David Stremme
Many may remember David Stremme from the time he spent in NASCAR’s Sprint Cup division driving for Chip Ganassi Racing as well as other teams. Indeed, the South Bend, Ind native made 200 starts at the top level of the sport. However, the 39-year-old driver stepped away from that side of racing in 2014 and has since dedicated himself to not only driving, but also building, dirt Modified cars.
Stremme’s wife, Ashley, and fellow NASCAR racer Kenny Wallace sparked his interest in competing on clay surfaces all around the country.
“I raced all asphalt up until 2010 when I started playing a little bit and ran a few charity races on dirt,” Stremme explained in an interview with InsideDirtRacing.com. “I enjoyed it and we ended up getting a few cars, my wife’s dad ran dirt, and Kenny Wallace is the one who got me into the charity races. We started messing around a little more by the end of 2012 when we went to (Georgia/Florida)SpeedWeeks.”
Stremme’s decision to become a full-time dirt campaigner was made easier when things began to unravel with his NASCAR operation.
“In 2013 when the Cup stuff started going all haywire, we owned part of a team, it kind of got ugly so I just said ‘Heck, let’s go race some dirt for a while’ and we really enjoy it,” Stremme explained. “We have a lot of fun. The NASCAR world is all about how much money you can bring and not necessarily talent anymore so we have some fun with this right now. We started building some cars right at the end of 2014, just kind of got tired of messing with some builders because they couldn’t get stuff on time and we couldn’t get parts so we just kind of did our own deal.”
So why race dirt Modifieds instead of other options such as Late Models or Sprint Cars?
Stremme’s No. 35 Lethal Chassis
“The modified is affordable for what I want to spend,” he declared. “My buddy, Kevin, and my wife go to the race track. We don’t take a big crew and really you don’t have to spend a lot of time on them through the week compared to a Late Model. Late Models are just a lot of work when it comes down to it, but the Modifieds are something that I love. You can go race anywhere in the country.”
The current resident of North Carolina has indeed raced all over the country. On the night of this interview, he was making his first venture onto the high banks of the Tazewell Speedway in upper east Tennessee, where he finished second in the feature event.
Stremme(35) racing on Tazewell Speedway’s high banks
“Last year our cars won at Boone National and we won down in Florida,” Stremme pointed out. “We’ve won in really just about every major sanctioned Modified series now, so I’m pretty proud of that. We race all over, we’ll go up to Fairbury, Illinois and we’ll go Pennsylvania to run. We’re based out of North Carolina but we travel around.”
Although Stremme doesn’t necessarily have a background in engineering, he has extensive experience working on and building racing machines. He owns and operates Lethal Chassis, which specializes in the building of Open Wheel Dirt Modified race cars.
“I have a lot of engineer friends, we’ll just put it that way,” he said. “We’ve always built our own cars as a family when I was growing up. I’ve always been a hands-on kind of person. Our car is probably more engineer driven than anything on the market right now. We’re working and we’ve still got work to do. Even myself as a driver, I don’t have a lot of experience, but I’m getting more. That’s why we wanted to come here tonight and see what we’ve got.”
So where does this former NASCAR racer hope his current path will lead him as far as his future in the sport goes?
“I just want to have fun. That’s why I do this. I’ll be 49 in ten years so if I’m still racing, and honestly I don’t know if I’ll do it that long, I imagine I’ll do something in racing but the main thing is that we enjoy it. We get to meet so many people through dirt and asphalt. I can pretty much go anywhere in the country and know somebody. I really enjoy that part of it, the camaraderie and making new friendships.”
