BY CLIFF SMELLEY
Starke’s Brody Gunter had proven he could compete at the national level, but if you’re sitting in the seat with the steering wheel in your hands, you want to do more than be competitive. You want to win.
After placing in the top five seven times in the last two years, Legend driver Gunter finally made it onto victory lane, winning round four of the Bojangles-sponsored Cook Out Summer Shootout at Charlotte Motor Speedway in Concord, North Carolina, on June 25.
“We had been close so many times,” Gunter said, adding, “To finally get it is such a relief.”
Gunter, 17, is in his fourth year of competing in Legend races, moving up from Quarter Midgets. This is his second year driving in the Semi-Pro division, which is for ages 16-39. His first two years were spent in the Young Lions division, which was for ages 13-15 when he began and now has a minimum age of 11.
He had seven Legend wins at the local level, but finally came out on top in an INEX-series national- level race. Gunter, who started the June 25 race in third, was running second to London McKenzie. After a caution on the final lap, Gunter got by McKenzie on the final turn.
Gunter said his number of past high finishes without winning suggested he should place first at some point, but he admitted he also felt like maybe he couldn’t win.
“When I finally did it, it was just kind of unbelievable,” Gunter said. “It didn’t feel like it was real.”
Gunter, the son of Bryan and Ashley Gunter, has been racing since the age of 6. It was something he wanted to do after attending a NASCAR event. A man who worked with his father put the family in touch with someone at Little New Smyrna Speedway, which led to Gunter driving Quarter Midgets — cars that are, as the name suggests, one-quarter the scale of Midget racers and powered by single-cylinder engines.
His first race resulted in a third-place finish. He then won his second race. In an interview for a 2020 Telegraph-Times-Monitor story, Gunter described the real-life win as better than a win in the racing video games he played, saying, “It was amazing. I just couldn’t believe I had won an actual race in an actual car.”
When Gunter began competing in the Senior division of Quarter Midgets, he eventually drove a car in each of the four engine classes: Animal, Honda, Light 160 and Light World Formula. In November 2019, he drove all four cars to victory at Little New Smyrna Speedway. As part of the 2020 Telegraph-Times-Monitor story, Gunter said, “Usually we would go down there, and we’d win three and do really bad in one, or we’d do good in two, and we didn’t do good in the other two. That was actually a really exciting moment. We’ve won with three of my cars before, but four? That’s pretty amazing. That’s the most you can run.”
Legend cars look like smaller versions (five-eighths scale) of 1930s-era Chevy coupes and sedans, modeled after NASCAR modifieds. Gunter said the cars, which have three-cylinder Yamaha engines, can reach speeds up to 100 mph.
Gunter said he feels more like he’s driving an actual car in Legend races as opposed to Quarter-Midget races. He said Quarter Midgets are more like go-karts.
“It feels so much better — like I’m actually racing,” Gunter said.
Ashley Gunter said Legend car drivers have more to control than in other types of cars, adding, “We’ve been told this is the hardest car to drive. If Brody was to step into a Late Model, he would think it was a breeze.”
At first, Gunter wondered if he was ready for the change since he described Legend racing as “completely different” from Quarter-Midget racing. However, he decided that didn’t matter. He was ready for the challenge. When he tested a Legend car, he thought to himself, “It doesn’t matter how good I am in this now; it’s something a lot more fun than what I’ve been doing.”
Another difference is that now Gunter is part of the 510 Racing Team, which now means his family isn’t responsible for the transportation and maintenance of his car.
“We just show up, and the car is ready to go,” Ashley Gunter said. “That allows us to travel and not have to worry about the car being the best it can be because the team that he is on does all that for him.”
Gunter also now has a driving coach — Jordan Black, who is an accomplished Legend driver who is a four-time champion in the Summer Shootout series. Ashley Gunter said Black has helped her son with his confidence in making the switch from Quarter Midgets to Legends.
Ashley Gunter said it also helps that Black is someone other than Mom or Dad.
“You have a neutral person who’s not a family member,” she said.
Brody Gunter said Black and members of the 510 Racing Team all deserve thanks for helping him adapt to Legend racing.
“They’ve all helped me improve my confidence,” he said.
Having confidence in the Summer Shootout is huge. Drivers from throughout the country (and also from overseas), who are successful at the local level, take part in the national event, which is eight consecutive weeks of racing (a total of 10 rounds).
“My crew chief describes it as every guy who can win from all the local tracks coming together to one event,” Gunter said. “You basically find out who is the best from out of all those local tracks.”
In his first year in the Legend Semi-Pro division, Gunter placed second once, third three times, fourth once and fifth once in the Summer Shootout.
Gunter said, “If you can basically just get a top five there, you’re like one of the best in the country, they say.”
He wound up finishing second out of 62 overall in the final points standings at the Shootout’s conclusion.
This year’s Summer Shootout began with Gunter placing second in his first race. He started in second and fell to fourth, saying he was stuck in traffic for most of the race before moving up to second on the last lap.
Gunter said he had a bad qualifying run for his Round 2 race, starting in seventh and falling to 14th. He managed to cross the finish line in ninth place in a race that featured no cautions.
His Round-3 race saw him get sandwiched into a wreck on a restart. Still, he was able to drive from 24th and finish in seventh.
Then came Round 4 and Gunter’s first-ever Summer Shootout win.
“It’s hard,” Ashley Gunter said, adding that Michael Crafton, the driver who won the first three Semi-Pro races in this year’s Summer Shootout, had never won a Summer Shootout event until this year. That first win came after five or six years of trying.
Yet Gunter has proven himself, his mother said, noting that he’s competing against drivers who are racing multiple times a week outside of Summer Shootout events.
“I think he’s done amazing because the drivers he’s driving with are in the car two to three times a week,” Ashley said, adding, “He can basically do what they do, but we don’t spend as much time and money as they do.”
Unfortunately, Gunter’s climb in the sport may stop at Legend racing. He said he’d love to move up to Late-Model racing, but it’s expensive. Gunter said he did make such a move, he’d go from racing approximately 30 times a year to approximately five.
NASCAR, of course, requires money, too.
“It’s not talent anymore,” Gunter said. “They care more about what you bring to the table outside of the race track compared to what you can do on the race track.”
However, he can continue racing at the Legend level, which has a Master’s division for drivers 40 years and older. Gunter said he’ll reach a point where he’s driving for fun instead of being a serious competitor, adding that he’s got life to think about.
“I’ve got to get a job and kind of let it go eventually,” he said.
For now, though, Gunter is participating in as many big, national-level events as is possible before graduating from high school and going to college.
Rounds 5 and 6 of the Summer Shootout take place on Monday, July 1, and Tuesday, July 2. The remaining schedule is: Round 7, Tuesday, July 9; Round 8, Tuesday, July 16; Round 9, Tuesday, July 23; and Round 10, Tuesday, July 30.
You can visit charlottemotorspeedway.com for more information.
Now that Gunter has that first Summer Shootout win, he can focus on getting another.
“Now, we can move on,” he said. “A lot of pressure has been taken off.”
