CJ Leary is heading for a USAC Sprint Car team to chase a championship in 2021.
Bill Michael will be heading the charge to take on a new challenge with Leary – who largely drove his own car for the majority of the 2020 USAC Season.
“At the end of the 2020 season, I didn’t really know what I was going to do,” Leary said in a release. “I had a couple options, but Bill (Michael) really wasn’t one of them at the time. We were just friends at that point, but he called me out of the blue and he was hinting around about maybe doing something and I didn’t know how serious he was. After I got off the phone, I was thinking about it and I called him back that night and asked him if he was really serious about doing this. He said this was one of his dreams to field a USAC National Sprint Car and run the full tour and he wanted to do that with me.”
Michael and Leary will make it happen as a team – and it won’t look largely different than it had this year for Leary.
The team will operate out of Leary’s shop in Indiana and the veteran USAC driver will act as the crew chief for his own car.
Michael promises to bring some better equipment, to try and give Leary more of an edge in the tour.
“I don’t even know if it’s all sank in yet even though I’ve been working on engines and building headers and things like that for three weeks now,” Michael said in the release. “It’s an absolute dream for me to be competing in the pinnacle of national non-wing sprint car racing. I would’ve never guessed I’d have this opportunity, especially with somebody like C.J. at the wheel. It’s totally one of the things on my bucket list that I never thought I’d get to achieve.”
Leary’s next race will be next month’s Chili Bowl Nationals with Alex Bowman Racing.
The 2021 USAC National Sprint Car season will kick off at Bubba Raceway Park during the second weekend of February.
