Race car drivers never know how or when the next opportunity is going to present itself.
In the case of three-time and defending CARS Late Model Stock Tour champion Bobby McCarty, his big break came thanks to a casual conversation one day with 11-time NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race winner Timothy Peters at Martinsville (Va.) Speedway.
The year was 2015 and McCarty was racing a family-owned late model weekly at Virginia’s South Boston Speedway. The team had decided to make a qualifying attempt for the ValleyStar Credit Union 300, widely considered the biggest race of the year for late model stock car competitors in the Southeast, at Martinsville Speedway.
Despite hiring a crew chief for the weekend to help get the team up to speed, things did not go as planned.
“We hired a crew chief and went to Martinsville and ran terrible,” said McCarty, who failed to qualify for the race that weekend. “It was awful.”
It was that weekend that the aforementioned conversation happened with Peters, who was there attempting to win the race for the second time as a driver for Barry Nelson’s Nelson Motorsports team. Peters was the fast qualifier that weekend and finished fourth after leading 33 laps.
“We just happened to be on the backstretch next to Timothy,” the 29-year-old McCarty recalled. “We got to talking with Timothy and he said, ‘Hey, look, after this weekend we’ll set up a time for you to bring your car to our shop and we’ll go through it.’”
Peters was true to his word and McCarty began bringing his race car to the Nelson Motorsports shop, where they got help with setup and preparation during the 2016 season. It was that relationship and his regular presence at the Nelson Motorsports facility that led to a phone call McCarty will never forget.
“My parents own a mechanic shop in Greensboro (N.C.), so I was at work. We had done the Wednesday test (at Martinsville) and the following Monday Barry called me,” McCarty said. “He said, ‘Hey, what are you doing?’ I said, ‘Well, I’m at work.’ Then he said, ‘Well, I need you to come down here to the race shop.’”
McCarty initially thought something was wrong, but it turned out he was about to get the opportunity of his life. Peters, who serves as the general manager of Nelson Motorsports in addition to being a driver, was running the full NASCAR Truck Series schedule that season for Red Horse Racing and made it to the final four in the Truck Series playoffs.
As a result, Peters could not commit to competing in the ValleyStar Credit Union with Nelson Motorsports. That created a vacancy with the team at one of the biggest races of the year. Nelson wanted McCarty to fill Peters’ seat.
“I thought he was joking, so I laughed,” McCarty said. “He was like, ‘No, I’m being serious. I need you down here right now.’”
When McCarty realized it wasn’t a joke, he made a beeline to the Nelson Motorsports shop in Virginia to help prepare the car.
McCarty turned in an impressive performance in the ValleyStar Credit Union 300. He was running third late in the race when an electrical glitch caused his car to start shutting off, ending his chances of winning the race.
“We’d just run the leaders down. We used a powder-coated bracket for the alternator and where it was powder coated it wasn’t grounding to the block, so the alternator wasn’t charging,” McCarty said. “The gauges went blank, the engine started skipping and shutting off so we just came down pit road. We didn’t get the finish I felt like we deserved.”
Despite the disappointing finish, Nelson saw something in McCarty. A few weeks after Martinsville, McCarty got a call from Nelson and the conversation turned to what his plans were for the 2017 season. It wasn’t long before McCarty struck a deal to race for Nelson, a deal that remains in place to this day.
“It’s really just one of those deals where, you know, I was just in the right place at the right time and I was given an opportunity and we capitalized on it,” McCarty said.
McCarty hasn’t stopped capitalizing on the opportunity to drive for Nelson Motorsports. After spending the 2017 season racing weekly at South Boston Speedway, where he finished second in points, McCarty and company joined the CARS Late Model Stock Tour.
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