The Sweet Smell Of Success

“Young Gun” Kasey Kahne Racing driver Brad Sweet broke through for his first two career USAC National wins at Knoxville Raceway in June. His first taste of victory has the 22-year-old phenom hungry for more.

Words: Mark Bourcier

For most young drivers, victory at any new level of racing is a relief, and perhaps a personal confidence-booster. For Team Mopar® driver Brad Sweet, sweeping the June 20–21 Mopar Midget National Championship Series doubleheader at Iowa’s storied Knoxville Raceway was not only both those things, but also an absolute rebirth.

The 22-year-old redhead, in his first year campaigning Midgets and Sprint Cars for Kasey Kahne Racing, cut his teeth on the dirt tracks of his native California before migrating to the Midwest in search of career opportunities. Despite always displaying great speed, the going has often been rocky. Sweet said winning the “King Doodlebug Classic” and the “Pepsi/Mountain Dew Knoxville Midget Nationals” in a single weekend — his first United States Auto Club (USAC) scores — “was like a weight off my shoulders.”

"At Knoxville, we did it. That makes you believe that when things to right, you can beat anyone." —Brad Sweet

Bigger still for Sweet was the fact that in the Knoxville finale, he outgunned two-time defending USAC Midget champion (and fellow Team Mopar driver) Jerry Coons in a fierce battle. The youngster and the veteran swapped the lead several times during the 30-lap slugfest, with Sweet — an admitted fan of Coons — grabbing control after a pair of hotly-contested restarts.

Sweet said, “I used to look at Jerry and think, ‘Once he gets the lead, you aren’t going to ever beat that guy.’ But at Knoxville, we did it. That makes you believe that when things go right, you can beat anyone.”

Thus was born a new Brad Sweet. His confidence has never been in short supply — indeed, bravado has always been his calling card — but it had been roughed up a little. In 2005 and ’06, prior to climbing into Kahne’s blue-and-white Mopar machines, Sweet had lost races by inches, fallen out of sure-thing victories with flat tires, and generally been slapped silly by Lady Luck.

“I had come so close in the past,” Sweet said, “but little things went wrong at the worst times. I just had a lot of bad luck. You get to a point where you’re like, ‘Am I ever going to win one of these things?

“So to win two big races in one weekend, and to have it happen at Knoxville, was great. I grew up watching the Knoxville Nationals [for winged Sprint Cars] on television, and I always thought that was such a cool place. It’s a track with a lot of history. It just never crossed my mind that I would ever go there and win.”

Like so many of today’s rising young stars, Sweet turned his first racing laps in go-karts near his family’s home in Grass Valley, northeast of Sacramento. After piling up close to 100 karting victories, he took the ambitious step of graduating to Sprint Cars in late 2002. In Northern California, most Sprint Car racing is of the winged variety, and it didn’t take long for Sweet to make his mark in the class. He won three features in the next two seasons, all in regional 360 cubic-inch cars, and even moonlighted with more powerful 410 cubic-inch machines on the prestigious World of Outlaws circuit. In ’03, Sweet was nominated for both the National Sprint Car Rookie of the Year and National 360 Driver of the Year awards.

His stand-on-the-gas style made him a spectator favorite. When Sweet’s first visit to Southern California’s Perris Auto Speedway in 2004 resulted in a top-10 finish (in just his third-ever non-winged Sprint Car start), a group of appreciative fans started a collection, offering to pay for Sweet to come back for subsequent Perris events!

He turned his attention instead to Sprint Car-crazy Indiana in 2005, and found similar acceptance there. Sweet was helped to varying degrees — ranging from shop space to mechanical help — by hospitable Hoosiers, and began to pick up occasional rides. A sixth-place USAC finish at Ohio’s Eldora Speedway and a runner-up finish in a local event at Bloomington, Ind., solidified him as a youngster to watch.

When he flipped his car through an advertising billboard at the Tri-State Speedway in Haubstadt, Ind., in July of ’05, Sweet grabbed national attention. Video footage of the spectacular wreck played on ABC’s “Good Morning America” program, which also interviewed Brad. On MSNBC’s “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” cable news show, the wisecracking host wondered if Sweet had “abandoned the traditional ‘four lefts make a circle’ style of racing for these controversial three lefts and a right.”

Funny stuff, sure, but those in the know were more impressed by Sweet’s progress. The editors of Flat Out magazine, a Sprints-and-Midgets monthly, named Sweet one of America’s top 25 drivers under the age of 25. He validated their faith by quickly becoming one of a handful of drivers able to boast of top-five finishes on all of the following Sprint Car circuits: USAC, the World of Outlaws, the National Sprint Tour, the Sprint Bandits, the King of Indiana Sprint Series, the Golden State Sprint Series, and the Sprint Car Racing Association. In 2006, Sweet topped a stellar field to claim the $10,000 winner’s check for the “Ron Shuman Classic” at the Lakeside Speedway outside Kansas City. Last season, his versatility was showcased when he scored victories in both winged and non-winged Sprint Cars, and a USAC Western States Midget.

His combination of youth, speed and experience — Sweet raced 75 times in 2007 alone — led to his ’08 signing with Team Mopar and Kasey Kahne Racing, where Brad is under the tutelage of team manager Willie Kahne and chief mechanic Davey Jones. The transition has been silky-smooth. Sweet said, “I feel like I’ve fit in well with the crew guys, Kasey, Willie, just everybody.”

That includes his KKR stablemate, Oklahoma teenager Brady Bacon. Aside from scattered outings during his scrambling days, Sweet had never worked with a teammate, “so that was different. Luckily, Brady and I get along really well. We’re not out there just thinking about beating each other. Yeah, if he’s outrunning me, I want to know what his guys are doing so I can do better, and if I’m running a little better he’s doing the same thing. But other than that, we work together as much as we can.”

Sweet’s biggest adjustment has been a matter of manpower. While in his earliest Midwest outings it was not uncommon to see him toiling alone, he’s now supported by a Kahne squad deep in manpower. “And that’s definitely a rewarding feeling,” according to Brad. “I feel like I worked really hard to get where I’m at; I wasn’t handed anything. So to be in a situation now where we’ve got six or seven guys who are there to help me makes me feel like I’ve come a long way. I still like to go to the shop and work, but I don’t have to thrash on my own car just to get to a race. I can show up at the track looking clean, feeling like I’m ready to go.”

But if the extra help has taken a lot of pressure off Sweet, it’s nothing compared to what that amazing Knoxville Midget weekend did. “The cool thing,” he said, “is that I was finally able to call Kasey and tell him we had won. We’d been in a little bit of a dry spell, so it was nice to call them with some good news.”

For his part, car owner Kahne lauds Sweet at every opportunity. In a July appearance on SPEED-TV’s “Wind Tunnel” program, Kasey declared that Sweet “can race about any type of car you give him. He figures things out really quickly … He can race with the World of Outlaws, he can race USAC, pavement, dirt, it doesn’t matter.” And the boss’s praise is not reserved for the media: “Brad’s a great little driver,” Kahne tells friends.

And that great little driver — Sweet stands just 5'5", and weighs a mere 120 lbs., much of that apparently in his right foot — is clearly enjoying life as a winning Mopar star.

“It’s been really fun so far,” he said. Then he paused before adding, almost as a warning, “And it seems like we’re really starting to click.”