Marshall Green celebrating a victory with driver Shane Clanton
Marshall Green started Capital Race Cars a relatively short time ago but his company has experienced tremendous success in that time span. Since he began in 2011, his cars have claimed numerous feature wins, including the lucrative Dirt Late Model Dream at Eldora Speedway. And during this past season, Shane Clanton earned the World of Outlaws Late Models championship driving one of Green’s machines.
The Georgia-based operation has landed some of Dirt Late Model racing’s top stars, including Clanton, Mike Marlar and Ray Cook among numerous others. Green believes that the quality of the cars he produces has led those drivers to his brand.
So is Green pleased with Capital’s development as a chassis builder to this point?
“Absolutely,” he declared in an interview with InsideDirtRacing.com. “The goal when I originally started it was to grow small and not really try to hurry the cars out the door or get into a hurry-up offense. Our goal was to get the cars really, really good and have a good thick notebook.”
Capital’s development is aided by the fact that there is an in-house fabrication operation that has allowed the race car side of the business to grow at its own pace.
“We own Capital Fabrication too and that’s a big machine shop and fabrication shop here where we do aerospace work and some military and government work as well as some one off projects for several different industries,” Green explained. “We use finite analysis, we use solid works computer design programs, we’ve got a lot of engineering that’s gone into the cars. We didn’t just start out and copy another brand or anything like that. We’ve just kind of created our own piece.
“Our goal was never to see how fast we could get cars out the door, our goal has always been to build a really solid foundation and grow off of results,” Green added. “We just want to go out there and win races, we’re fortunate enough to have a fabrication and machine shop that allowed us to grow small. Capital Fabrication allowed Capital Race Cars to grow at whatever pace it needed to. If you look at the number of cars we have out there and look at our number of wins, our success rate is super.”
Green also believes that his experience as a successful driver provides him with the knowledge he needs to relate to his drivers.
“I think that’s one of the strong suits for us with the Capital because being a former driver and with the success that I had on that side of the fence, I can relate to what they’re telling me that the car is doing or what it needs to do,” the one-time winner of the Dirt Track World Championship pointed out. “Also, when I watch the car from my perspective now, I honestly have one foot that’s standing on a driver’s point of view and another foot that’s standing on a chassis builder’s point of view. Sometimes I can see that the car didn’t turn in the corner quite right, but it might be something that the driver was doing, then they come in and a lot of times we can fix the driver instead of the car. Then a lot of times they ran the perfect line and will tell me the car wouldn’t do something and I know we’ve got to work on the car. I definitely think it’s a big advantage being able to wear both hats, for sure.”
Green believes there is more to success as a chassis builder than just piecing cars together.
“What we build here besides cars is a race program,” he said. “I have a database that I keep up with of what I see that a Mike Marlar likes, or what I see that Shane Clanton likes, or what I see that Ray Cook likes and so on and so forth. That way when I talk to these guys through the week and when I spend time with them at the racetrack, I’m able to pull from my database their habits and characteristics and utilize our program to where we can help each other because we’re really big about open notebook racing. If you notice, a lot of people get in our cars and they really start running good to begin with and I think that’s because we try to fit that program to work with them instead of trying to change what they do as a driver.”
Shane Clanton
Having drivers with mechanical backgrounds will benefit any chassis builder. Green believes he has some of the best in his fold.
“It’s huge, and it’s not just huge to us, it’s huge to any car builder that’s as open minded as we are,” he insisted. “We just pool our thoughts together. There are things that we’ve done that all of our guys have contributed. Our fundamental program is, more than anything else, about the people themselves. We believe in ourselves and we believe in the people who are in our cars regardless of what their past looks like. Give me somebody who believes in themselves and believes in us and we’ll work hard and have success.”
Green credits one driver in particular for his contributions to Capital.
“Shane has been very instrumental since day one in building the cars and being involved. He is extremely involved. I can’t say enough good about all of our guys, but Shane has been very instrumental in helping us get where we’re at. He came to me back in ’09 because he was struggling and wanted me to help him and we started working together and we just keep building on what we’ve done. We didn’t build our first car until 2011. All your good racers now how to work on their car, even though they might go through a slump, and they might just need an outside opinion.”
