By Tony Veneziano

Momentum and confidence are often said to be worth a few extra horsepower to a driver. For Carson Macedo, who is in the midst of a two-race win streak with the Arctic All Star Circuit of Champions, those intangibles are on the rise at a very important time of the season as he gears up for a string of nine races in nine nights as part of Ohio Sprint Speedweek.

Macedo will open the 2018 edition of Ohio Sprint Speedweek with the Arctic Cat All Star Circuit of Champions this Friday at Attica Raceway Park. The nine-race mini-series then heads to the famed Eldora Speedway, Waynesfield Raceway Park, Wayne County Speedway, Sharon Speedway, Atomic Speedway, Muskingum County Speedway, and Limaland Motorsports Park all in succession. The tour wraps up with a second visit to Atomic on Saturday, June 23.

“The 3G team has put a lot of work in this year to be in the right state of mind and have our ducks in a row for Speedweek,” Macedo said. “It’s one of our busiest times of the year. We are taking it race by race. It’s a lot of nights in a row and you have to really be prepared. We’ve spent a lot of time in the shop getting everything ready and prepared for the week ahead. It was definitely good to get a couple of wins and build some momentum before we start Speedweek.”

After a running a “True Outlaw” type schedule last year with a great deal of success, Macedo and the 3G team, for whom he drives, committed to running the full All Stars schedule this season. Logistically, the All Stars calendar works well with the program that the team led by Joe Gaerte and Tim Norman have in place.

Last season, Macedo won 12 races, including the Canadian Sprint Car Nationals at Ohsweken Speedway. On the touring front in 2017, he won with the All Stars at Lincoln Speedway in Pennsylvania and the MOWA Series at Bloomington Speedway in Indiana.

“My ultimate goal in racing is to race with the World of Outlaws and race competitively with them,” Macedo shared. “The All Stars are really tough right now and there are a lot of good drivers running with the series. Tony Stewart has done a great job with the series and has built something that a lot of people have an interest in. If you want to run with the Outlaws someday, you need to get with the All Stars and try to have success there. That’s what we are trying to do. I’m really happy we are running the series and they are doing a really good job.”

Macedo cut his teeth racing sprint cars in his home state of California as a teenager. He headed to the Midwest for the first time in 2016 and contested the full USAC National Midget schedule, driving for the powerhouse team owned by Keith Kunz. Macedo claimed the Indiana Midget Week title that season, along with USAC National Midget Series Rookie of the Year honors. The fourth-generation driver won three midget races in 2016, including the Pepsi Nationals at the historic Angell Park Speedway in Wisconsin. Macedo also raced competed in a winged sprint car on a limited basis for the Mintz Motorsports team, based out of Ohio, that season.

“At home, we get labeled as having heavy, rough, and hooked-up tracks,” he explained of California sprint car racing. “It's not always that way. You do occasionally have some tracks that are that way, but we have slick tracks, too. A lot of the tracks we raced at are more on the edge, with walls around them like Tulare (Thunderbowl Raceway). We don’t have a lot of big tracks and half-mile, so for me, places like Knoxville and the bigger tracks take a little bit of adjustment.

Over the last few seasons, Macedo has had the opportunity to race at a wide array of tracks. He competed at a number of bullrings while on the USAC Midget tour and has added quite a few bigger tracks to his repertoire over the last season and a half with the 3G team. 

“Driving for someone like Keith Kunz and now Joe Gaerte and Tim Norman, they are people that are familiar with the race tracks, so that makes it easier on me,” Macedo noted. “When I go there, my car is really close and there is not a lot of searching with the setup, because they have been there and know what to do. They definitely can give you some advice on what to do. That makes it a whole lot easier. There is still some adjustment, but it's nice to have people in your corner that have you going in the right direction from the start.”

Growing up in Lemoore, CA, Macedo looked up to Jason Meyers, who is from Clovis, which is about an hour away. The two-time World of Outlaws Craftsman Sprint Car Series champion would eventually become a mentor to the young driver and even took him to the PRI Trade Show in 2015 to introduce him to a number of industry insiders. 

Tommy Tarlton, a fellow Californian, and Sean Dyson, from Australia, have also had a large impact on Macedo’s career. He made all of them proud when he scored his first World of Outlaws Craftsman Sprint Car Series win in his home state of California at Silver Dollar Speedway in 2014.

“For me, Jason (Meyers) is somebody that has had a lot of success in exactly what I am trying to do,” Macedo shared. “It’s easy for me to look up to him. He’s been there along the way and has given me some really good advice. That's really all I can ask for. I talk to him often and he always has really good advice and leads me in the right direction.”

Macedo heads into Ohio Sprint Speedweek second in the current All Star standings, just 22 markers out of the lead. He was victorious last weekend in New York at Stateline Speedway and Weedsport Speedway. 

Macedo is near the top of the leaderboard in most categories on the stats sheet, but he and the 3G team are taking a race-by-race approach and not getting caught up in the hoopla of the point standings.

“There are a lot of races with the All Stars and a lot can change in just a few nights,” Macedo said. “At the end of the day, you just have to be consistent and be there every night. I think people can see what Chad Kemenah, Rob Hunter, Brian Kemenah, and that team have done the last few years. They have been very consistent and you rarely see them ever out of the top three. They are consistently in the top five every night and that's what it takes to win championships. The championship means something to us, but the 3G team is trying to go to every race, do our best and win races. The only way you can win a race is if you are there when the checkered flag flies.”