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David Ashley still has his first racecar, the one he and his father built 30 years ago.

It’s 5 feet long, jet black, with the number 13 on the side and made out of plywood. He even had a sponsor for his car, Maggio’s Plumbing. Ashley lost that first race, a Soap Box Derby, but he’s won a ton of them since then.

His father was a racecar driver, and when Ashley and his brother were kids their dad took them around the state on weekends to race go-carts. “I’ve been around racing all my life and I just fell in love with it,” Ashley says.

As he got bigger, so did his racecars.

Now 41, he races in “Late Model” class cars, the fastest and most powerful class of cars in the SUPR Racing series. The SUPR series—short for Southern United Professional Racing—is a circuit of short-track dirt raceways in Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Texas.

Ashley’s No. 14 car has a 600 horsepower motor that pushes him around the quarter- to half-mile tracks at speeds up to 120 mph. A professional racecar driver for 13 years, Ashley has competed in 600 races. He is the three-time SUPR champion and the fourth most winning driver in SUPR history.

And he’s not done yet.

The new season kicked off in February at the Baton Rouge Raceway off of Plank Road between Baker and Zachary, and runs through November. Ashley races every weekend. Last year alone he drove in 56 races.

He is one of the oldest drivers in the series and still one of the hardest to beat. “I will race until I can no longer be competitive,” Ashley says. “If I can’t go out there and dominate, it’s time to find something else to do.”

That something else, when Ashley finally hangs up his racing helmet, might be to help his two sons and his daughter with their racing ambitions. At 16, Ashley’s oldest son, Alex, drives in the “Limited Modified” SUPR class and already has his own sponsor.

“He definitely shows potential,” Ashley says. “I use it to keep his grades up. He does well in school, he races. He doesn’t do well, he doesn’t race. So far, he’s doing a lot of racing.”

For more on SUPR racing, visit suprracing.com or batonrougeraceway.com.

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