Mason Massey has missed pavement racing.
Beyonnd a pair of K&N starts in 2014, the 17-year-old Georgia native had largely steered away from his asphalt roots in lieu of dirt Late Models at Senoia Speedway — the track his family purchased and has been operating since last winter.
Now Massey has signed-up for a two-race stint with Goodson Racing out of Pensacola and is hoping for the kind of success that can steer him towards NASCAR moving forward. His first test with the Mike Garvey engineered No. 1 will be on Saturday night in the Red Eye 100 at New Smyrna Speedway, and they will follow that up with a second start at CRA Speedfest at the end of the month.
If everything goes as planned, he’d like to do even more as the season progresses.
“I’ve known Tracy (Goodson) and Mike for over five years,” Massey told Race22.com on Thursday night. “They told me they had an open seat and I had really wanted to get back to asphalt.
“We talked about doing Cordele first, but they said they were interested in running this weekend, so I said ‘heck yeah,’ and we were off to the races.”
Massey hasn’t competed in an asphalt Super Late Model since making his first Snowball Derby start in 2013 for his family-owned operation. They finished 23rd that afternoon and it was an accomplishment that left Massey hoping to return to the discipline someday.
“Asphalt is where my heart is,” Massey said. “My goal is NASCAR and I want to be on asphalt. We just didn’t have the money to do it right.”
Over the past two years, Massey has put a lot of his efforts towards learning the business side of the industry, a benefit of his family owning Senoia. Massey has been able to parlay some of the relationships forged through the speedway into his upcoming Super Late program.
“We’ve been able to get some family friends on board,” Massey said of his sponsorship package. “We’ve been working hard to pick up some help and certainly some of the friendships we’ve made at the track has helped us with the deal too.”
In a perfect world, Massey hopes to run the six Southern Super Series events at FIve Flags Speedway and Mobile International Speedway this season in advance of attempting to make his second Snowball Derby in December.
Garrett Jones recorded three top-10s in his three starts with Goodson and Garvey on the Gulf Coast last season, providing Massey a ton of optimism for the future.
“I have a lot of confidence in this race team,” Massey said. “I have a lot of confidence in myself too. I feel like we can do a lot of good things together and I’m excited to get back to work on asphalt.”
