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(Matt Hamilton/The Daily Citizen) Billy Callahan has been a fixture at North Georgia Speedway since he started racing at the track in 1998. Recently, he made the switch from Pony racing in his old familar No. 9 to an Economy class car. However, the switch hasn’t stopped him from winning, going 2-for-2 in his first two weeks of races in his new class.
(Matt Hamilton/The Daily Citizen) Billy Callahan has been a fixture at North Georgia Speedway since he started racing at the track in 1998. Recently, he made the switch from Pony racing in his old familiar No. 9 to an Economy class car. However, the switch hasn’t stopped him from winning, going 2-for-2 in his first two weeks of races in his new class.

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September 26, 2012

Staying on track

Despite change in cars, Billy Callahan still winning

Devin Golden devingolden@daltoncitizen.com The Dalton Daily Citizen Wed Sep 26, 2012, 06:44 AM EDT

Billy Callahan won 36 races in five years in his old No. 9 car.

In just two weeks in his new one, he has bumped the total to 38.

Callahan traded in his old car in the Pony class for a new No. 32 car in the Economy class, and he picked up another win Sunday at North Georgia Speedway a week after picking up a win in the Sept. 15 feature race.

But the beauty was the Chatsworth resident never drove the Mastersbuilt car prior to his qualifying run two Saturdays ago. That means he is 2-for-2 in his new car.

“Last week was the first time in it and I won with it,” Callahan said Saturday night. “And I just qualified on the pole for (Sunday).”

He said he won Sunday’s 20-lap econo feature, which was the final day of the speedway’s “Let’s Get Dirty” weekend, with ease.

“I jumped out early and led every lap and got the win,” he said. “It was fun.”

So, for statisticians out there, Callahan is batting a perfect 1.000 with his new baseball bat, and even has a home run. Regardless of the analogy, what the driver is doing isn’t something most veteran drivers do every day.

“Not when you switch classes,” said Jason Jones, the speedway’s promoter. “He was in Pony and went to (Economy) and you don’t see it happen like this. It’s a talent that he’s got. That man’s got talent.”

Callahan, however, is a bit more humble about the feat.

“I haven’t seen it a whole lot,” he said. “It can be done. If you have a good-handling car and a good engine, anything is possible.”

The 14-year veteran driver — he started racing in 1998 — won eight races this season in the Pony class and finished second overall after winning it in 2011. He isn’t completely new to Economy cars as he has switched between it and the Pony class throughout his career. It’s just this specific car that he’s still getting used to.

“Around 10 years ago I raced Pony and I bought a big car like this,” Callahan said. “I was in it a couple years and then sold it and got back in a Pony car. I won two championships in it, and someone wanted it a little more than I did so I sold it to him.”

In his old car, a Ford Mustang, he won around seven or eight races per season. In his new car, he’s still thinking of appearance tweaks.

“It’s a good-handling car,” he said. “I don’t like the blue body. I want to change to change it to black.”

Callahan does not come from a racing family, although he has lived in Murray County his entire life. He is married and is the father to two girls — 18 and 11 years old — and works as an international customer service manager for Shaw Industries. He graduated from Murray County High in 1996. His sport of choice before he started racing was golf, but that ended soon enough.

“I started dating a girl and her dad was racing at the time, and I kept coming down here,” Callahan said. “I thought, ‘If I come down here so much I should start racing.’”

Why can’t he do both?

“Golf is expensive; racing is expensive,” he said. “I couldn’t afford to do both.”

Aside from racing at the Chatsworth track, he also competes at Cleveland Speedway across the state line in Tennessee. But his primary race setting is in Murray County, where he knows a lot of the fans and they know him. But sometimes they know him only as a winner and want to see a change.

“You got some good and some bad,” he said of the fans. “What’s weird with racing is if you win a lot, fans want you to lose and root against you. You drive around the track and can see fans giving you a thumbs down. You just shrug it off.”

If he continues down the same path, he’ll be getting a lot more thumbs down. He said there may even be a little extra incentive to beat him in the next feature, which is scheduled for Saturday. But it might not make a difference if he has a perfect fit with his new racing instrument.

“On occasion they put a bounty on a guy if they win so many races,” he said. “Sometimes they may pull some competition in from other tracks — just trying to beat him.”

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Staying on track

Despite change in cars, Billy Callahan still winning

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