Steve Wallace has made his mark in short track racing by hosting the Tom Dawson Memorial Trophy.  Now, the son of NASCAR Hall of Fame driver Rusty Wallace plans to add to his accomplishments by winning the inaugural Championship Auto Racing Series (CARS) Super Late Model championship.

Wallace, now 27, won the Snowball Derby in 2004, the same year he took home Rookie of the Year honors in UARA.  After that, he spent time in the NASCAR XFINITY Series, scoring 34 top-10 finishes.  Now, he’s got his sights set on the CARS Tour, which will run its inaugural event on Saturday night at Southern National Motorsports Park in Lucama, North Carolina.  Along with the goal of winning the CARS Tour Super Late Model championship, he also hopes to visit one of racing’s most historic tracks later this season.

“This series is really cool,” Wallace said about the new CARS Tour.  “You know I’ve been fortunate enough to run a lot of races in a lot of types of cars.  I’m really excited to have Jet Tools on board this year with full-time sponsorship.  I’m looking forward to running the CARS Tour full-time.  I’m excited about it.  This series is a standout series.  It’s got an unbelievable amount of great competition, good teams, good cars and good sponsors.  We’re really excited about this year.  We tested here last week and had a pretty good test but you can always do better.”

Joining the likes of Bubba Pollard, Harrison Burton, Kyle Grissom and Anderson Bowen, among many others running the series, Wallace knows he is facing some tough competition in the all-star tour.  Despite having some previous experience at Southern National Motorsports Park, he does not feel like he has an upper-hand on a driver like Pollard who has never run at Southern National.

“This is only my second race here at Southern National,” Wallace remarked.  “I raced here six or seven years ago.  Like we talked about before, there’s some great competition.  There’s a lot of really good competition.  Kyle Grissom, I grew up with him since I was a little kid.  I’ve known Bubba Pollard for quite a while.  He’s really good.  He’s for sure going to be one of the guys to beat.  We’re excited about it man.  We worked all winter, we had a good Speedweeks, won a race down there and we’ve got everything ready to go.  We hope for a really good run down here.”

Wallace thinks he can win the championship.  After all, he would not be racing in the series if he did not think he could.  However, Wallace does not feel any driver will be dominant throughout the entirety of the 10 race series.

“Well, yeah.  I’d like to think I can win it.  We work hard and a lot of these guys work hard.  There’s not one guy who’s going to dominate this thing, I can promise you that.  I mean, there’s a lot of good cars, good competition, everybody’s really smart so there’s not going to be one strong, dominant guy.  I think there will be guys who dominate and guys who run well every week so we’ll see.”

After the CARS Tour season ends, Wallace will set his sights on some of the season’s biggest races, primarily one track he has never visited – Winchester Speedway, located in historic Winchester, Indiana.

“We’re going to see where our money’s at with sponsorship and see where that goes.  I’ve run the Snowball Derby quite a bit, been fortunate enough to win that year and had some good runs.  I really want to go run the Winchester 400.  I’ve never been to Winchester and everybody says it’s a really good time… for sure, Winchester and probably some other races.  First and foremost, try to win this CARS championship.”

While Wallace is a former champion in New Smyrna Speedway’s World Series of Asphalt, which is run every February as a part of Daytona Speedweeks, a proverbial CARS Tour championship would be his first touring series championship of any kind and would join his father, who won the 1983 ASA Championship and the 1989 NASCAR Winston Cup Series Championship, as a touring series champion.

The CARS Tour X-1R 300 at Southern National Motorsports Park will go green Saturday night at 7pm EST.  For fans unable to make it to the race, RACE22.com will have coverage throughout the day and up to the minute updates on Twitter and RACEFEEDX.com will have live, pay-per-view coverage of the race.