43
After five-year journey, Huff finds victory lane
By Greg Gulas
EAST PALESTINE
It took five years and 43 races before East Palestine native Brandon Huff won his first Automobile Racing Club of America Truck Series event in Fremont, Ind., at Angola Motorsport Speedway,.
Saturday, the 2008 East Palestine High School graduate hopes the site of his initial victory will be equally as nice to him and his No. 21 truck as he looks to move up in the point standings.
“You never forget your first win, so July 25, 2015, will forever be etched in my mind,” Huff said. “It was my fifth race of the season and the best finish to that point came the week before when I placed second in Columbus.
“I’ve had four poles so far this season, but won in Angola without the pole,” Huff said. “After qualifying, my father [Dan] and I made a major spring change which really helped.”
Huff first became interested in racing at age 6 when he watched weekend NASCAR races on television with his grandfather, Joe Guy.
“They just kept getting more and more interesting,” Huff said. “When I was 7, my father then took me to a Go Kart track in Columbiana and asked me if I wanted a yard kart or race kart. When I responded race kart, he knew that I was hooked.”
Huff’s parents bought him his first race kart the following year. Those first few years he raced 20-25 times each Sunday at the Columbiana track.
In 10 years of kart racing (1998-2007) between heat and features, he had more than 50 wins in Columbiana as well as four divisional and four national championships.
Graduating from high school, he was not willing to give up racing so he moved up to Legend Cars. He raced at tracks from Barberton to Lorain to Midvale, and even the Lake Erie Speedway in Pennsylvania.
For the next three years, his 1250CC Yamaha motorcycle engine-driven car won six times while setting and then re-setting the Barberton track record.
When the Legend Car Series began to fade, the decision to quit or continue loomed. For Huff and his father, it was a no-brainer.
“Racing has allowed for some excellent father-son quality time,” Dan Huff said. “It allows you to set goals and strive for excellence. And like life itself, you have challenges that you must overcome.
“In order to become successful at racing you have to be disciplined, but willing to test and try new ideas,” he said. “You learn to lose respectfully and win gracefully.”
If anything was humbling for the Huffs, it was learning the ARCA ropes.
“We made our ARCA debut in 2011 and had a lot of homework that needed to get done. Between shocks, springs, angles of control arms, panhard bars and the trailing arm, you have to have the right angles and heights must to be correct,” Brandon Huff said. “There was plenty of in-depth testing and a lot of trial by error.”
Huff finished 10th out of 20 entries in his first ARCA race at the Toledo Speedway. A fourth-place finish in Newport, Tenn., was the best of his 10-race season.
He had a fourth-place finish in 2012, a third-place in 2013 (while racing just eight times) and a runner-up finish in 2014.
“It’s a big confidence booster when you’re battling for the lead,” Huff said. “We’re slowly progressing, yet are never satisfied because the competition is extremely tough every week.
“We realize we need to get better each time out,” Huff said. “After every race, my dad and I do a recap.
“We take measurements and see where we could have done better. He says when I spin out because of a bad decision on the track, it’s my fault but since he’s an engineer, if the set-up of the car is off then it’s his fault.”
Huff’s mother, Lana, is a typical racing mom who says it’s tough watching her son going in excess of 100 miles per hour around the track.
“My two sisters and I grew up liking NASCAR because of my father, but it didn’t bother me when Brandon’s father put him in a go-kart,” she said. “As he moved up, however, I’m still there for moral support but often times it’s tough to watch.”
With seven races down and just three remaining this season, Huff is running third in points while looking to claim his first points championship.
“We’ve set goals and the first was to finish in the top-10,” Brandon Huff said. “Next, we wanted a top-five and then a top-three finish.
“Winning at Angola last month was big because we feel as though we have the equipment and set-up to keep moving forward. It’s a track that I have come to like and appreciate.”