It didn’t take long for Spencer Hughes and his race team to know the 2016 season would be special.
In fact, they knew something was brewing before the 2015 season ended.
“Last year, at the Fall Classic at Whynot, we made some changes to the setup of the car, and Spencer went out, led it for a little while before a water pump went out and ended the night early,” said Johnny Hughes, Spencer’s father and crew chief. “Then we went to The Bullring and ran third in the Possum Town Grand Prix. We knew based on the last couple of races last year that we’d found something.”
Then, the Hughes Racing team got a new car. The typical transition period for breaking in a new car lasted one race for Spencer, who won his first race of the 2016 season in his second race of the year.
“Right out of the box, it just fit his driving style,” Johnny said.
It was a great way to start, but no one on the team could have predicted a championship season, nearly 20 feature wins and a “no-days-off” race schedule that lasted 27 consecutive weeks.
Spencer, 15, clinched the 2016 NeSmith Street Stocks National Championship. He was tied with Randy Lovell at 700 points, but Hughes had more second-place finishes to win the tiebreaker.
“I felt like we had a pretty good shot at it once we got past week 14 and we needed to win four or five more races,” Spencer said. “We always had a good shot at it, but you can’t hardly have a bad weekend to try and run for national points, especially when it came down as tight as it did this year.”
The points chase was so tight that two points separated Spencer and Lovell from Steve Pate, who finished third. Only 11 points separated first from fifth.
“That competition made it real stressful the last six or seven weeks,” Spencer said. “Second place didn’t do us any good in the points late in the season, and that was really stressful going into each weekend, the last two or three trying to get to 700.”
Spencer won seven of the 10 points races at Magnolia Motor Speedway, edging Lee Ray by 50 points for the track championship.
“It’s been an unbelievable year,” Johnny said. “We’d hoped to have a good year, but it’s been beyond our wildest expectations. The second week of the season, we won the Battle of the States at Whynot, then the third week we won the Golden Egg at Magnolia. If we didn’t win another race that year, it would have been a good year. Then it kept building. We won four or five in a row after that. It was very early on, from that second race, when we knew it would be something special.”
Regardless of age, the level of success Spencer reached this season requires discipline and next-level focus. Spencer said the hectic schedule wore him down at times, but he never got complacent. Working for Mike Boland at Trak-Star Race Cars taught him the importance of maintenance.
“You have to look for new ways to get faster,” Spencer said. “You always have to look for a bit more speed, just try and stay on top of the game.”
Johnny said he “probably hounds Spencer too much” about staying on schedule and prioritizing tasks, but for the most part, Spencer’s work ethic doesn’t have to be managed.
“You hear about all forms of sports teams peaking early and struggling to get back there,” Johnny said. “We had an outstanding first part of the season, then we had — I won’t say a slump — but we struggled a bit mid-year, and then we came back strong. He deserves a lot of credit for continuing to work hard. Hopefully, we can continue that in the big-race season.”
Spencer hopes to move up to Late Models next season, though they’ll need help to make that happen. He raced a sprint-modified car recently and won a race. There are options, but nothing has been finalized.
“You always want to move up and move into something with more room to advance, but, on the other hand, you don’t want to try to do it with inferior equipment,” Johnny said.
Spencer will race this weekend at Magnolia Motor Speedway, Oct. 8 at the Fall 40 at Magnolia, and Oct. 22 at the $15,000-to-win Fall Classic at Whynot.
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