After success behind the wheel of a thunder car last season, Hudson Nagy is making the next jump of his racing career as he will be behind the wheel of a pro late model for 2017.

“It’s going to be different,” he told Short Track Musings. “Going from a thunder car to a late model is a big jump, with competition, the way it drives, the way it handles, how fast you go – everything, really. Your equipment is so much more. It’s hard to explain, but it’s so much more than the car that I was driving last year. So it’s going to be a wild and crazy experience, but we’ll get through it.”

The plan right now is for Nagy to run the full Flamboro Speedway schedule.

“Expectations are just to do the best that we can,” he said. “I hope to run up front with everybody else and keep up the pace and have a good year. I’m hoping for a top-five year.”

There’s also the goal of “getting more sponsorship” towards running some of the APC Auto Parts United Late Models of Ontario Series events. For right now, he’s certain they’ll be at Jukasa Motor Speedway’s grand opening at the end of August, as well as possibly running the APC event at Flamboro.

Seeing Nagy as part of the field at Jukasa would be no surprise, as his uncle Alex Nagy is in charge of promotions for the speedway.

“I’m proud of my uncle and everybody else that are putting in time and effort to build it back how it was,” he said. “Unfortunately, I wasn’t alive when it was opened and to see how great it was. But from the stories and pictures that I’ve seen, it was really something special. I hope that we can put it together and make it as good, hopefully better, than what it was before.”

For the driver of the No. 63 Jukasa Motor Speedway, Jukasa Designs, Jukasa Radio, Pure Energy Performance, Been There Dumped That, Epic Racewear, Dave Franks Photos, Automotive Truck and Tire, Fielding Winery, and Ken Wallace Contracting Late Model, the jump up a division comes after a great season in thunder car competition at Flamboro.

“I had the most wins in a season that we’ve ever had,” he said. “We unofficially got seven feature wins so that was pretty good for us. The only downfall is that we had some bad luck throughout the season with a blown motor, a spring went and made the handling all junk, overheating problems, crashed into the wall so that took us out a couple weeks. We ended up finishing fifth in points and we were pretty happy with that.”