A last-minute opportunity awaited Kaylee Bryson over last weekend at Riverside International Speedway (AR) – an opportunity to drive a Late Model.

With car owner Dale Howard nursing an injury suffered the previous weekend, the Oklahoma driver was given the nod to jump in the Late Model, along with her usual Sprint Car ride with the United Sprint Car Series (USCS).  With a single day’s notice, she was now pulling double-duty in her first visit to “The Ditch.”

“We honestly didn’t know I was going to run it until the day before when Dale called me.  He was having some back problems and so he asked me if I wanted to run it,” said Bryson.  “I went out there kind of not really knowing what to expect, I hadn’t even sat in one of those cars before.”

Bryson went from last to third in her heat race, giving her the sixth starting spot in the 20-lap feature.  She ended the night in fifth, scoring a top-five finish in her first Late Model start, in addition to a seventh-place finish in the USCS feature.

“I think it went really well.  It was my first time at that track and in that car.  It wasn’t even my seat so it was a little uncomfortable but we made it work.  We added some padding, which was pretty funny.  Overall, it was a pretty good weekend.” 

After spending her career in the open-wheel ranks of Micros and Midgets, jumping into the Late Model provided an entirely different challenge.  She had to forgo some of the nuances that come with the open-wheel side when she hit the track for hot laps. 

“I went out there for hot laps in the Late Model and I felt like I was going to flip the car over.  The left rear picks up and the right front digs in the ground.  My whole life I was raised to not have that feeling, if you have that feeling in a Sprint Car you’re probably flipping.  To go out there and try to beat that feeling, it was totally backwards and I had to figure it out fast and drive it hard.”

Saturday night’s Late Model debut won’t be the only time she goes racing with the fenders.  She has another Late Model start scheduled next weekend at Thunderbird Speedway in her hometown of Muskogee, OK.

The Late Model is the latest in a laundry list of racecars she has driven in 2023, which has included Silver Crown, asphalt Sprint Car, and Trans-Am.

“We’re going to run again at Thunderbird (Speedway), a local track here in my hometown.  We’ll run another Late Model, it’s not the same one.  We plan on doing some more of that this year.”

“I’ve got a pretty long list,” she added.  “I think so far this year we’ve driven nine different cars, and that’s just in 2023.”