Tyler Courtney says he has outgrown his underdog status and wants to move closer to being a top dog of winged dirt racing and that means an inevitable showdown with the Big Cat this season in the High Limit Sprint Car Series.
Sunshine made one of the worst kept secrets official over the holidays in announcing that the Clauson-Marshall Racing No. 7BC would contest the full High Limit schedule in 2024. After winning the All Stars Circuit of Champions crown in 2021 and 2022, not to mention Kings Royal XXXVIII, it was inevitable that Courtney would chase a national championship.
That actually would have been a World of Outlaws schedule in 2023 until the High Limit midweek series was announced. The ability to compete in that full midweek slate, combined with another ASCoC schedule, was just too appealing to turn down.
And then, the injury.
He was leading the championship when he got hurt in Joker’s Wild on Kings Royal weekend, suffering a relatively minor spinal injury that took about five weeks to recover from. It’s also one that he says he is 100 percent recovered from.
“I broke it at the end of July (and the doctor) cleared me at the end of August,” Courtney told Sportsnaut. “He was very confident in me getting back into a race car, which made me even more confident. My injury is 100 percent healed.
“Obviously, I get sore sometimes at more physical race tracks but my doctor told me it will be that way for the rest of my life. Nothing has hindered me. I’m lucky that I was hooked up with the right people to get me with the right specialist in (Indianapolis) because I was really well-taken care of and they got me on the right track to get back into a race car.
“Very fortunate to still be driving and I love doing it.”
He was cleared to compete the week of the Knoxville Nationals but didn’t feel like that was the right week to jump back into a race car. He said he was closer to 90 percent and didn’t want to impede on the agreement the team had with Anthony Macri to run The Granddaddy of Them All anyway.
They could have pulled out a second car but he didn’t want to stretch the team thin.
Regardless, he returned to the seat at Outlaw Speedway in New York and won in his first start back. Courtney says he is very fortunate that the injuries were not as severe as others in similar incidents.
“I waited the extra week and went to New York and I was very fortunate in that, while you never want to break your back, my fractures were very small and it just made me do nothing for five weeks,” he said. “It could have been a lot worse but certainly not something anyone wants to go through.”
There are a lot of business reasons for Clauson Marshall to choose chasing a High Limit charter but Courtney is simply excited to see where he stacks up in a championship chase against the likes of the aforementioned Big Cat, Brad Sweet, in addition to Rico Abreu, Justin Peck, Spencer Bayston and Zeb Wise.
“Our motto for the season is to take ourselves from underdog to something where guys talk about us as a top team,” he said. “We’re ready for that challenge.”
He said he is ‘tired of the underdog story’ and that’s where the Big Cat and that cast of characters comes into play.
“I think everyone gets tired of talking about Brad but he’s the benchmark, right,” he said. “That’s the guy you have to beat but Rico is going to be tough and there’s Brent Marks, Justin Peck, Zeb Wise. You can name 12 guys that have signed up that can compete every night for a win.”
What does Sweet currently have right now that Sunshine says he aspires towards?
“This will be our fourth full time year as a winged team and I think this is Brad’s 15th year and its just experience,” Courtney said. “My crew chief is in his fourth year too and we’re learning together.
“We’re going to a lot of new tracks that Brad has been to but he’s coming to some tracks that he’s never seen before but we have. It’s going to be a fun year.”
And like everyone who has chosen either the High Limit series or World of Outlaws, Courtney doesn’t want you to read into the perception of politics.
“At the end of the day, the Outlaws are still the Outlaws and I don’t think people should compare the two because they are two different series,” he said. “The Outlaws will always the Outlaws but for us, the High Limit Series made a lot of sense. You take all the teams and drivers they have signed up and that excites me as a competitor myself to see what I can do at this next level.”
Courtney says he wants to win 8-10 races across the full year.
“I think that might be a little ambitious but they’re achievable,” he said. “Our goal is to win a championship and we know that’s going to be tough but we have to believe it first. That’s always been our approach the past three years since we went winged racing.”
Matt Weaver is a Motorsports Insider for Sportsnaut. Follow him on Twitter.