After three years of racing on the World of Outlaws grind, Brock Zearfoss knows he could surely go anywhere else in the country and win consistently but that isn’t what the 3z team is about.
They want to race against the best until they become amongst the best.
To that end, Zearfoss will remain with the World of Outlaws for a fourth consecutive season while working towards those end goals. He joins three-time series runner-up David Gravel as drivers committed to The Greatest Show on Earth.
“Obviously, you want to get better,” Zearfoss told Sportsnaut during the World Finals earlier this month at Charlotte Motor Speedway. “Racing with the best in the world is obviously where you want to be and what anyone in racing wants to end up doing.
Fortunately, I’m able to do that. Obviously, we can race locally and be pretty dominant, I feel like. I feel like we could win a lot races back home in Pennsylvania but it’s a different level of competition and mentality when you race where we do. It’s only going to make us better in the long run.
“I feel like I have a lot to prove on the Outlaws tour. I meant to be on the tour. I know I haven’t shown it yet but racing against Donny (Schatz) and even Sammy (Swindell) when we first started racing with the Outlaws, it reminds you every race what our goals are.”
The Zearfoss team took a step back in performance in 2023 after making decent strides in 2022. He doesn’t deny that and says he is disappointed in the overall results. At the same time, he believes in crew chief Todd Berkheimer and mechanic Ron Helmick.
The Jonestown Jet, who finished ninth in the World of Outlaws standings this past year with eight top-10s and eight pole dash appearances says there was a lot of trial and error over the course of the season.
What else are they looking for to improve in 2024?
“You know, it all comes down to needing your total package to be right,” Zearfoss said. “Each year, we’ve kind of worked on different things to get our cars right. We’ve changed shock packages and this year, I feel like we’ve gotten a lot more comfortable with our balance.
“So now, we have get our motor program, which is good but it needs to be a little bit better, so we’re working on that. We just have to get better in all areas. I have great people behind me and we’re going to keep working.”
All told, Zearfoss is sitting on two wins, three podiums, nine top-5s, 60 top-10s and one quick time in 252 WoO feature appearances. That’s all been part of the iron sharpening iron approach Zearfoss says is making them better each season.
“It’s really hard to run 80 races with the best guys that have the best of everything and are on point every night while you’re still trying to build your program,” Zearfoss said. “That’s kind of the struggle of it.
“We wish we could come right out of the box and be the best but that’s not the way it works. We have to do it differently with being a family team but we’re building one brick at a time and it takes a little bit of time to do that.
“We’ll keep working, hold our heads up and keep on going.”
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.