WHEATLAND, Mo. — A part of Payton Looney wished he hadn’t been at Lucas Oil Speedway on Thursday.

Yes, the Republic, Mo., driver had a downright dreadful evening from the outset when simultaneous fuel pump and oil line issues arose in hot laps. And once that was resolved, the night plummeted when he wrecked out of his heat race, an incident not from his wrongdoing, and the damage sustained was too much for quick repairs. As frustrating as that sounds, Looney’s disappointment in being at the track for the first preliminary night of the Lucas Oil Show-Me 100 was because he’d rather have been elsewhere.

“I had to miss my son’s baseball game to be here, so that kind of stunk,” Looney said. “My kids are more important than anything, and my wife. … I don’t like missing any of my son’s baseball games. But if you didn’t race Thursday, you were pretty well shot. And with (the way Thursday turned out), I probably should have went to the baseball game because we didn’t get any points anyways. But it all worked out.”

That last, tone-shifting sentence from Looney came after Friday’s fourth-place finish in the second Show-Me 100 prelim on the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series, where he provided prelim-dominating Jonathan Davenport his serious challenge via Looney’s 180-degree turnaround from 24 hours earlier.

Looney still has to race through one of Saturday’s B-mains if he wants to compete in the 31st running of the Show-Me 100. He starts from the pole in the third and final consolation race, and if he finishes in the top two, he’s golden. If not … well, then he at least won’t be as upset as missing his 5-year-old Baylor’s baseball game.

“Baylor wanted to be here for the weekend. If we didn’t race, we would have been here anyway tonight and tomorrow,” Looney said of spectating races with his son. “It all worked out. We’ll be here. And while here, hopefully we’ll put it in the show.

“You always know you can do it. You have to have confidence to race,” added 2020’s surprising Show-Me 100 winner, only the second home-state driver to win the crown jewel event. “To be here, you have to think you can do it. But these guys are really good. I don’t race a whole lot anymore. My kids are getting older and they’re in sports, and all that type of stuff. We just race the bigger races close to the house. That really fits my schedule good (and) it fits my car owner’s schedule good.”

What Looney’s implying is that while a spotlight forever follows him as a Show-Me 100 winner, his racing career doesn't takes precedent in his 28-year-old life. Looney’s $20,000 victory during the Covid-hampered 2020 season had the power to change his life, potentially giving him the pedigree to chase his dream of building a career driving Dirt Late Models.

But the husband and then father — 3-year-old daughter Elliott wasn’t born until after her father’s epic Show-Me 100 victory — Looney became a full-blown family man. The driver who led Lucas Oil Midwest LateModel Racing Association points most of 2020 and ended up a close third in the title chase scaled racing back so much that he’s a part-timer at best — running a fraction of the 60 or 70 races of many teams — and so much that “a lot of people thought I was crazy,” Looney said.

“The guys who are in the top-tier rides of course make a good living. I could be up and down the road all I wanted to. But when you have kids, my main goal is to provide for them,” said Looney, whose father Brad Looney was a longtime Dirt Late Model standout in regional competition. “I mean, racing wasn’t the best way for me to provide for them and for my wife. I just made the decision. It was easier when we had Baylor. But when you throw another one in the mix, it’s hard on my wife, and it’s not fair to her either. 

“It just worked out we can still race the amount of times I wanted to race,” Looney added. “And I can still have a good job and still provide for my wife and kids. We still get to race for fun. And there’s no pressure. If we didn’t win tonight, it’s not the end of the world. We still had a good time. We tried like hell. We’ll try the same thing tomorrow.”

VIDEO: Watch Friday's Show-Me 100 prelim highlights from Lucas Oil Speedway. 

The full-time sales estimator for Absolute Roofing Company of Springfield, Mo., has 15 races scheduled this year aboard his 3-year-old Capital Race Car with a 6-year-old engine for Atnip Motorsports. The Show-Me 100 weekend makes up his fourth, fifth and sixth race nights of the season.

In a sport where keeping up with the Joneses (and their engineers) is difficult, it’s remarkable that Looney’s able to go pound for pound with the sport’s heavyweights and finish on the frontstretch with standouts Davenport, Ricky Thornton Jr., Tim McCreadie and Brandon Overton, all of whom have raced nearly 40 times each already this year. Looney, of course, doesn’t make it happen on his own. He credits his relevancy to Capital Race Cars owner Marshall Green.

“It’s a huge testament to him. It’s awesome,” Looney said. “I don’t race all the time to be at the top of my game. It took me three or four laps to know what the car needed, and then once I figured out how to drive it better, we took off and won (the heat). I’m trying to be as good as my car is. But at the same time, Marshall and them took me under their wing. They help me be able to show up and race.

“I don’t have to race 100 times a year to know what’s going on. Marshall is aways taking care of me, and I’ll forever be grateful. I’ve told him this a thousand times, without him, I wouldn’t race. I wouldn’t do this for sure. I wouldn’t show up with the national guys and be anywhere competitive. He’s the one with the information. He builds the cars. He fills me in. He’s just a great guy. A great family guy who gets me and what I want to do. I’m really fortunate.”

On Friday, Looney gave last season’s $2 Million Man all he could handle, and if it weren’t for the 28-lap caution for Tyler Stevens, the result maybe could’ve been different. Up to that point, Looney hounded Davenport in traffic, engaging in a side-by-side lead battle with 15 laps to go.

The caution with 12 laps left allowed Overton to get by Looney for second, and Looney couldn’t make another bid for the point.

“We needed to go green for sure. We needed to be in traffic. (Davenport) was searching pretty hard in traffic trying to find a way around a couple of them,” Looney said. “That allowed me to show him a nose and a door. He obviously has another gear when I pull up beside him. He was going to make it really tough to pass him. I was just trying to get the lead and then the rest take care of itself. However that could happen, I don’t know. I just wanted to get the lead and then kind of figure it out after that. It just didn’t work out.”

As long as Looney qualifies for the main event Saturday, he truly believes he can make something happen no matter where he starts.

“I feel like I do have a piece that can win again,” said Looney, who even went as far to say he feels better car-wise than when he won three years ago. There is, however, a caveat to that.

“Everybody else is just a lot better, too. The cars are just more stuck and more gripped up,” he added. “I can do things I couldn’t do when we won, but so can everybody else. The car feels just as good, if not better. We just have to be as balanced as we were (Friday) for the 100 laps and then go from there.”

Looney could make Saturday’s feature, or maybe he won’t. The result won’t make or break him. Obviously if another stirring Show-Me 100 victory is in store, the party is on. But if Looney never does another spectacular thing in racing, he says he’s OK with that, too. He’s content and that’s what matters most to this family man.

“Winning that (the 2020 Show-Me 100) was kind of like, I’ve made it. I can do it and now I’m content if I never won another race,” Looney said. “I proved to myself and everybody else that I belong here. That’s what happened. That’s what I did. It made it easier for me to do what I did, like the decision not to race much anymore. A lot of people thought I was crazy. I’ve dreamed of this as a kid. This is all I’ve ever wanted to do. It worked out the way I think it should. For us to be able to show up and still be competitive, it just makes it a perfect situation.”