Racing After His Dream

When Austin Vaughn registered for high school, the career counselor was stumped. How do you help a kid who is already on track to become a NASCAR driver? As the youngest licensed stock car racer in Mississippi, Austin has plenty of talent and drive. However, one of his greatest strengths is having grown up in the small but vibrant Mississippi racing scene, where he honed his skills from a young age. This informal education in stock car racing has set him up for a career doing what he loves, supported by family members who are his biggest fans and teammates.

The Vaughn Family

Austin’s love of cars and racing runs in the family. His father, Dee Vaughn, had street cars and dirt track cars after he graduated high school in the 1990s. He took a long break from the sport and came back to it when his son became interested in racing. Meanwhile, Austin’s mother, Jessica Vaughn, says that racing has been a big part of her life since childhood. Growing up, her family knew the people who built the racetrack in Corinth, and she began working the venue’s concession stand starting at 12 years old. “I've just kind of been around race cars ever since then. So, our kids had no choice, they just kind of were born into it.”

Drivers and fans in the Mississippi stock car racing scene are a part of a tightly knit community and, like the Vaughns, many participate as families. Race days are family-oriented, offering children’s activities like bicycle races and candy grabs, and kids often get called out to the track and invited to ride in the cars during breaks in racing. Growing up in this scene made racing accessible when Austin became interested in it at 11 years old, at which point, he began racing go-karts on dirt ovals. It wasn’t long before his family could see that Austin was serious about racing – and that he was very good at it. The family started out with one go-kart, then they ended up with a second one, at which point Austin started running both vehicles in different races on the same night. His mother says that he “got in pretty competitive. He'd take both carts to the track, run a race and get out of it, hop in the other one, run another race. And it wasn't long before we realized, okay, we got to do something different.” Austin then moved up to mini stocks, 1 winning one race in a junior division before moving up to the adult class. After that, he began driving an open-wheel modified car 2 and dreaming of NASCAR.

Maintaining and repairing a stock car like Austin’s requires a mix of do-it-yourself ingenuity and calling on a network of specialists to deal with tricky repairs and manufacture custom parts. There are a range of ways to maintain a stock car, depending on available resources and the size of the group dedicated to the task. Some drivers invest a lot of money in their cars and have a whole team of people to maintain them, and others function as single-person operations in which the driver is also the owner and mechanic. In the middle of this spectrum are small groups like Austin and his parents, who work together to maintain his vehicle and install many of the parts themselves. They also have friends who come to the shop once or twice a week to help and hang out. The family purchases specialized parts from manufacturers that cater to stock car racers to install themselves, although they sometimes send the vehicle out for certain repairs and custom work that require professional assistance. 

One area in which they rely on experts is making custom safety equipment. Track officials check cars to make sure that they comply with the rules, and they are serious about safety regulations. Drivers are required to wear a fire-retardant racing suit, a helmet, and special gloves and shoes that are properly fitted to their bodies. Inside the car, they have special containment seats and harnesses to protect them from g-force and keep them safe in an accident. These items are ordered from suppliers who customize them for each driver and car, and they have to be updated frequently for a young driver like Austin, who is still growing.

Keeping the car in working condition and going to races has become the primary activity for the family. According to Dee, “We pretty much donated our whole life for his racing. That's all we do.” The car requires constant upkeep. “You can start cleaning tires, changing oil, greasing it, and that's every week. It never ends. If you want to stay up competitively, you've got to work on it.” 

These days, Austin, Jessica, and Dee travel to races on the many dirt tracks in Tennessee, Alabama, and North Mississippi, but this coming season, they will expand their range to allow Austin to race on asphalt farther east. As Austin moves toward competing at the national level, his driving is enriched by his versatility, skills, and the community connections from his Mississippi roots. 

Stock Car Racing in the South

Stock car racing has come a long way to be accepted as a valid career option and family activity. So named because the early race cars were stock production models rather than today’s specially built vehicles, stock car racing is said to have its origin in Prohibition-era (1919-1933) bootlegging. People who illegally transported alcohol required fast, responsive vehicles to evade law enforcement, so bootleggers altered standard vehicles for that purpose and eventually started racing them for pleasure. 3 By the midcentury, the sport had risen in popularity, leading to a discussion about the future of racing in 1947 that laid the foundation for NASCAR, the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing, LLC, which hosted its first race in Daytona Beach in 1948. 4 Austin Vaughn competes in the Automobile Racing Club of America (ARCA), which started out as the Midwest Association for Race Cars (MARC) in 1953 and became a subsidiary of NASCAR in 2018.

This history means that stock car racing displays a classic pattern of folk culture: it started out as a grassroots activity and eventually hit the mainstream, but it still displays informal, creative elements that we can identify as folklife. Even though nationally televised NASCAR races are big business today, drivers come up in local scenes that are far less formal and have cultures of their own, and they still carry that culture with them when they make it big. 

While his youth is probably the most immediately striking thing about Austin Vaughn – he’s by far the youngest ARCA driver in Mississippi – as a prospective driver at the national level, he also brings an unusual kind of experience from his local roots. Stock car racing is often associated with places farther east, like North Carolina and Florida, but the scene is different in Mississippi. Here, as well as in states like Tennessee and Alabama, drivers race on dirt tracks instead of asphalt. Few NASCAR racers have experience driving on dirt, but Austin grew up with it, making him a versatile driver who can handle a wide range of conditions.  Jessica explains, “We usually get the comments ‘You can tell he’s driven on dirt. How he drives, you can tell he’s driven on dirt.’ The dirt experience has definitely helped him.”

Dirt is more difficult for drivers than asphalt, in part because it constantly changes with the weather and use, and the driver has to adjust to these conditions. Jessica elaborates, “The track changes after every race. You go out for your heats or you're qualifying, and then a few dozen more cars get on there. The next one, you go out for your feature race. The track's totally different. There's ruts, there's different things you have to account for every time you go out. There could be a new rut in a different corner, and you just got to learn to drive it and drive through that.” This difficulty makes it a rigorous physical sport. According to Austin, steering alone takes a lot of force. “It can be a workout on you just working the wheel back and forth.”

Each track is different as well. Some are sandy, some have clay, and others have a sticky mud called “gumbo” that creates a tacky surface. Teams set their cars up to deal with the conditions of the track they plan to race on, including making changes to tire pressure and gear ratios. However, sometimes a track gets rained out, causing the racers to go to a different track that is still running that night. This means that they may need to adjust their setup with little notice to deal with the conditions of the new track.

Although dirt may require more skill from the driver, asphalt has its own challenges. Austin says that gravitational force (g-force) and heat can be hard on the body. “Most times when you're going into a corner, you can pull two to five Gs against your body. Then you have to deal with the heat, and it can be up to 120-ish degrees,” but on asphalt, “you turn a lot harder, you run a lot faster. The Gs are a lot stiffer, a lot more than a dirt car.” However, he also notes that during a race, “you kind of forget about most of that stuff.”

At Mississippi’s small, local dirt tracks, the love of racing brings drivers and fans back throughout the racing season, which generally goes from March through late October or early November, depending on the weather. “You have to love dirt racing in North Mississippi to be able to do it. There’s no money in it, you just have to love to do it,” says Jessica. Dee adds that there is some money, but with such high costs, “You never win enough to pay for the hobby.” Some racers, particularly those who cannot afford the best equipment, never win a race, but they keep coming back because they love working on the cars and the thrill of getting behind the wheel.

It isn’t all roses, though – the stock car racing community also has its rivalries and drama. Depending on where they sit, spectators can have a completely different experience: from the grandstands, they can watch the race, but there are also bleachers in the pits, where drivers park and work on their cars. There, emotions can run high, and some spectators will pay more for these tickets so that they can witness the drama between drivers. With such a small scene, local spectators are generally aware of the rivalries between drivers and teams, which often spill over onto social media.

“When something happens on a Saturday night, it’s all over Facebook. And they voice their opinion on how they felt the night went, and everyone is either agreeing or disagreeing with them,” says Jessica. It can get rowdy, but it is all part of the entertainment. When needed, those same racers will come together to take care of each other. Jessica says, “Racers are a tight community. We pull together when somebody needs money or when somebody's sick, or if somebody totals their car, everybody's worried about it; it's a big deal.”

Asked if he has any rivals, Austin laughs. “Not yet. Most people I race with, I know pretty much all of them, so I am not hitting anybody, and nobody's really hit me yet.” Not wanting to downplay his competitive spirit, he adds, “I'm not going to be just nice to people and let them go by me, but I'm not going to try to run people on the fence or anything.” 

On the Road to NASCAR

As an aspiring NASCAR driver, Austin is well on his way. Last year, he qualified for his NASCAR ARCA license at the age of 15, having impressed NASCAR officials enough for them to recommend him. As Austin moves toward racing on asphalt and competing at the national level, he also is experiencing a different stock car racing culture in which the stakes – and the costs – are far higher than at home.

Despite his skills, Austin is still young. At the same rate as he keeps outgrowing his custom seat and suit, his skills are going through rapid growth and development as he tries out new things and gains experience.

Likewise, the Vaughn family hopes that the North Mississippi racing scene can grow. Although it is very popular, it mostly attracts drivers who want to compete only at the hobby level. Austin is one of only three ARCA drivers from Mississippi, and the racing scene here has generally had less exposure compared to some locations farther east. 

The lack of NASCAR-style asphalt tracks also can contribute to confusion among potential sponsors because the costs are so much higher for racing on asphalt, and this limits opportunities for drivers who may want to go pro. Jessica Vaughn explains that racing on dirt is easier on the equipment, so it can be much less expensive than racing on asphalt. “You’re typically getting a new set of tires every asphalt race, but with dirt, you can run the same set of tires all year if you take care of them.” For a potential sponsor who may be unfamiliar with the difference, the cost can be surprising if they are accustomed to sponsoring local racers who need less funding. According to Jessica, “a lot of your sponsorships around here in the dirt level is like your family. If they have a small business or your buddies have a small business and they help you out, you put their name on the car. And it's just mostly local sponsors, local businesses and stuff like that.” 

As Austin moves toward racing on asphalt, and particularly if he is successful in NASCAR racing, the costs will go up dramatically, but his sponsors will receive national exposure in return for investing in him. Jessica explains, “You got to have the right sponsors. The sponsors [are] how you get into it. And locally here, we're not like a hub for NASCAR, so people don't really want to jump on board. They're not familiar with how that works. If we lived in North Carolina, the sponsorships wouldn't be a problem. But here in Mississippi it's a little tougher to get the big corporate sponsors and national sponsorships to be able to fund what he needs to do to get to the level he wants to be.”

Nevertheless, Austin seems unstoppable. “I've wanted to do this since I was three, so I just wanted to do it pretty much since I was born.”

His mom agrees. “Sometimes we've had the sun come up trying to come home because some of those races, it's late when you get home, you're so tired, but just get up the next morning and start washing the car every day, something every day. But we do it. He loves it. We do it.”

*Resource Note: This essay was based on interviews conducted by Maria Zeringue with the Vaughn family at their home on July 7, 2024 and on February 13, 2025 via phone.

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