three years of sprint car racing under his belt, is running his rookie season with the World of Outlaws Sprint Cars this year. Lasoski is at the helm of Daniel’s team as crew chief and mentor, trying to use his years of experience to shorten his learning curve.
Lasoski, of Dover, Mo., ran his first race with the World of Outlaws in 1983 and his last in 2017 – making more than 1,200 starts. In that time span he won four Knoxville Nationals, was inducted into the National Sprint Car Hall of Fame in 2011 and drove for some of the Series top team owners like Casey Luna, Dennis Roth and Tony Stewart.
He won the series championship and his second Knoxville Nationals victory in his first year with Tony Stewart’s team in 2001.
“Tony was not only my car owner, but he was my buddy,” Lasoski said. “When we started his whole Tony Stewart Racing back in the day. We were traveling together… He grew up like I did. I had my helmet bag and my seat and that’s all we had. We’ve both slept on people’s floors. We’ve both slept in the back on a car to race. He was basically trying to help me out to start a racing career with having my own team and controlling my own destiny. The proof is there. We won a lot of races together.”
Fabled crew chief Jimmy Carr was at the helm of Lasoski’s car at TSR. Like Lasoski and Stewart’s relationship, the two were friends, but they were also perfectly synced in knowing what the car needed.
“We had the relationship to the point where I could come in and before I could speak, he was going to tell me almost word for word what I was going to say,” Lasoski said. “When you get a relationship like that, it is very hard to beat.”
Using what he learned from Stewart and Carr and other owner and crew members he’s worked with, Lasoski is trying to establish a similar relationship with Daniel. Several of the tracks Daniel will be racing at and the drivers he’ll be racing around on the World of Outlaws tour, Lasoski already has experience with.
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