Illustrative stock photo of weekly short-track racing at night; not taken at Berlin Raceway. (Pexels)
Most 70-year-olds are told to take it easy on the stairs. Tim DeVos spent 2026 taking the high line into Berlin Raceway’s corners, winning 12 times in 21 sportsman starts, and collecting a NASCAR Local Racing Series Division III national championship. It is his second national title, and the points total behind it is the number worth lingering over: 448, the most of any 2026 national champion across the series’ divisions, per NASCAR’s own Oct. 13 announcement.
The age is the hook. The mechanism is the story.
How a Track Champion Becomes a National Champion
NASCAR’s national titles at the local level are built from weekly-track points, rolled up into regional and national standings. That means a driver does not need to be at a hundred tracks. He needs to be at one track, on the right nights, and keep winning. DeVos did exactly that: he took Berlin’s sportsman championship by 199 points, claimed the Midwest Regional crown in Division III, and those Berlin results are the foundation of the national one.
That matters because it shows what the system rewards. A driver who dominates a deep, well-run weekly program can outscore someone who is merely good at a handful of larger events. DeVos himself has pointed out the flip side: if Berlin wants a driver to contend in Division I, the track may need more races on its calendar to generate enough national points. A schedule, in other words, is part of the car.
The Second Title Was a Different Kind of Hard
His first national title came in 2022 in Division II, in Berlin’s limited late model class, where he won 10 of 24 features. This one is a different class and a different division. Two national titles in two divisions is a better résumé line than two in the same one, because it argues the driver, not just the equipment, is the common factor.
The Berlin résumé is long: a first win on June 5, 1982, a track-record 127 wins, and five track championships across four divisions. He also went outlaw late model racing this year with a borrowed car, a notable detail given that a 2012 house fire destroyed his own outlaw car and left him with only the engine. On July 4 he set the division’s track record at 14.736 seconds. Tyler Roarhig later broke it with a 14.687. Records at a track like Berlin don’t stay put for long. DeVos called the season “a smoking year.”
The Fragility Behind the Number
Here is the part the trophy photos skip. DeVos has said that even when you lead national points, the whole thing could “all go away in a heartbeat.” One wrecked car, one failed engine, one bad night, and a season of work can evaporate. At the local level, there is no fleet of spare chassis and no engineering department to absorb a bad week. A national championship at this level is as much about parts inventory and weekend logistics as it is about talent.
That goes double for a driver whose signature move is going into the corner on the top side, a line he describes as high risk and high reward. The reward is clear. So is the risk, and it has to be managed all summer.
What to Watch Next
DeVos is eyeing a super late model program for 2027 to run alongside his limited late model, and he would like a Division I title, though he calls it a difficult goal. He has not settled whether to defend his sportsman crown or run more outlaw races. If he does chase Division I, expect the fight to be about calendar depth, not just speed. For a driver who has won at Berlin for more than four decades, that might be the only competitor he has not yet beaten.
The national spotlight is elsewhere this week, with the Cup Chase points scramble heading into Talladega and a Phoenix race decided by tire strategy. Age stories in racing don’t always involve the youngest name, as with the Formula 1 age record Kimi Antonelli is chasing at Austin. Age records come at both ends of the scale.
Image credit: Eugenio Felix via Pexels
About the Author
