Chris Madden
No one can question Chris Madden’s success. The Gray Court, SC driver has won a number of big races and championships throughout his Dirt Late Model racing career. And no one can question his work ethic either. Long hours are spent in his shop to assure that his car will be competitive whenever it is unloaded at a race track.
So exactly how long are those hours?
“Most of the time it’s from sun up to sun up, if you want to go fast,” the driver said with a smile. “People just don’t understand the hours we put into this stuff in the shop. I try to run it like business. I take my kid to school every morning but after I drop him off I go home and get started at the shop and work all day. I try to stop at a decent time and enjoy some time with the family, but most of the time it doesn’t work out that way.
“We’re usually still out there at the shop late hours into the night,” Madden added. “But I try to take at least a couple of nights a week and spend time with my family and go watch my boy play ball. Sometimes we’ll take off and go watch him play ball then come back and work until midnight or one o’clock in the morning. I still have to get in the bed at a decent time to be able to get him up and ready to go to school.”
The five time Southern Nationals champion says there is even more to the formula for success than just hard work. The mindset of the driver and team are critical in determining whether or not a car will find its way to Victory Lane at the end of the night.
“It’s like anything else, in whatever you do the confidence level is a lot of it,” Madden insisted. “If you don’t think you can win, you’re probably not going to win. If you don’t think you can run good, you’re probably not going to run good. I try to have a positive attitude at every one of them when I drop the tailgate down. I try to have the attitude that I’ve got a chance to win. As a matter of fact, I do have that attitude. If I get to where I feel like I can’t win, then I’ll quit. I think that’s a lot of it. A lot of it is in people’s head, but I’ve still got it in mine that I can win.”
Like many other racers, Madden keeps a notebook of setup information for most of the tracks he competes on. However, he says the value of those tools may be limited in this modern age of racing.
Chris Madden’s No. 44 Sweet-Bloomquist car.
“We try to, but that’s probably one of my weakest points,” Madden admitted of the practice of keeping notes. “It’s hard to do, trying to race and be hands on with everything that goes on with the car. I’m a little short handed with help because our funding is not what need so that we can have everything we’d like to have to keep from being overloaded. We’re kind of overloaded right now. I’ve got one guy that really goes with me and he really totes a lot on his shoulders. What he can’t handle, I tote the rest and that’s tough.”
With the technology of racing changing so quickly, Madden and every other driver must be prepared to adapt quickly to new ideas and equipment.
“It used to be that things changed year to year but now it seems to be week to week,” the driver said. “It changes so fast that the notebook has almost become worthless now. You better have a computer and an engineer that knows how to operate everything in order to go fast. But we do the best we can do.”
This weekend, Madden plans to enter the No. 44 car in the Spring Nationals races at Cleveland Speedway on Friday night and Tazewell Speedway on Saturday evening. And according to the driver, preparing for two races on the same weekend is much the same as any other weekend.
“Running two races doesn’t really mean any more than running one race preparation wise other than more tires, obviously. As far as preparation of the car it’s not any different than it would be prepping for one race.”
Chris Madden with my son, Austin Allen
