INDIANAPOLIS – In several instances throughout C.J. Leary‘s career, he‘s found himself in a new situation with new digs, a new car, new engine, a new program and a full assortment of itinerary to decode in the brief “offseason.”
Entering his 11th full year on the USAC AMSOIL Sprint Car National Championship trail, Leary has found the comfort of home in more ways than one with his return to the Michael Motorsports team once again for the upcoming season.
Despite car owner Bill Michael making his official home in Chino Valley, Arizona, the physical shop the team operates out of is located right in Leary‘s backyard, relatively speaking, in Greenfield, Indiana. It’s a newly-built space which provides the 25-year-old Leary with an all-access pass to practically come-and-go to the shop any time as he dials in his race cars alongside Charlie, his trusted pure breed English Black Lab.
With everything from top to bottom new in 2021, this coming year provides a bit of solace for Leary. He can now take his mind off constructing and pondering about the various unknowns as he did last season, as opposed to concentrating on preparation for the season-openers Feb. 17-19 at Bubba Raceway Park in Ocala, Florida, a track he won at in 2019.
“It takes a lot of stress off at this point in the year where, last year, Bill and I were new to each other; we were extremely busy trying to get stuff done in time for Florida, which was going on all the way up until when we left,” Leary recalled. “There were new cars, new motors and just a lot of unknowns going into a new deal like that.”
With a year under the belt, the focus shifts to other aspects of the machine. After a five-win season in which the team finished fifth in the 2021 standings, Leary knows there‘s still work to do. After all, this is their passion; this is their way of life; and there‘s no sense of relaxation until it‘s mission accomplished, especially when you eat, sleep and breathe race cars like this pairing does.
“After racing with Bill, we have a lot better understanding of who each other (is),” Leary explained. “We had success last year and, through this past winter, we‘ve had time to work on some stuff that we didn‘t know we needed to work on. I‘ve always said that when you go racing, it typically takes a good two years to get a solid shot at accomplishing what you‘ve set out to do, although 2019 was a little out of the ordinary.”
Leary reached the pinnacle three seasons ago as the USAC AMSOIL Sprint Car National driving champion. He was also the 2012 series Rookie of the Year and, last April at Pennsylvania‘s BAPS Motor Speedway, he provided the first victory for a Ford engine in the series since 2011.
The blue oval is back under the hood again this season, and through its ups and downs, provided Leary with a whole new set of experiences he believes pay dividends this year with even more power and even more success coming to the table in the coming year.
“It‘s a night and day difference from anything I‘ve ever driven,” Leary noted. “When we got deep into the season, I felt like we were lacking in areas, and I had to get used to driving it a little bit. I think we hit on things the last five races during the west coast swing that can help the drivability of the engine. It‘s not so much that I can feel it, but the stopwatch showed a definite improvement. We feel the changes we‘ve made throughout the winter have made it better and we should come out of the gate swinging instead of trying to learn like we did last year.”
Leary has an innate knowledge of the car at this point of the career, and one aspect he cites as a godsend is his formation of an in-house shock program — Leary Shock Technology.
It‘s a foundation of know-how from both sides of the team that he links back to both his father, Chuck, the 1993 USAC National Midget & 1995 USAC Silver Crown Rookie of the Year, as well as USAC Triple Crown champion Tracy Hines, who drove to his first career USAC feature victory in 1996 at Winchester (Ind.) Speedway while wheeling a midget for the Leary family.
These particular words struck a chord with young C.J. – “if you‘re going to be a race car driver, you‘re going to have to learn how to work on these things.” C.J. took that to heart all those years ago and still applies them to everything he does today. Leary fully appreciates his ability to diagnose and fix a race car inside and out, which has developed him into the driver he is today.
“I‘ve gotten to race with a lot of really good car owners and crew chiefs, and I feel that the pure knowledge and the building of the notebook over the last 10 years has been the biggest things that has helped me,” Leary stated. “Ten years of learning is a lot, and I‘m really hands on. Having that notebook about the things that worked on the car and the things that didn‘t work on the car has been huge.”
Being able to know those aspects in and out is a matter that Leary highly invests in that will never go out of style and goes hand-in-hand with what he desires to accomplish behind the wheel of a race car in the now and in the future.
“I enjoy the innovation of racing and I think there‘s a lot of innovation in sprint car racing left to go,” Leary said. “At the end of the day, if I mess something up setup wise, there‘s no one to blame but myself. I‘m already hard enough on myself and I don‘t want there to be a finger pointed in any direction. Bill and I go to have fun and enjoy it, but it‘s a professional race team and we want the best results possible. I think I can supply us with those results with the wheel and the setup stuff too.”
Keyword: Leary, Michael Ready Second USAC Sprint Season Together