VIC COFFEY - Sweeteners Plus

T
VIC C
Ivan Veldhizen
he yellow and red colors of the Sweeteners Plus Dirt Late Model have become
instantly recognizable to full-fender fans
across the country thanks to Tim McCreadie,
who in just five years on the division’s scene
has won a World of Outlaws Late Model Series Championship and an ever-growing list
of big shows.
But now there’s another Sweeteners
Plus driver attempting to make a mark on
the national Dirt Late Model scene, and for
the uninitiated, this one is actually more
closely connected to the upstate New
York race team.
Vic Coffey, the 2008 World of Outlaws
Late Model Series Rookie of the Year, has
been the constant in the history of Sweeteners Plus Racing. He’s spent virtually his entire
racing career competing with the backing of
the Lakeville, New York, based company that
distributes and manufactures liquid and dry
sweeteners. From his early days in MicroSprint racing to his emergence as a force in
the DIRTcar Northeast Modified ranks, and
now on to his current Dirt Late Model exploits, Coffey and Sweeteners Plus have
been joined at the hip.
Of course, Coffey, 38, isn’t just a hired
gun for the motorsports arm of the Sweeteners
Plus organization. He also happens to be family. His step-father is Sweeteners Plus President & CEO Carl Myers, who married Coffey’s
mother, Ann, several years ago.
“To have a sponsor this good, for this
long, whether it’s family or not, is rare
in this sport,” said Coffey, hailing
the support he’s received for
nearly two decades from
Myers and his mother.
“Most of the time,
people will eventually say, ‘Enough’s
enough,’ and get
out, so I feel
very fortunate
that they have
the love of
racing that
they do
and continue to
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C COFFEY
BY KEVIN KOVAC
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izen
Ivan Veldh
Vic Coffey sits in
his Sweetners Plus,
Rocket Chassis
mount prior to
on-track action.
want to do this.”
“I would probably be just a
weekend racer without them; somehow involved in the sport, but not
racing fulltime like I am.”
Coffey didn’t harbor any grand
ambition of making a life in dirt-track
racing while growing up. Actually,
as a kid he frequented the asphalt
ovals near his home in western New
York, regularly attending events with
his father Pete Sr., who had raced in
the late ‘60s to early ‘70s, and older
brother (by six years), Petey.
But when Coffey was 14, a
small local track, Limerock Speedway in Caledonia, New York, covered its paved surface with dirt, and
Coffey’s father decided to resume
his racing career there in the MicroSprint division. Coffey helped his
dad for a couple years until entering
the Micro-Sprint class himself as
a 16-year-old, driving a hand-medown car from his father. He ran
a partial schedule during his rookie
season in 1989, and then became a
Limerock regular in 1990.
It was in 1990 that the Sweeteners Plus logo debuted on Coffey’s
Micro. Myers, who at the time was
racing off-shore power boats, and
Coffey’s mother, took advantage of
an open weekend on Myers’s schedule to attend the second night of
Limerock’s season. Coffey promptly
went out and won the evening’s first
feature and came from deep in the
field to finish second in the nightcap,
impressing them enough to earn a
sponsorship deal.
“They started out buying
me tires and wheels,” said Coffey.
“Then, about midway through the
year, this one guy, Jeff Bennett, was
pretty much kicking everybody’s
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tail, and Carl was like, ‘What kind of
engine does that guy have?’ I told
him he was running a Suzuki, which
was the hot ticket at the time, and
Carl said, ‘What do you have to do
to get one of them?’ I said, ‘I guess
you need a couple thousand dollars.’
“At the time, I was using
one of my father’s spare Yamaha
engines. I was kinda paying him off
for the new car we bought from the
money I was making working parttime at Sweeteners Plus, so I didn’t
have enough money for an engine.
(Myers and Coffey’s mother) de-
cided to buy me a (Suzuki) engine,
and then the next year Carl decided
he wanted to do a whole deal and
own the car, too.”
And with that, the Sweeteners Plus dirt-racing juggernaut was
born. Within two years, Myers was
funding a four-car Micro-Sprint
team, and then in 1994, one year
after Coffey won his first Limerock
points championship, Myers moved
Coffey to the DIRTcar Sportsman
division in a new Troyer-built car.
Coffey won 11 DIRTcar-sanctioned
features over the next two years be-
fore advancing to the headline BigBlock Modified class, and winning
the 1996 DIRTcar Modified Rookie
of the Year award.
When Myers slowed his
power-boat racing in 1998, he
expanded the Sweeteners Plus BigBlock Modified effort to a serious
two-driver operation. Coffey was
entrenched in one of the seats and
spent the ensuing seasons learning
the ropes as a teammate of several
established big-block Modified stars,
including Pennsylvania’s Doug Hoffman and New Yorkers Danny Johnson, Steve Paine and, beginning in
2003, McCreadie.
DIRTcar Big-Block Modifieds
were the bread-and-butter of Sweeteners Plus Racing, but Dirt Late
Models began appearing among
the open-wheel cars in the team’s
sprawling shop in Avon, New York,
for the first time in 2001. Danny
Johnson, a superstar in the Big-Block
Modified ranks, enticed a skeptical
Myers to purchase Rocket Dirt Late
Models for both him and Coffey.
“Back then, our only real exposure to Late Model racing was during
Speed Weeks in Florida when we
ran the Modified at Volusia (Speedway Park) and the Late Models were
there too,” says Coffey. “Carl didn’t
really care for the Late Models, but
the surface at Volusia used to be
different than it is now. It got to be
rubbered-up and one-lane a lot, and
when Carl would come over and
watch he’d say, ‘These are the most
boring things I’ve ever seen in my
life. There’s no passing, just followthe-leader (racing).’”
“But Carl had never seen
(Late Models) anywhere else where
there was better racing. Danny said,
‘Well, maybe we should try it,’ and
Carl decided to do it.”
The Sweeteners Plus Dirt Late
Models debuted with Coffey and
Johnson aboard in a UDTRA event
on February 3, 2001, at Golden
Isles Speedway in Brunswick, Georgia. Coffey was surprisingly fast
right out of the box, finishing fourth
in a talent-filled A-Main.
“It was a fast, oil-slick surface, kind of like racing at Syracuse
(the one-mile fairground oval in New
York that hosts DIRTcar Modified
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Chris Dolak
Vic Coffey and family. From L to R: Kyle, Vic, Kasey, Jill and Shelby Coffey
racing’s biggest annual event) or
an asphalt deal,” Coffey says of
Golden Isles. “I went out there
and ran fourth, and I kind of got a
false impression about Late Model
racing. I was like, ‘Whoa, this ain’t
too hard.’ Then we went to East
Bay (Raceway Park in Gibsonton,
Florida, the following week) and got
a rude awakening. Just qualifying
was tough, so it was a real eyeopener for us.”
It was McCreadie who took
Sweeteners Plus into the Dirt Late
Model spotlight after becoming Coffey’s teammate in 2003. After running a single Dirt Late Model event
for Sweeteners at Hagerstown
(Maryland) Speedway at the end of
the 2002 season, and a handful of
shows in 2003, McCreadie won an
UMP DIRTcar-sanctioned A-Main
at Volusia in February 2004 and
then hit the road with the reincarnated World of Outlaws Late Model
Series, capturing the tour’s Rookie
of the Year title. McCreadie went
on to lead the WoO LMS in victories
in 2005 and captured the six-figure
points crown in 2006.
As McCreadie exploded on
the full-fender scene, Coffey continued to merely dabble in Dirt Late
Model racing, entering the Georgia
and Florida events at the beginning
of each season, but only selected
shows thereafter.
“I was having fun doing what
I was doing,” said Coffey, explaining why he didn’t immediately
follow McCreadie into full-time Dirt
Late Model action. “I was just starting to be successful in the Modified.
I won Syracuse (the $50,000-to-win
Eckerd 200) in 2002, won some
races at Canandaigua (Speedway in
New York), won some small-block
(358-Modified) series races. I felt
like I was just getting good at this
– finally.”
But after adding more Dirt
Late Model events to his schedule
in 2007, and finishing as high as
fourth in a WoO LMS A-Main at
Cayuga County Fair Speedway in
Weedsport, New York, Coffey got
the itch to expand his horizons. He
went WoO LMS racing in 2008,
entering 37 of the season’s 43
events and scoring a pair of topfive finishes en route to winning the
Rookie of the Year award.
“Carl kinda pushed me toward
it after seeing the success Timmy
had,” Coffey says of his decision to
curtail his DIRTcar Modified racing
in favor of Dirt Late Model competition. “I looked at it like, I’m gonna
be 38. If I’m gonna do it, it was
time to do it. My older two kids
(Shelby, 13, and Kyle, 12; he also
has a 16-month-old son Kasey) were
at the point where they’re starting
to do their own thing a little bit and
Jill (Coffey’s wife and the sister of
DIRTcar big-block Modified driver
Justin Haers) supported it fully, so
I felt like I should go for it. I didn’t
want to keep going on wondering,
‘Should I? Should I? Should I?’”
“I figured that Modified racing
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Kevin Kovac
will always be there for me, and we
already had the Late Model equipment for the most part. It boiled
down to a situation where Carl and
Ann have always said they’ll give
us their full support while they’re
involved, so I figured, ‘Well, if I’m
gonna do this, I gotta do this while I
have some good backing.’”
A full-time racer since leaving his position in the maintenance
department at Sweeteners Plus in
2001, Coffey’s Dirt Late Model effort doesn’t operate with the virtual
open-checkbook policy that prevailed in Sweeteners Plus Racing’s
early days of Big-Block Modified
racing. But he also makes it clear
that Myers doesn’t allow him or McCreadie, who returned to the seat of
a Sweeteners Plus Dirt Late Model
in mid-June after being sidelined
for five months by a back injury
suffered in a January wreck during
the Chili Bowl Midget Nationals in
Tulsa, Oklahoma, to lack for anything.
“Carl doesn’t do anything
halfway, no matter what it is;
whether it’s boat racing, car racing,
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Vic Coffey inspects the worn-out
right-rear tire that cost him a victory
in the WoO event on April 17 at
Fayetteville, North Carolina.
hunting, fishing, he does it fullsteam ahead,” said Coffey. “He’s a
very competitive guy, and he wants
results. He gives us whatever we
need to get the job done, but he
also expects some results out of it.”
“It used to be a win-at-allcosts kind of a thing; there were no
limitations,” he continued. “We had
all kinds of race cars, all kinds of
motors. There was a lot of overspending on silly stuff that wasn’t
really needed. But the last four or
five years, they’ve said, ‘okay,
here’s what we’re gonna do this
year and you have to work within
those parameters.”
Coffey handles the budget he
receives from Myers, basically managing Coffey-McCreadie Enterprises
as a subsidiary of Sweeteners Plus
Racing.
“I think it’s made me more
conscious or more careful with the
equipment,” said Coffey. “I never
saw what came in and out before; they (Myers and his mother)
handled all that. Now we have x
amount of money to work with
for the year, and I take care of the
business end as far as paying all the
bills with what the cars bring in and
the sponsorship we have.”
“Before it was basically, send
the invoices down the street and
somebody else paid ‘em. Now I’m
accountable for it all. I don’t have a
lot of hands-on with the race cars
because of it, but most of the time
they (Sweeteners crewmen Johnny
Coco, Al Stevens and Mike Amell)
don’t want me working on it anyway.”
Coffey’s job is to oversee the
race team and, of course, figure
out how to outrun the star-studded
group of WoO LMS drivers. The latter hasn’t been easy for the fun-loving racer who’s come to be known
as the ‘Captain’.
“Just trying to keep up with
these guys is tough,” Coffey said of
his Outlaw rivals. “There’s so much
talent in this pit area, if you’re off
on any one thing, you don’t have a
chance.
“I’m still learning what to do
(to the car). I’ll come in (to the pits)
and I’ll say, ‘Man, am I loose or
tight? Am I tight and throwing the
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Jay Fish
car to make it loose, or am I driving it slow and making it
feel tight?’ I have a hard time figuring it out sometimes.”
“Timmy was able to pick through that stuff real
quick and start making the right changes,” he continued, praising his teammate. “I would dare say he’s got
as much natural ability as anybody in any pit area. Me,
I’m more of a guy who, if the car’s right, I think I can
be as fast as anybody, but sometimes when the car
isn’t right, I have a hard time figuring out what to do
with it. Timmy can pick right through that.”
“I wish I had that ability, that next-step talent.
Some guys just got it, and Timmy definitely does. I
guess I have to work at it more.”
Coffey has shown flashes of his potential this
season, but bad luck has too often prevented him from
seeing a concrete result. His strong run in March’s
Lone Star 100 at Battleground Speedway in Highlands,
Texas, was short-circuited by a tangle as he ran in
the top-five, and, more famously, he led April’s 50-lap
WoO LMS A-Main at Fayetteville (North Carolina) Motor
Speedway until a flat right-rear tire ended his bid as he
approached the white flag.
“Fayetteville and Texas showed me that we
can run with them,” said Coffey, whose lone Dirt Late
Model feature win came in an unsanctioned event on
September 9, 2007, at Little Valley (New York) Speedway. “On a good night we can run up front, like at
Fayetteville. But when you get the opportunity in these
Outlaw races like we got at Fayetteville, you gotta cash
in. That’s what was so disappointing about that night.”
“To be honest, I thought when I got in that situation (leading a WoO LMS A-Main) for the first time; I
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Teammates Vic Coffey and
Tim McCreadie inspect the
track in Canandaigua, New
York, prior to the WoO
event on June 23rd.
thought maybe I’d get nervous. But I was so calm in
the car that night. I thought, ‘We got this.’ The car was
so good. It felt to me like a Saturday-night Modified
race at Canandaigua.”
“That’s why it was such a letdown when we got
that flat. It’s hard to win a heat race with these guys, so
to lose when you’re in that position is a heartbreaker.”
Coffey hopes he’ll stick around the Dirt Late Model
world long enough that everything becomes second
nature to him. He pins that on the continued backing of
Myers and his mother, who remain solidly behind the race
team, despite rarely getting to see their cars in person.
“They don’t even get to go to a lot of races
anymore,” says Coffey. “They’re about half-and-half
(living) between Florida (Daytona Beach) and (upstate)
New York, and with us racing the Late Model now, it’s
not like they can come to Canandaigua every Saturday
to see us when they’re in New York. For them to be as
involved as they are and spend the money they do on
the sport when they don’t really don’t even get to go
watch and see the results anymore, they can easily say,
‘Well, we don’t want to do it anymore.’”
“Sooner or later that will probably happen, but
there won’t be any complaints from me. They’ve done
way more than I could have ever expected.”
“But as long as we continue having some success; like the couple Syracuse wins I have (he also
won the Eckerd 200 in 2007), the Outlaw championship with Timmy, the other stuff we’ve been able to
pick up along the way, it keeps them enthused and
wanting to do it. Because the more you win, the more
you want to win.”
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