A driver with only two years of experience in a dirt late model going full-time with the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series isn’t what you would call a typical career path. But for Daniel Adam and the Adam Family Motorsports team, there’s no better time to chase a dream than now.

“I’m 18, I don’t have a wife, kids, house, I don’t have any of that stuff,” Adam said. “Everything’s lining up, and we’re gonna see what we’ve got.”

Adam was initially exposed to racing much like many other drivers; by watching his father, Joe Adam. Daniel began his own driving career at the age of 13, competing in legends cars at various tracks around his eastern North Carolina home.

“I’ve wanted to do late models since I was three years old watching my Dad do it,” Adam said. “They run 602 late models down here and a lot of limited stuff. After running the legend at Fayetteville, they run 602s there every week, so it kind of made sense as a stepping stone to go to the 602 instead of a street stock or something like that.”

2022 marked Adam’s first full season of limited late model competition. A fourth-place points finish at Fayetteville Motor Speedway highlighted a year that also included appearances with the Steel Block Bandits, GM Performance 602 Series, and other limited late model sanctions across the southeast.

A trip to the Gateway Dirt Nationals in December of 2022 served as Adam’s first appearance in the open-motor division. While he failed to make the main event on Saturday night, it set the stage for Adam’s first season as a full-time super late model driver.

The 2023 season saw Adam make scattered starts with Lucas and the World of Outlaws, as well as regional tours such as Carolina Clash, the XR Workin’ Man Series and the Ultimate Super Late Model Series. The team also traveled more than ever before, making multiple trips to the midwest for the first time in Adam’s young career.

“We went up there just to test and get a feel on different tracks that we’re gonna run this year,” Adam said. “Being able to just have the experience and knowledge on those tracks, how much different those tracks are to drive on. How much more throttle you can give it, how you need wheelspin on those tracks. Versus in the south, you have to baby the throttle and try to keep it straight and hooked up all the way around, whereas in the midwest you can kind of hammer it and let it wheelspin itself.”

The Adam team will be a much more frequent visitor to the midwest bullrings in 2024, as they have recently relocated from North Carolina to Illinois in advance of the upcoming season.

“We’re moving our shop up to Illinois, about an hour and a half away from almost every track [in central Illinois], so we’ll be able to run a lot of local stuff up there too.”

While Adam has always targeted a national tour run, chasing the Lucas championship was not always part of the team’s plan.

“At first, we were gonna do the Outlaws this year,” Adam said. “And then we saw that there were already like 20 registered guys. I’m not saying that I don’t think we could do it, but that’s a lot of people to have to compete with your first year doing a national series.”

One unique aspect of Adam’s team in 2024 will be their choice of engine. Barring any last-minute changes, the 75 car will be the lone Pro Power Racing customer on the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series, a tour currently dominated by the likes of Clements, Cornett and Durham.

“We had a little 430 motor when we went to East Bay [in 2023], we just got it with the car, it came with the Rocket we got. We went there, and Bill Schlieper with Pro Power was there, and he came over to just check on the motor, meet us, all that stuff. And we broke a piston rod as he was standing there.”

“Luckily, he had the part in his trailer to fix it, so we just got a really good connection there. We’ve got four motors now, and we’ve got a fifth one we just bought off of him. So we’ll have five Pro Power motors in the stable.”

While Adam is confident in the team’s ability to contend for the Rookie of the Year title, he is keeping several options on the table early in the season.

“If we’re not any good after speedweeks, we don’t know what we’ll do. We might switch to the Hell Tour if we don’t come out of speedweeks too hot. But hopefully we come out of speedweeks halfway decent, and we stick out with the series all year.”

In addition to the team’s plan to follow the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series and the Castrol FloRacing Night in America mini-tour, they also expect to run several other marquee events for the first time.

“We’ll hit the Dream and the World, and we’re gonna go to the USA Nationals at Cedar Lake and the Prairie Dirt Classic at Fairbury,” Adam said. “We’ll hit the first few Flo nights that are really close, obviously Illinois Speedweek. Spoon River’s like an hour from our shop, so we’re gonna hit that, we’ll hit Lincoln, then we’ll obviously hit the two Lucas nights. And then they go to Brownstown, which is two and a half hours maybe.”

“So they’re all really close, Eldora’s not too far either. The only one that we don’t know if we’ll hit would be Senoia, just because it’s all the way in Georgia. From Illinois to Georgia’s gonna be a haul, so if we’re not up there in points we probably won’t hit that one. But we’re gonna try and run that for points and see what we can do with them.”

While Adam will be visiting the vast majority of tracks on his 2024 schedule for the first time, there are two in particular that he has circled on the calendar entering the year.

“Eldora, Knoxville, those will be two cool ones,” Adam said. “We almost went to Knoxville last year, but we just had a ton of damage from going to Circle City. We broke a rear end in one of our cars and our motor-carburetor combination was acting funny, so we just decided to stay home. Those two are definitely bucket list.”

With Adam’s debut as a Lucas full-timer just weeks away, he is keeping his expectations in check. As with any race team going on tour for the first time, the primary goal is to just survive.

“Just get better every night,” Adam said. “We’re a brand new team. We’ve got one guy that I’ve been working with for a year and a half, and the other one I’ve been working with for a month. And our crew chief is brand new, he just came to work with us for the first time this week. So it’s going to be a big learning curve and we’re all gonna have to mesh together and learn together.”

“Obviously we want to get Rookie of the Year,” Adam said. “Making every race, not having huge crashes, tearing a lot of stuff up, just trying to survive and learn a lot to hopefully have a really good sophomore year.”