Imagine it’s race day for the SPEARS SRL Southwest Tour at one of the many California short tracks the series visits during a given season.
Teams are preparing for another Saturday night of racing when the Campbell Motorsports hauler arrives and parks.
That leads to ominous looks on numerous faces as the competition attempts to figure out how to defeat the No. 43 super late model owned by Byron and Carol Campbell and driven by Derek Thorn.
Very few have beaten Thorn and the Campbell Motorsports team in the last two years. In fact, Thorn has been nearly unbeatable in West Coast super late model competition and has established himself as one of the best super late model racers in the United States.
“The owners, Byron and Carol Campbell, have given us everything we need to compete and they’ve had faith in us,” said the 35-year-old Thorn. “Mike Keene here in the shop, he’s the one that makes these things go fast and he has an attention to detail like nobody else I’ve ever met in my life. He goes through these things (the race cars) with a fine-toothed comb each and every week.
“He’s here seven days a week always tuning on them, making them better. We’re always trying to improve our program, never settling, always trying to stay on top of it because this is racing, it’s always evolving right?”
Thorn, Keene and the Campbells have done an excellent job staying ahead of the pack. Last year, the team competed in 14 events, mostly with the SPEARS SRL Southwest Tour, and won eight times.
Thorn’s only finishes outside the top five were a pair of disappointing results during All American 400 weekend at Tennessee’s Nashville Fairgrounds Speedway. He also sat on the pole for the Snowball Derby at Florida’s Five Flags Speedway last December, dominating the race before finishing second to Ty Majeski.
Despite falling one position short of winning one of short-track racing’s biggest crown jewels, Thorn has his fair share of gems in the trophy case.
He won the Snowflake 100, the pro late model precursor to the Snowball Derby, at Five Flags Speedway in 2019. He won the 2017 edition of the Winter Showdown at California’s Kern County Raceway and added a second victory in the annual event earlier this year.
He’s also recorded multiple championships, including SPEARS SRL Southwest Tour crowns in 2012, ’14, ’16, ’17 and ’20. He has more than 50 victories in SPEARS SRL Southwest Tour competition, a feat that is even more incredible when one considers he made his 100th series start earlier this year.
He’s also the proud owner of two ARCA Menards Series West championships during the 2013 and ’18 seasons while driving for Bob Bruncati’s Sunrise Ford Racing team.
It’s no wonder that Thorn’s stock has risen in the short-track world with those kind of accolades on his résumé.
Thorn says a lot of the credit belongs to the Campbell family, for whom he began driving on a part-time basis roughly 10 years ago.
“I would be racing a shopping cart if it wasn’t for him,” Thorn said of Byron Campbell. “He has been such an amazing owner and just overall friend who has helped me through so many things in life outside of racing. It’s been about 10 years now and it’s flown by. I can’t believe it’s been 10 years.”
His success on the West Coast has left many wondering why Thorn never got a shot in one of NASCAR’s national divisions. His two ARCA Menards Series West championships should have been more than enough to warrant a look from a NASCAR operation, but the offers were never received.
Why? Thorn says it all came down to one thing.
“A lot of it is money driven, right? A younger version of myself would be perplexed but as I’ve gotten older, I feel like I’ve wrapped my head around it a little better to understand that it’s just a money-driven sport,” Thorn said.
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