Author: Devin Jackson

LONG POND, Pa. — Lavar Scott is accustomed to reaching top speeds around a racetrack. But earlier this month, less than 24 hours before his race at Pocono Raceway, he took a beat.

Standing in front of a room of about 40 people at Holy Ghost Distillery, roughly 10 miles west of the track, Scott, a Carneys Point, Salem County, native, told stories about his racing family.

“One time, my grandmother raced my grandfather, and she flipped her Mustang,” Scott told the room, which was greeted with a chorus of laughs.

It was insight into the racing family that molded him. Lavar’s path started at 4 years old, when his grandfather built him a go-kart. He couldn’t race with an engine for another year, but his grandparents pushed him around the track anyway. Now, he’s racing through NASCAR’s Drive for Diversity program and into the sport’s second tier, the O’Reilly Auto Parts Series, where he drives the No. 45 car.

Scott, just 22, exudes confidence in every room that he’s in. When he tells novice racing fans his age, they can’t believe it. Those two hours at Holy Ghost Distillery — he was meeting with people connected to David Weinstein, a partner at Archer & Greiner, a law firm that serves as one of Scott’s racing sponsors — also displayed the business side of being a professional driver.

“As a driver, you can’t just be fast, right? You have to be fast and be a good business guy, and me being 22 and having to learn that so fast is really challenging,” Scott told The Inquirer inside his Alpha Prime Racing car hauler at Pocono Raceway’s infield. “[I’m] trying to put sponsors together and get more resources, to have better resources to make our cars faster, right?

“The people that can kind of stay grounded and the people that do the work every day are usually the ones that get past those challenges, and I’m in the middle of that right now. I’m just working to get to the other side.”

His family and the village that raised him, from South Jersey to North Carolina, keep him grounded. And it was apparent just how much he leans on those closest to him.

“It’s almost no surprise, because he damn near guaranteed himself, ‘That’s what I’m going to do,’” Wayne Scott Jr., Lavar’s uncle, said at Pocono Raceway. “And there was no alternative. There was no Plan B; there’s no second job. … That was his game plan, and he stuck to it. Here he is living his dream, not done yet, but he’s living it.”

Added Lavar, one of three active Black drivers in NASCAR: “The support [from] my family is a need. I need to have the support to feel good, right? If they didn’t support me, I don’t know how I would go about my day. I really care about what they think. They’re my family, [they’re the] reason why I’m here now.”

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In the southwest corner of Pocono Raceway sits the Pocono Quarter Midget Raceway, which hosts races for kids ages 5 to 16. Scott’s eyes were fixed on the youngest age group driving go-karts with cages on top to protect them from injury. He beamed while watching the kids circle the dirt track because it reminded him of his start in racing and his first-ever win, on a dirt track when he was 5. He was hooked.

As he watched from the chain-linked fence that separated the stands from the track, a few teenagers recognized Scott from his racing TikToks and asked for pictures and autographs.

But he wasn’t just at the track to watch and take a trip down memory lane. He offered words of encouragement to the kids and took a group picture. It marked the first time in two years a NASCAR driver came to speak at the track during Pocono weekend.

“I started where you guys are,” Scott told the group of about 40 kids. “Some of your parents, I raced against. I’m proud of you guys. It’s really cool what you’re doing. Being back at this type of track brings back memories. … It means a lot [to me] to be here with you.”

It was a reminder, too, of his own racing journey and family ties. It began with grandfather Wayne Sr., who became interested in cars when he was in high school.

Wayne Sr. got into drag racing, often with his friends. His love for drag racing was passed down to Lavar’s mother, Sonia, who was National Hot Rod Association certified and “very competitive” as she raced all over Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware.

“She didn’t want to leave the track until she beat her time, and at that time, she was one of only a few women out there racing,” said Waynetta Scott, Lavar’s aunt and Sonia’s little sister. “There’s a [nine-year age] gap between us … but just watching her really inspired me to just know that you can be the only female out here and dominate, and she had that mindset to go against the men at that time.”

What helped feed Lavar’s racing career, Wayne Jr. says, is Scott’s Auto, which Wayne Sr. opened in 1978. It has become a family business, and Sonia, Wayne Jr., and Waynetta work at the Carneys Point shop.

“We grew up at our auto mechanic shop, and it’s like a second home, so we’ve just always been around cars and in that competitive nature,” Waynetta said. “Like how everyone goes and watches the Phillies, we went to a racetrack. That’s how we congregated and enjoyed our family time together.”

Lavar’s older brother, Jerome, who also goes by Wayne, and Lavar “have been competing and everything their whole life,” said their uncle, Wayne Jr. Lavar and his brother would race their uncle and cousin, Wayne III. But Lavar, Wayne Jr. says, didn’t appreciate his uncle’s driving.

“He [said] he’s scared to get close to me on the track because I’m a wild driver, I guess you’ll say,” Wayne Jr. said with a chuckle. “I’m having fun out there. … I was like, ‘I’m just giving you some experience. You never know what you might get into out there [on the racetrack]. So take it as a lesson because everything’s unpredictable.’ I told him, ‘I’m glad I can help.’”

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Lavar Scott has been chasing the winning feeling since his first race roughly 17 years ago. It’s been almost five years since Scott was last in the winner’s circle, even as he moved through NASCAR’s Drive for Diversity program.

“It’s a feeling that when I go to bed, I think about, [when I] wake up, [I] think about, [when I] sleep, [I am] thinking about. It’s just the feeling of standing on top of your car after a win and [celebrating] with your friends and family and knowing you did your job really well that day,” said Scott, who has four top 20 finishes in the Auto Parts Series. “Knowing the work you’re putting in is paying off … I get kind of super emotional talking about it, because [racing] really, really matters to me.”

Scott signed with Alpha Prime Racing team last December, about two months before Jusan Hamilton was appointed as team president. Hamilton became NASCAR’s first Black team president a few years after he became the sport’s first Black racing director in 2017.

Hamilton, who was a racer himself while growing up in Ithaca, N.Y., had known Scott for seven years and sees a lot of himself in Scott.

“I see someone who works hard, continues to be a student of the sport,” Hamilton said. “He’s just on a platform now where he knows all the work that he puts in is going to maximize tomorrow, and I just see him continue to put that work in and try and be a better driver and on the track and a better person off the track to support the rest of it.”

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Beyond what Scott is doing on the racetrack, what he is doing off it is catching young fans’ attention in the Philly area and beyond. Last fall, Scott entered a partnership with Philadelphia-based Urban Affairs Coalition, a nonprofit that works “to improve the quality of life in the region, build wealth in urban communities, and solve emerging issues.”

Through this partnership, UAC launched Team Racing-2-Education, which aims to introduce young people to careers in engineering, data analytics, automotive tech, and media production within motorsports. Recently, Alpha Prime Racing launched a national workforce development initiative in partnership with UAC and Team Racing-2-Education to “immerse students and young adults in hands-on experiences across race team operations, engineering, mechanics, logistics, marketing, content production, business operations, and event management.”

“It’s something I really take very seriously, and want to help grow and change, and bring a lot more people into the sport,” Scott said. “I think our partnership [with UAC] and our goals align really well. … It’s been really cool, and the work that’s being done is definitely making a change, but there’s still a lot more to be done, and we’re working hard every day to kind of continue that.

“On my side of things, I want to see more simulators be available to the youth and to kids, and let them gain interest. When you go to your local middle school or high school, you walk into a gym, you see your basketball courts there, you go outside for football with your friends, right? But I think there’s a way to just get some [racing simulators] into different places to have it accessible to them to play.”

Added Hamilton: “It’s really been our culture of Alpha Prime to bring new people into the sport to give them a foundation to learn and grow in a team that supports that because a lot of the big [NASCAR] teams, they just want people that are turnkey and can go straight to work without training. They don’t want to take the time to train because that’s loss of performance for them in their eyes, so we kind of serve that position of the sport.”

Scott also had an autograph signing early Saturday morning. Children and adults, excited to meet him, walked up to his hauler and grabbed a poster for him to sign.

That has become a regular occurrence as Scott’s profile has grown. He says he can “hear little kids say, ‘Hey, that’s Lavar Scott,’” and added that it’s ”super cool” to have those interactions.

A visit with a children’s hospital earlier in the week, though, helped put things in perspective.

“[I was] speaking with this girl, and she had to be about 9 years old, and she said … ‘I think this is the coolest thing ever, that I get to meet you,’” Scott said. “[I said], ‘So you think today, meeting me is the coolest thing ever?’ She said, ‘This is the coolest thing I’ve done in my life, is to meet you,’ and that hit hard for me. That was — I don’t want to say motivating, but it touched on a different level.”

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Scott walked away from his No. 45 car with Sunoco, a Chevrolet with a blue, yellow, and red color scheme. He walked toward the wall separating pit road from the straightaway just past the start/finish line before the national anthem and flyover.

He needed a moment to collect himself and refocus. He had spent the hours leading up to the 4 p.m. race on Saturday striking a balance of focus on the race and his laid-back, playful energy around family and friends.

While it was all business in the morning for practice and qualifying, he enjoyed the company of his uncle, Wayne Jr.; aunts Shanel and Waynetta; cousins Wayne III (who works on the No. 44 car for Alpha Prime Racing as a pit crew member) and Elizabeth; and mother, Sonia, after securing his 25th starting spot.

His racing approach, Lavar says, is reminiscent of an NFL player who is revered in the Philly area.

“I do respect Jalen [Hurts], how he goes about things, being very quiet, processes things differently … and I think that’s how my guys view me,” said Scott, who connected with the Eagles quarterback recently. “No matter what’s going on, that Lavar’s going to show up prepared and ready to go.”

Once it was time to climb into his car, the rest of the Scott family watched anxiously from his pit box, listening to the in-car radio communication to glean information they couldn’t see on the track.

Every time Lavar’s No. 45 car zoomed by at around 190 miles per hour, a friend or family member would point out his car, trying to get a glimpse of their star fighting for track position.

“I get starstruck when I see him in his suit and in his race car,” Waynetta said. “I know he loves his family. We’re so family-oriented that it just gives him that comfort and the support and the confidence to know that he can go out there and be all that he can be. He does [racing in NASCAR] well, and he’s not alone in this battlefield.”

Though Scott’s first race at Pocono Raceway didn’t end the way he was hoping — he was knocked out of the race with five laps to go to finish 29th — it was clear from listening to his spotters through his car communication that he was maximizing his opportunities to move up through the field after starting toward the back. He was inside the top 15 at one point.

Those closest to him believe this is just the beginning for Scott as he navigates the delicate balance of racing and relationship building.

“I think what Lavar is doing is certainly going out there and competing at the highest level, which is fantastic. I think he’s learning as he goes as well, but making some really good progress,” NASCAR CEO Steve O’Donnell said recently. “A guy who we’d love to see continue to climb the ladder in NASCAR, and he’s done it the right way. He’s put in the time, and he’s working with a great race team. I’m excited to see how it plays out throughout the year.”

Added Hamilton: “As long as [his] partnerships continue to grow, the sky’s the limit, really, for Lavar. The goal for all the drivers that we brought in on the NASCAR side, when I was working in that capacity, was for them to get to the Cup Series, and I think that’s still an attainable goal for him as long as everything else continues to work in his favor off racetrack.”