With seven feature top-five’s and nine heat wins, it is safe to say the 2023 season was very successful for Tegan Stanley at Peterborough Speedway. Of course, everybody will remember August 5 when he picked up his first career feature victory. The driver of the No. 23 Honda recently shared his thoughts on the win and more with SHORT TRACK MUSINGS. 

What are your thoughts as you look ahead to the upcoming 2024 season?

I’m not really too sure what to expect. Like, I want to expect the world out of it, obviously. That’s what every racer expects. We had a good bit of speed the second half of this season so I’m hoping to start off really strong and hopefully figure the car out and progress during the season more than I did this year, instead of just in the middle of the season. We did achieve quite a bit this year with a significant amount of heat wins and of course a great feature win, but I would like to be able to a little more consistent and have the car figured out instead of fighting with it this season.

We have quite some plans to upgrade and work on the car this year. I’ve talked with quite a few of my sponsors and I actually have a meeting coming up where I’ll be going through everything that I think the car can use or needs to be refreshed. I have my sponsor, Tyler Junkin; he’s super knowledgeable in racing so I’ve got quite a long list of stuff that I want him to think on for me. He also helped last year with my set-up and the tire pressures last year and he taught me how to make the car do what I want to do.

So this year will be a lot of tire pressure games and not staying with what works – trying to find what is the fastest. So we plan on keeping to do that and making sure we’re having fun. We’ve been pretty lucky the last couple of years we stopped fighting for motors so this year we have a motor that is going to last us. That’s one last thing that we have to worry about. So now it’s just worrying about making the car as fast as possible and still having fun with doing that.

You mentioned last season, and the success. Yes, there was the eight heat wins, but obviously the big deal was the first feature win in August. What did it mean to you to check that box off?

It meant the world to me. That week was the same week that I sunk my car doing pizza deliveries and it was actually – we were going to skip that weekend. Then I found out Friday night that Saturday was my neighbour’s son’s birthday, and he said he wanted to go see Teagan race at the race track. So I didn’t have any plans on racing, no money – all of it just went into the street car, and the second he said that, I talked to my sponsors and we made up enough money that I could go racing.

Everything was going that I should not be racing that weekend. The car fell off the trailer on the way to the race track. We had to stop in the Foodland parking lot – me and my dad had to pick it back up, and ask some old guy if he could pull it with his truck onto the trailer because it fell off completely. We ended up making it there, and the car ran great.

It was everything we could imagine that the car could do perfectly. It worked in our favor. We ended up winning the first and second heat. The car was fast, consistent – it was perfect. Calen, who was the neighbor, he was ecstatic obviously the second that I won the first heat. I expected it out of the car because I had a good position. So I told him before if I won, I wanted him to hold the flag. So he got to come over and hold the flag which was a moment in his life that he won’t forget – and mine either.

Then to go win the second heat and the feature – everybody had high hopes for that night as it started off great, but we had a very competitive couple of cars out there. So we kind of knew if we weren’t on the top of our game that those cars would catch us. It did end up happening, but fortunately, some things happened when I ended up staying in it with them. So that was a big bonus.

It was great. We had so much of the sponsors and family out there. We had everybody other than a couple of people there that night. We didn’t expect anything to come out of that weekend, but everybody ended up showing out and of course when we won, everybody was super excited. The feeling in the car was amazing. I was so shocked. It was crazy.

The second I got passed for first place, I kind of accepted that second-place just might have been that weekend and that was the end of it. But I didn’t give up, and neither did the car. Sure enough, the white flag came out and made the move to happen and that was the win. I thought I was going to be yelling and super excited, but I was more shocked than anything that it actually happened.

One of the fans sent me a video of the entire side of the stands – all my family, sponsors, and friends, everybody all screaming and yelling. People that I didn’t even know were cheering and chanting. It was so cool to see everybody be so supportive and so excited. Obviously in the car, the second I got out, I was ecstatic. I smiled all day for like the next week. Everybody I saw asked me about it, even people at work who don’t really follow my racing because it is a big deal – as much as some people may say it’s not.

People race for 20, 30 years and never get that. So for me to do that in my first three years is crazy, and wouldn’t trade it for anything. That was one of the best weekends I had and I don’t think you can get much better, other than winning every event.

And might I add, doing it dramatic fashion too because it came right down to that battle in the last three laps there back and forth which had everybody on their edge.

That’s the best kind of racing. I’m an aggressive racer. I love that aggressive racing. That’s why short track has always been my favourite kind of racing – bumping and banging, paint exchange, nothing seems more fun to me than that.

One of my favourite races ever was when me and (Sean) Kennedy raced – I was on the outside for 14 laps straight door-to-door. I would be ahead by a bumper one lap, he would be ahead by a bumper the next lap. We were just back and forth like that and I just crossed the line with him a bit of ahead of me. That was my favorite races.

Two of the almost exact same cars and Sean Kennedy is an amazing driver, right? So for me to say that I hung out on the outside of him for that long showed everything that I’ve been learning and teaching myself is going to work, and all the help that I’ve got from other drivers and veteran racers that have been racing longer than I’ve been alive. It proves that I am listening, and I’m not just blowing them off because I think I’m the best. I’ve got a lot to learn, and a lot to learn about the car and get the car to do what I want it to do, as well as the driver do what the car is going to do.

Stay tuned for Part Two of the Interview