Speedway, Indiana (December 12, 2024)………Drake Edwards made a splash in his debut season of midget racing in 2024 with success on the west coast along with a smattering of solid appearances on the national scene.
Now for 2025, Edwards (Peoria, Ariz.) will have the opportunity to compete full-time on the USAC NOS Energy Drink Midget National Championship trail for this past season’s championship team, CB Industries.
The 21-year-old Edwards earned USAC Avanti Windows & Doors Western States Midget Rookie of the Year in 2024 on the strength of a pair of victories at California’s Santa Maria Speedway and The Dirt Track at Kevin Harvick’s Kern Raceway while coming up just 11 points shy of the series title in a car owned by Jerry Petty’s team, Petty Performance Racing,
“It definitely exceeded our goals,” Edwards admitted. “At the beginning of the year, my goal and Jerry’s goal was to just get top-10 in the points and make laps. We had no idea that it would be as great as it was. Luckily, we were able to click off a couple of wins there, and the championship ended up being way closer than I ever thought it was going to be. It would’ve been really cool to get the championship, but all and all, it surpassed what I thought we could do.”
In just a handful of USAC National Midget starts in 2024 at tracks he’d never laid eyes on before, Edwards was rock solid and proved to be a quick study. The only new track he got a second crack at was Ohio’s Eldora Speedway during the 4-Crown Nationals where he proceeded to finish ninth.
What began as an impromptu, unplanned excursion to compete with the national series turned out to pay major dividends when he came back “home” to race afterward.
“The week before Indiana Midget Week, we ran at Ventura (Calif.) that Saturday,” Edwards remembered. “Kyle Cummins was planning to take his cars to Midget Week, so I called Jerry that night after we were done racing and I told him that I’d love to go learn some stuff and be around those guys to see if we can figure some things out to bring home with us setup-wise. I’m glad we did because I ended up coming back from Midget Week, and the next weekend after, we picked up our first win at Santa Maria. After that, Jerry saw how much that improved me as a driver and with our setups after being around competition like that. We were able to come back later in the season to race at Eldora, the BC39 and the western swing. So, I think that was a very good call with us to go back east a little bit.”
Edwards wasn’t completely immune to the growing pains associated with a Rookie season. There were plenty of ups, but also their fair share of downs which led Edwards and his car owner, Jerry Petty, down a path to get an extra set of eyes and wrenches on his ride to keep him consistent. In a roundabout way, that led them to CB Industries car owner Chad Boat, and a new pairing was born.
“I hadn’t formally met Chad until this recent western swing,” Edwards revealed. “This whole deal came about just because we were struggling. It was just my family and I maintaining our midgets on the west coast. I was trying to figure out all the setup stuff and doing that on my own. I’d have really good races and really bad races, and I couldn’t find a balance. Jerry really wanted to find a crew chief to be able to run our own cars on the national deal, but he couldn’t find anyone. So, he talked to Chad about getting me in a car. Our main goal with this is to learn as much as I can about driving the car while also learning what they do to make their cars fast under Chad, who is very knowledgeable.”
Edwards’ full-time job during the day is maintaining and wrenching on the Petty Performance Racing midgets and sprint cars, the latter of which is driven full-time on the USAC AMSOIL Sprint Car National Championship circuit by Kyle Cummins, a role Edwards will continue to perform at the track and in the shop when not behind the wheel of the CBI Midget throughout 2025.
Edwards’ father and uncle both raced frequently on the west coast, and if you dig deep into the USAC archives, you’ll find his uncle, Chris Edwards, as a top-10 finisher of a USAC Western States Midget feature in 2004 at California’s Perris Auto Speedway.
Drake himself got bitten by the racing bug early on and was equipped with a quarter midget by the time he was five, competing at that stage until he was age 12 or 13, he estimated. After taking a couple years off from the sport, by 2019, Edwards was back in the cockpit, this time in a micro sprint owned by his father. Ultimately, he’d eventually claim the title in the Class A and Outlaw divisions at Central Arizona Raceway in what was practically the first time he’d ever chased yearlong points.
Although his first actual competitive laps in a midget came years later, Edwards’ first such experience in a midget didn’t go quite as well, but it did end up making a connection with Jerry Petty, and a story to tell.
“I was helping Jack Yeley for a while, going to his house and helping him work on midget and sprint car stuff,” Edwards explained. “Jack gave me the opportunity to practice one of his midgets before they took it to Chili Bowl because he didn’t have enough drivers to practice in all of the cars he wanted to take! So, at our local track of Adobe Mountain Speedway (in Phoenix, Ariz.), it was the first time I ever ran a midget, and when I came off the track, it wouldn’t get out of gear and I almost ran Jerry over. He loves telling that story of how we met. Since then, he’s helped me out with the micro and at the Tulsa Shootout. After that, I pursued him for a midget deal for this past year with the Western States series. He was all for it, and here we are now.”
Edwards and Avanti will remain teamed together as they join CB Industries for 2025. In fact, Boat hints that there is more to come in his new association with Petty/Avanti with their role expanding to more than just the midget.
The 2025 USAC NOS Energy Drink Midget National Championship season begins with two-straight dates at Indiana’s Kokomo Speedway on April 25-26 for the Kokomo Grand Prix.
Photo - Josh James Artwork
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