At Barre’s Thunder Road, Racing Runs in the Family

The asphalt on pit road sizzled as a hard rain fell on Thunder Road International Speedbowl in Barre. Just 10 minutes before the scheduled start of last month’s 46th running of the Vermont Governor’s Cup 150, driver Taylor Hoar and her pit crew hunkered down in their car trailer and waited for the downpour to pass. For people reared on high-speed motion, idling is never comfortable.

To kill time, Taylor, 23, scrolled on her phone with her thick, fire-retardant race suit peeled down to her waist, the rain providing only minimal relief from the sweltering heat. Soon enough she’d zip up the jumpsuit, tuck her chestnut ponytail into her helmet, pull gloves over her cotton candy-pink nails, and climb into her red-and-white No. 48 race car. Because temperatures inside could easily top 125 degrees Fahrenheit during the 150-lap race, succeeding at Thunder Road is as much about the driver’s endurance as the car’s. That’s assuming she even finishes — never guaranteed in a crowded field of 29 cars, racing bumper to bumper at 90-plus miles per hour on a quarter-mile oval.

Taylor is currently the only female driver competing in the Maplefields/Irving Late Model Series, the fastest and most competitive division at Thunder Road. She’s had six top-10 finishes this season, including two top fives and a third place. Earlier this year, she was one of only five drivers in North America chosen for the elite Kulwicki Driver Development Program, which helps promising stock car racers improve their skills on and off the track.

In hindsight, Taylor’s entry into racing seems preordained. Her father and coach, Brian Hoar, 53, is one of the most accomplished drivers in the history of the American Canadian Tour, the sanctioning body for Thunder Road and other tracks throughout New England and Québec. During his 26-year career, he was the 1999 King of the Road champion at Thunder Road — meaning he accumulated more points that season than any other driver — and was an eight-time ACT champion before advancing to the NASCAR Busch Series, now called the Xfinity Series, the second-highest level of NASCAR competition. For several seasons in the 1990s, Brian raced against his own father, Doug Hoar.

Family dynasties aren’t rare in competitive sports — think the Griffeys in baseball or the Mannings in football. In Vermont, the skiing Cochrans of Richmond and the Dreissigacker rowers and biathletes of Craftsbury produced multiple generations of world champions and Olympic medalists. But more so than nearly any other sport, stock car racing tends to run in the family, from the Earnhardts and Pettys of NASCAR to the Hoars, Dragons and others at Thunder Road.

On any given Thursday, most drivers at the Barre speedway on Quarry Hill have parents or relatives who’ve raced or worked in the pits. EastRise Credit Union‘s sponsorship of Taylor is managed by Sarah Ricker, a longtime race fan whose husband works in Thunder Road’s street stocks division.

Familial connections in racing make sense, given the sport’s technical, time-consuming and costly nature: Drivers need a crew who are willing to devote considerable time during race season to help them win — often without getting paid. On this particular night, Taylor’s half brother, Justin Prescott, and boyfriend, Tanner Woodard, whose father was also a driver, were both racing against her.

“There are probably more second- and third-generation drivers running … at Thunder Road than there are first-generation drivers,” said Dave Moody, a senior sportscaster with Motor Racing Network and SiriusXM NASCAR Radio, who grew up in Montpelier and now lives in Salisbury, N.C. Moody got his start at Thunder Road in high school, when track founder Ken Squier hired him to announce races. Moody did that for the next 30 years.

A few Thunder Road drivers have gone on to compete at the sport’s highest levels. Kevin Lepage of Shelburne raced in the NASCAR National Cup Series, and Bobby Dragon competed in the NASCAR Busch Series. Gov. Phil Scott, a three-time King of the Road and one of the track’s winningest drivers, earned national name recognition through electoral victories, not his checkered flags. As Brian Hoar put it, “This is his golf game.”

The vast majority of Thunder Road drivers will never break even financially, let alone earn a living in racing — Taylor attends Champlain College, and her father owns the Goss car dealership in South Burlington. When they’re not attending school or working day jobs in, say, construction, auto repair or the building trades, drivers typically spend a good chunk of their time and paychecks getting their cars ready for the next race.

For most, it’s not about chasing fame or prize money. Racing is a way of life, for themselves and their families. Most weeks, their only reward is the adrenaline rush of driving really fast on one of the most challenging short tracks in North America.

“We’re all super competitive,” Prescott said. “It’s in our blood.”

Once the rain subsided, pit road came alive again with the rapid-fire chatter of air wrenches and the guttural growl of engines firing up. As Taylor’s crew toweled her car dry, she huddled with her father and Rick Paya, her crew chief, to discuss a bolt in her exhaust system that shook loose during a practice run.

“These things are rattle traps,” Paya said, “because we’re building them as light as we can.”

As the race announcer summoned the late models to the track, Brian knelt on Taylor’s hood to settle the front suspension; the closer the car sits to the ground, the less turbulence swirls beneath it and the better it grips the track.

Taylor climbed into her custom-built driver’s seat, which sits so close to the dashboard that she has to remove the steering wheel just to get in. Taped below her speedometer is a quote from Alan Kulwicki, the late short-track racer from Wisconsin and driver development program namesake, who went on to win NASCAR’s Winston Cup Championship in 1992: “If you don’t believe, you don’t belong.”

Parked alongside Taylor’s car, as it is every Thursday, was the black No. 04 late model that Taylor’s half brother drives. Though ostensibly her competitor, Prescott, 37, works full time as Taylor’s car chief, which means he maintains and repairs her car at the Hoar family’s shop in South Hero. But once the green flag comes down to start the race, the siblings won’t cede each other an inch.

“He doesn’t make it easy on me,” Taylor said, “so I don’t make it easy on him.”

Where the Rubber Meets the Road

In an air-conditioned skybox overlooking the track, Sandy Hoar, Prescott and Taylor’s mother, watched the Governor’s Cup with her older daughter, Rachel, 24. A hand-held radio crackled with staccato bursts of chatter between Taylor and Paya.

Paya, 59, isn’t technically a member of the Hoar family but might as well be. As a car owner, he won three of his 10 ACT championships as Brian’s crew chief before retiring from the sport four years ago — or so he thought. When Taylor moved up from the street stock to the late-model division, Brian asked Paya if he would be her crew chief and spotter, too. The car she drives was custom built from scratch by Paya for a previous driver. Sporting decals for nearly two dozen local sponsors, from Regal Gymnastics to Laplante’s Plumbing & Heating, it bears No. 48 because her father’s car was 45; her grandfather’s, 46; and 47 was already taken.

With only tiny rearview mirrors inside the car, Taylor usually can’t see a competitor’s car until its hood appears in her peripheral vision. Paya, her spotter, sits high in the stands, serving as her eyes and ears on the track and the voice inside her helmet telling her what’s happening around her. During the race, he might say, “Plus two all around,” meaning she’s two car lengths ahead of the racers behind her. “No. 86 is looking inside” means that car 86 is trying to pass her low on the track; “86 is at your door” means Taylor is about to get passed.

Sandy was deeply familiar with the sport when she married a race car driver. Her father worked on a pit crew at the now-defunct Catamount Stadium in Milton, which operated from 1965 until 1987. Still, it’s very different when it’s your own kids on the track, she said.

Once the race began, Sandy could barely sit still, either leaning forward nervously or clutching her head with both hands. Watching Taylor, Prescott and Woodard race gave her plenty to stress about. What’s that like?

“Nerve-racking,” she deadpanned, not looking up from the action below.

The drama began shortly after the green flag dropped. Just three laps in, a smoky front-stretch pileup ended the night for two cars and battered several others, including Taylor’s and Prescott’s as they came out of turn four.

Sandy and Rachel erupted in loud groans. Taylor’s car spun 180 degrees, ramming nose-first into the concrete wall. She wasn’t eliminated from the race, but the wreck knocked her off her game.

“I was just kind of holding on for dear life,” she recalled later.

Getting in a wreck “can be kinda scary, especially the first time,” she added. “But we have so many safety precautions that keep us safe.” They include a mandatory collar-like head and neck restraint, adopted industry-wide after Dale Earnhardt’s fatal crash in February 2001.

Back when Brian was racing full time, he said, a driver had only a tiny sheet-metal plate alongside the right side of their helmet — not for safety but as a headrest against the extreme g-forces in turns. In crashes, it was often bent. Brian considers himself lucky that his worst injury after hitting a wall at high speed was a broken finger.

The race didn’t improve for the Hoar family as the night wore on. With body damage to his own car, Prescott had to return to pit road several times, effectively ending his chances of a podium finish. Taylor’s steering was loose, and her engine ran hot due to the front-end damage. Late in the race her frustration finally boiled over, evident from a terse exchange with Paya. And when another pit crew member chimed in on the radio, she barked, “Too many people talking!”

Taylor avoided a second wreck on the 59th lap that snarled traffic and resulted in another yellow caution flag, but she was unable to claw her way back to her 10th-place starting position.

“This is going to be a race of attrition,” Sandy said with a heavy sigh, as yet another car was hauled off the track by a wrecker. “I’m glad I took my blood pressure meds.”

After 150 laps, the checkered flag went to current points leader Jason Corliss of Barre, a record-tying fourth Governor’s Cup win. Despite damage to his car, Prescott finished 13th. Taylor came in 22nd, just ahead of Gov. Scott.

For years, whenever NASCAR’s Cup Series raced at New Hampshire Motor Speedway, one of its drivers would come to Quarry Hill to race against the Thunder Road regulars. Many of those NASCAR drivers also had trouble negotiating turn four, which is notorious for causing wrecks.

Thunder Road is a small, high-banked and asymmetrical oval, with short straightaways, Moody explained, which makes it especially difficult to drive. At many other raceways, single-car time trials determine the drivers’ starting positions, with the fastest car going first and the slowest car last. There, a winning driver may never need to pass another car on their way to victory lane. Instead of time trials, Thunder Road uses qualifying heats, essentially mini races between several cars at a time.

“You’re not going to win a race at Thunder Road without passing a lot of cars and really breaking a sweat,” Moody said.

That’s no easy feat, given Thunder Road’s high car counts. At least two dozen late models compete on a weekly basis, compared to other short tracks that may draw 15 cars or fewer. All that traffic makes passing difficult, especially because there’s only room enough to drive two abreast.

Racing at Thunder Road also requires “an insane amount of focus,” Taylor said. With the deafening roar and vibration of engines, the broiling heat, the near-constant turns, and other cars just inches away, if not swapping paint with hers, Taylor might hear her spotter say something over the radio and react to it instantly — but later not even remember doing so.

“It’s not a track for trophy collectors,” Moody added. “If you can go to Thunder Road and win, you’ve done something special.”

All in the Family

In the spectator zone on the night of the Governor’s Cup, Gordy Wood of Waterbury Center sat alone at a picnic table in clean work boots and crisp blue overalls, eating ice cream. “There are folks who love to see the crashes, but I am not one of them,” he said. Behind him in the stands, an elementary school-age boy with an impressive mullet leaned over the railing and waved a small checkered flag in a figure-eight pattern, mimicking the track’s flagman.

The 81-year-old Wood, one of the thousands of fans who got drenched that night waiting for the race to start, grew up four houses away from Squier and used to mow his father’s lawn. He’s been going to Thunder Road for more than half a century and rarely misses a race.

“I love this place,” Wood said. “It’s not only the racing. It’s the people you meet.”

In some ways, Thunder Road has changed a lot since Squier, the late Vermont radio mogul and NASCAR Hall of Fame broadcaster, opened it in 1960. In those years, stock car racing in Vermont was a more popular local pastime, with five race tracks in the Burlington area alone.

Today, Vermont has just two others: Devil’s Bowl Speedway in West Haven and Bear Ridge Speedway in Bradford, both of which are dirt tracks. Squier, who promoted his first race at the Barton Fairgrounds at age 16, also built Catamount Stadium with a group of five other men. He scheduled Thunder Road races on Thursdays because that was the day the quarry sheds in Barre paid their stonecutters. “He wanted to get their first dollar,” Moody said.

Thunder Road’s original wooden fences have long since been replaced by metal ones. The front-stretch wall, once made of railroad ties, is now reinforced concrete. In the early days of the track, Moody noted, “If you got in trouble on turn two and went sideways off the top, it was 30 feet straight down into the trees.”

When Cris Michaud and Pat Malone bought Thunder Road from Squier and Tom Curley in 2017, they put in a new tower, skyboxes and concession stands and added new fenced-off viewing areas for fans behind turns three and four.

What hasn’t changed, Wood said, is the track’s family culture. Wood offered up a quick genealogical chart of all the race families he’s followed over the years: the Carons of Colchester, the Donahues of Graniteville, and the Dragons of Milton, including brothers Bobby and Harmon “Beaver” Dragon, who were both inducted last year into the Vermont Motorsports Hall of Fame. (Bobby’s son, Scott, was also racing that night.)

From Wood’s vantage point, he could see the pit crew of another multigenerational driver: Kaiden Fisher. Nicknamed “Tropical Storm,” the 17-year-old wunderkind from Shelburne wowed race fans last year when, at 16, he became the youngest King of the Road in the track’s 65-year history. Fisher’s previous records include being the youngest winner of a street stock division race, at 12 — three years before he could legally drive on Vermont’s public roads with a learner’s permit.

“It’s physically demanding, and you have to work the whole time, but it’s the heat that really gets you,” said Kaiden, who aspires to go on to NASCAR. “I’m fairly young, so I feel like I have a bit of an advantage over other people.”

Kaiden’s father, Jamie “Hurricane” Fisher, was the 2003 King of the Road and regularly raced against Brian Hoar and Phil Scott.

“After three decades, I’m racing against kids a third of my age. I raced against some of their grandfathers,” said Gov. Scott, 67, who also got into racing through a family connection: His uncles worked for DuBois Construction, one of the firms that Squier hired to build Thunder Road.

When spectator Wood was asked about the Hoar family, his blue eyes lit up.

“Oh, she’s one of my favorites,” he said with a smile, referring to Taylor. “She came to my 80th birthday party.”

Though Taylor grew up at the track, she never showed much interest in racing as a kid, her father recalled. Before she tried her hand at the street stocks, at 17, Taylor knew next to nothing about auto maintenance, except how to change a tire. She was a competitive gymnast all through high school but finally gave it up because of the toll it was taking on her body.

“I was like a lost puppy when I had to retire,” she said. A month later, she was at Thunder Road, helping her father and stepbrother in the pits.

New drivers typically get their feet wet in the four-cylinder Road Warriors, which are basically street cars with roll cages and no glass. From there, they can move up to the street stocks — also four cylinders but with race tires and more modifications. Next are the Flying Tigers, with V8 engines, stock frames and additional chassis modifications. Finally come the late models, which are totally fabricated by chassis builders and run on larger race tires. New, a late-model can run upwards of $85,000.

Unlike NASCAR, where the sky’s the limit on how much a team can spend, Thunder Road aims to keep the sport affordable by dictating which shocks, tires and transmissions drivers can buy. Before every race, each car must run through the tech line, where inspectors spot-check the vehicle to ensure that all the seals on the engine are intact and everything else conforms to the rules.

“It keeps [drivers] coming back,” Brian said. “If they have to keep up with the Joneses and the Joneses buy new tires every week, they’ll buy new tires every week until they have no more money.”

Whether Taylor has what it takes to move on to NASCAR remains to be seen. For now, she wants to race more in the Northeast before testing her mettle down South. Brian knows people in NASCAR country, but racing there is expensive.

“People always say, the fastest way to lose money is go racing,” Taylor said.

Rebuilding Body and Soul

The following Wednesday afternoon, Taylor and Prescott were back at their family’s shop off Route 2 in South Hero, which sits at the end of a long, tree-lined driveway beside a horse barn; Taylor’s sister, Rachel, works as a professional equestrian in Washington State. As Brian likes to say, “We’re into horses and horsepower.”

Lining one wall of the clean, spacious shop are shelves of trophies from Brian’s years of full-time racing. Oversize checks from big-purse races rest amid the antlers of a dozen mounted deer heads. Hanging from the ceiling are the hoods of retired race cars, including Brian’s NASCAR Busch Series car from 2002 and Taylor’s and Prescott’s hoods from their rookie seasons. One dented hood still bears the tire marks of another car.

“That one still hurts,” Prescott said. In October 2022, he was ahead in the final lap of the Milk Bowl, Thunder Road’s annual fall classic in which the winner kisses a dairy cow. Prescott, racing in the Flying Tigers division, “caught some traffic” and the driver behind him, Logan Powers, tried to pass him.

“We both held it to the floor … and crossed the line in destructive fashion,” Prescott said. “I didn’t win.”

By the time a reporter arrived, Prescott had spent hours that week rebuilding the front end of Taylor’s car. One of two identical cars sporting the logo of EastRise Credit Union, it looked in near-pristine condition for the following night’s race, including some new decals. Without multiple sponsors, most drivers couldn’t afford the sport, which is one reason race cars look like rolling billboards.

Taylor’s engine, which days earlier was caked with oil and shredded tire rubber, now looked brand-new. On average, a driver will put in 20 to 25 hours a week on the car, often holding a weekly “shop night” for the crew. Hence the tavern-like full bar at one end of the garage.

“If you have a bad week and you wreck out,” Brian said, “it’s all hands on deck.”

Prescott has plenty of experience rebuilding after serious wrecks — both in a race car and in his personal life.

“April 25, 2019, is my clean date,” he said casually. “I was as bad as they come, full-blown addicted to everything and anything.”

About the only thing uncommon about Prescott’s story of drug addiction is its successful outcome. As he told the hosts of the “Uncommon Deeds Motorsports Podcast” in August 2022, Prescott felt like a badass at age 9, he said, when his mother married a famous race car driver; though he has a different last name, everybody knew him as Brian Hoar’s son. When friends came over, they’d play video racing games wearing Brian’s helmet.

A self-described “problem child” growing up, Prescott took advantage of his stepfather’s extended absences during race season and partied heavily all through high school. Though he always wanted to race himself, he now understands why Brian didn’t let him at that age. “I was a disrespectful asshole,” he said.

During a brief stint in the U.S. Navy, which his parents hoped would provide him structure and discipline, Prescott injured his shoulder in a training exercise, for which he was prescribed a boatload of painkillers. He didn’t even realize he was hooked on them until his prescription ran out.

It wasn’t long before Prescott moved on from pills to heroin. For about a decade, he was homeless, racking up criminal convictions and burning bridges with friends and family. He went through rehab, only to relapse months later. After a 2019 overdose nearly killed him, he awoke in a hospital bed to the terrified look on his mother, Sandy’s, face.

“I knew I needed to either change everything or I was going to die. And I was OK with the thought of dying,” he said. “I didn’t have anything to live for.”

That is, until someone in recovery asked Prescott a life-changing question: What did you love to do before you got into drugs and alcohol? Without thinking about it, he said, “Racing.” But by then, he was 32 and assumed that ship had sailed.

Later that year, Prescott entered Thunder Road’s Enduro 200 Race, aka “the People’s Race.” In it, amateurs take old beaters from the junkyard, remove all the glass, outfit them with roll cages and drive around the track as fast as they can. Prescott described it as “100 shitboxes getting smashed up.”

Though the Enduro was light-years away from the NASCAR driving that his stepfather had done, “It gave me purpose and kept me busy,” he said. On July 9, 2020, Prescott won his first real race driving in the Road Warrior division. With pandemic restrictions still in effect, there were no fans in the stands to cheer as he took his victory lap with the checkered flag.

This season, Prescott has been on a winning streak. On June 13, he picked up a $20,000 win in the Keith Morse Memorial 150 at Riverside Speedway in Northumberland, N.H. On July 11, he finished second at Thunder Road, then three days later won the Wall’s Ford Late Model 100 at White Mountain Motorsports Park, in North Woodstock, N.H., edging out his stepfather, who also raced that day.

Despite some big-purse wins, Prescott has no illusions about making a living as a full-time driver. Plus, the economics of racing are “all backwards,” he explained. A late-model driver might spend $650 on a set of new tires each week. A normal Thursday night win pays $700. Throw in the cost of pit passes for the crew, gasoline, replacement parts and collision repairs, and the expenses quickly add up.

“Even when you win, you’re still losing money,” Prescott said. “You’re just not losing as much money.”

To be clear, Prescott wasn’t complaining. Thanks to racing, he’s clean and sober, staying busy doing something he loves and supporting his sister as she climbs the ranks.

“The reality of that dream is, I’m too old for that shit,” he said. “But Taylor’s got a real possibility.”

Taylor’s Swifties

The following Thursday, autograph night at the Times Argus Midseason Championships at Thunder Road, the drivers emerged from pit road and lined up along the front-stretch fence to greet their fans. Though each driver had a smattering of people around them, Taylor’s fans, most of them young girls with their mothers, crowded 10 deep for her autograph.

“I like your nails,” one girl said softly.

Among those in line was 13-year-old Lindsey Moulton of East Corinth, who was sporting a Taylor Hoar T-shirt, as she does most weeks. Moulton comes to Thunder Road every Thursday. At home, she sleeps under a blanket she got for Christmas that has photos of Taylor all over it.

“She’s the first girl racer I’ve ever seen race,” said Sammy McCallum, 10, of Barre Town, as she emerged from the gaggle of fans with a coveted autograph.

Comments like McCallum’s mean a lot to Taylor, who had few female role models of her own when she started racing.

“When you’re in the car, nobody knows or cares if you’re male or female. So I try not to play the girl card,” she said. “I just want to be another racer.”

Nevertheless, she’s since established a long-distance relationship with Tracie Bellerose, the 2000 track champion and its only Queen of the Road to date. Her words of advice to Taylor: “Don’t let the boys push you around.”

They definitely didn’t that Thursday night. Taylor ran a solid, wreck-free race and finished eighth, immediately ahead of her brother. The young fans at the beginning of the night seemed to buoy her spirits.

“The kids look at us like we’re NASCAR drivers, which is pretty cool,” she said. “It’s one of those things that reminds you why you come back each week.”

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This article appears in Aug 20-26, 2025.

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