Photo Credit: Ashley McCubbin
When Thayne Hallyburton first got into racing, he knew nothing about working on cars, despite his father owning a shop.
“I had no interest in my dad’s business, no interest in working on cars,” he stated. “If I worked on something, it was because I had broke it and I had to.”
Beyond that, he was a first generation racer so as a whole, the family entered the program with no previous racing experience.
“It took us some time to figure out how to turn left. Once we got that figured out, we kind of worked there and as our experience grew, our knowledge grew,” he commented.
With each step of the way, Hallyburton began to show more speed, and continue to work his way closer to the front. Now after a solid 2015 campaign, Thayne Hallyburton will be returning back to Sunset Speedway this year in hopes of another strong season.
“Should be fun,” he told OnPitRoad.com. “Lots of guys coming back, and sounds like there’s some new guys moving up. I think it should be fun. It should be a good mix of kids and veterans.”
Sunset Speedway’s Sauble Falls Tent and Trailer Park Late Model Division has boosted some of the strongest car counts over the past couple of years, with a good group of 10-15 guys that could win on any given night. Despite not reaching victory lane last year himself, Hallyburton was one of the drivers to keep an eye on all year as he posted three top-fives and seven top-10s, even with some rough moments over the year.
“Last season was rough, car wise,” he admitted. “We were fast but it just seemed like between putting a new clip on it, putting a motor in it – just seemed that we could never get things on a roll where things would be right.”
Even through the rough moments, Hallyburton made it clear that there was no chance of him quitting as he says when he does anything, he goes all out with “everything else gets put on the backburner. I’m all in and that comes from my personality”.
Now going into the new year, Hallyburton is hoping for things to go much smoother, and be the guy that reaches Taylor Holdaway’s level after Holdaway’s dominating campaign last year of winning over 10 features during the season.
“I think number one we need to do more homework this year as Taylor got the jump on us on a couple of things,” Hallyburton commented. “But by the end we had the gap narrowed and we’re hoping this year it’ll be narrowed even more.”
After finishing the year strong with a third place finish on championship night, Hallyburton is certainly someone to keep an eye on this year.
