It was the last weekend before the start of Georgia-Florida Speedweeks, and Earl Pearson Jr. had lounged around his Jacksonville, Fla., home with an inordinate amount of time on his hands.

He had no ride. No job. No irons in the fire. No foreseeable way he’d be competing in the Lucas Oil Dirt Late Model Series opener at Golden Isles Speedway in less than two weeks. | Complete Speedweeks coverage

It sure felt like retirement for the soon-to-be 52-year-old, so he figured he might as well start making peace with the emerging reality that Father Time had directed him out to the pastures.

“I was alright with hanging my helmet up and just come out here to be part of it,” Pearson said. “Maybe work with the series here and there? Because I don’t want to get away from the sport. Hell, it’s all I’ve ever done.”

Then his 25-year-old son, Trey, spoke up one night at dinner.

“Why don’t you give it a shot?” he posed to his father. “What do you have to lose?”

Suddenly Pearson made all the right phone calls and rallied all the right people to make a winter’s worth of preparations happen in a week’s span. In less than 14 days, Pearson went from the fringes of retirement to the centerpiece of a once part-time team that’s conjured up enough materials to hit the road with the Lucas Oil Series.

Enough to get them comfortably through Georgia-Florida Speedweeks at least. And it wouldn’t be possible without Farley, Iowa-based car owner Jason Rauen, who miraculously pulled through on Pearson’s request for a lifeline in the knick of time.

“It is crazy how it all happened,” Pearson said. "And literally, I promise you, in 48 hours I went from absolutely nothing — just sitting there — to bam, bam, bam, we have to rock and roll.”

From the initial conversation with Rauen to the intricacies such as graphics on the car, everything practically worked in Pearson’s favor to make his milestone 20th consecutive season with the Lucas Oil Series come to fruition.

The only holdup during the entire process had been the day after Monday’s initial conversation between Pearson and Rauen. Once both parties converged, with Pearson bringing his host of backers — the cornerstone of those being Lucas Oil Products — to Rauen’s turnkey race program, the next steps were to hash out the schedule.

Both Rauen and Pearson couldn’t realistically see how they’d bring everything together in time for the start of Georgia-Speedweeks, so they leaned toward starting their season sometime during spring. That plan fell apart quickly.

“We were going to run during the summer months … then Jason called me back and said, ‘We have to go for it,’” Pearson said. “From that point on, we went for it. These guys have worked their asses off to make this happen.”

Earl Pearson Jr.'s ride with Jason Rauen for the 2024 season, as shown at Golden Isles Speedway. (Heath Lawson)

Pearson phoned his backers, informing them of their frantic push, and to get graphics squared on his No. 46 machine.

“Probably a week-and-a-half ago, we said, ‘Alright, we’re going for it,’” Pearson said.

Rauen and crew chief Zach Frields, meanwhile, had less than a week to plan a 20-hour haul through the Midwest’s treacherous wintery weather. On Monday, the team stopped off at Cory Hedgecock’s BMF Race Car shop in Sweetwater, Tenn., to purchase door panels, spoilers and components to make up the front suspension and rear-end.

Once Rauen’s team loaded up from the Hedgecock headquarters, it was off to Pearson’s home on Tuesday — yes, the night before their first laps together in Wednesday’s practice session — to mount his seat.

“It was boom, boom, boom, all at the last minute,” Pearson said in the Golden Isles pit area before the start of Thursday’s season-opening Lucas Oil Series tripleheader. “As I said, it’s been good. But for all that’s took place in two-and-a-half weeks, it’s amazing we’re sitting here really. I’m talking about graphics. I’m talking about shocks, springs, tires, you name it. It was all in two weeks. And finding crew guys to make all this work. I mean, it’s just a blessing to make this work.”

Pearson said that living so close to Golden Isles, a place he basically “grew up at,” had “75 percent to do” with the reasoning to scramble and expect the assembling of a touring-ready team within 10 days to come together. Not only because it made logistics easier, but so family and friends could attend what’s likely to be his last Georgia-Florida Speedweeks.

“It’s big to come here because I’ve won a lot of races at this place,” Pearson said. “So many family and friends come here. Saturday night, you won’t be able to walk around this car. There will be so many people. It’s part of it. I enjoy that part of it because I don’t get to race around them anymore. Heck, I don’t even get to see them. After Speedweeks, we’re gone throughout the Midwest. I don’t get to see them too much.

“It’s a special thing to come here in front of all the people that surround us,” said Pearson, who then added this is “more than likely” his final year as a touring driver.

“If you had the perfect year, then of course you go do another year,” he continued. “But I’ll be 52 going on 53 (next year).”

Reflecting on longevity spurred Pearson to then go a little deeper with that train of thought.

“People don’t realize … of course, Scott Bloomquist has done it and Dale McDowell, he’s been talking about retiring. Billy Moyer and all them, you can keep going. People don’t understand, what we go through is,” Pearson paused slightly to turn around and point toward his toter, “you live in that thing. You live there. And that gets old.

“You travel and you can’t come home for three, four, five weeks. I mean, you can fly back and forth, do all this, but every weekend when your family is having a birthday party or out on the lake or whatever, you sit there in that box and think about it.”

Earl Pearson Jr. hangs around his team's transporter prior to Thursday's Lucas Oil Series opener at Golden Isles. (Heath Lawson)

Pearson has no regrets or resentment for spending half his life on the road (this is his 25th year as a full-time driver). He wouldn’t have been that invested without passion driving him along. It’s just the more he ponders what else he could be doing with himself after reaching so many noble feats within the sport, and dialoguing about it among his veteran peers, the more beauty he sees in the leisurely life.

“McDowell and I … hell, him and I talk about it all the time,” Pearson said. “Yes, you love to do it. But you have no other life. It’s racing. This is it. You talk to Steve Shaver and some of the other guys, and they’ll tell you, there’s another life out there. Once you get away from it, you’ll see how much you’ve missed in life. That’s what I’ve been looking at.

Pearson is also a grandfather now, too. His son Trey became a father August 2022, in the weeks before Pearson’s last victory to date on Aug. 27 that year at Port Royal (Pa.) Speedway. Not letting those sweeter moments with family slip away does press on Pearson’s heart.

“What sucks is, I hardly watched (Trey) play tee-ball, baseball … when we raced, we was always here and he was always there doing other stuff,” Pearson said. “It works on you a little bit. That’s what I tell all these other guys.”

Jonathan Davenport, now 40 years old himself, has grown closer with Pearson especially these last few years. The pair of multi-time Lucas Oil Series champions have had the luxury of flying back to their respective homes between race weekends, oftentimes taking an Uber or rental car to the airport together.

And it’s in those spaces that Pearson briefs Davenport on everything he wish he knew 10 years ago.

“He has his son now playing football, baseball, all that … me and him have talked about that,” Pearson said. “I tell him, ‘This is the one thing you’ll regret in your life if you miss everything he’s doing.’

“And he said, ‘I ain’t going to miss it. I will not miss it.’ I respect that. Yes, he makes good money doing this. But the other side of that, look at what you miss. There’s other things out there. Yes, this is what we grew up doing. Do we love it? Yes. But the big thing is, you have to have your family, too. This is something that, 10 years ago, you wouldn’t have ever thought of — getting out of the sport.”

What Pearson’s implying is that the sport has evolved so much the last decade, from the backbreaking costs to now racing year-round if a driver chooses, the habits and mechanisms that made him successful for so long are outdated. He never foresaw the day where drivers race 100-plus times to stay on top of their game, nor the influence of technology that’s forced drivers to run the cars harder than ever — a driving style that’s never been Pearson.

But Pearson insists “I don’t have nothing to prove,” and he rests assuredly knowing that whatever comes from this encore of a year, his legacy is secured.

“Hell, we’re going to get out there and beat and bam with them,” he said. “Whatever happens, happens. Of course, we’re here to win races and do our job for our sponsors.”

Reaching 20 years with the Lucas Oil Series is also a milestone Pearson really wanted to live out, as well as Forrest Lucas, the founder and CEO of Lucas Oil Products.

“That’s one thing that Forrest Lucas said. He said he’d love me run for 20 years,” he related.”I said, well hell, as much as he’s done for me — and it’s not that he made any decisions on it — he said he’s with me 100 percent and said and that he’d make it happen. The whole family, the whole family, is behind me.”

Lucas Oil Products is now in its 24th year backing Pearson, the longest active “what they call athlete” the entity has sponsored.

“We have way more friendship than sponsorship,” Pearson said. “We talk all the time. We go out to the ranch, hang out with him, mess with the cattle, whatever it may be. And not just me. It’s what he does for everybody. He just has a story of itself. It’s unbelievable.”

What is there to pragmatically expect of Pearson this year? He only finished in the top five last season on three occasions in 54 feature starts, by far the lowest season-long total of his career. His 19 top-10 finishes were more than the 2020 and ’21 seasons, though, so it’s not like Pearson’s competitiveness has fallen off the ledge.

Competitiveness has never not been a priority, but in what’s shaping to be his final season, Pearson wants to enjoy himself before anything else.

“What can we expect? We can only expect so much,” Pearson said. “These guys have been down here a whole month. … Yes, we have work to do, but we felt better after (Wednesday’s practice night) than we did the first time we hit the racetrack. We went in the right direction. Hopefully it all works out. We’ll do the best we can.

“I’ve had a great career. I’ve done a lot. … I have nothing to prove to nobody.”