Josh Rice signaled he and his JRR Motorsports team will return to the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series while accepting his well-earned Rookie of the Year award ahead of the Dirt Track World Championship at West Virginia Motor Speedway on Sunday, October 18th.
Rice had three wins, 14 Top 5s, and 23 Top 10s in 40 feature starts to earn Rookie of the Year. His first win came during the Cowboy Classic at Lucas Oil Speedway in a fantastic three-car battle with Chris Ferguson and Garrett Alberson. After hunting both of them for a handful of laps, he struck to claim second with seven laps to go after Ferguson biked up coming off of turn 4 and again in turn 1. In the same lap he began challenging Alberson for the lead. By 6 to go he drove underneath Alberson in turns 3 and 4 and took the lead and never looked back.
He then followed up that win with not only a preliminary win for the North/South 100, but a $75,000 North/South 100 win. He won in dramatic fashion making a last lap, last corner pass on Jonathan Davenport.
During the award presentation, Rice recapped his up and down year, “There was one point in time in Florida where I was like, ‘Man, did I do the right thing?’ I just quit a really good job and I was like, ‘Holy cow! We’re buried in points.’ And when we got on Mark [Richard’s] program, it was instantaneous success. We won a Crown Jewel the first weekend and then had a chance of winning one at The Topless. Had a chance at having probably a record rookie year and just never could get everything to go together.”
“It’s cool obviously. There’s a lot of people that’s won this Rookie of the Year deal,” Rice continued. “Just to make it all the way through a year and being at the highest of highs and lowest lows it’s cool just to make it through. And obviously [car owner] James [Rattliff] spends a lot of money for us to do this.”
Rice then shared his intention to run the series again in 2027, “It’s really cool. And now that I’ve been to all of them, I’d say we’ll prob do this Lucas deal again next year. It’s a dream come true to get to do this for a living and I never thought I’d ever get the opportunity to do it. It’s a lot more fun than being in a factory every night, I can tell you that. I’m still on night shift every once in awhile with these race cars.”
He went on to share that his goal for this year was to finish in the top five in points and given he will finish seventh this year, he aims to finish fifth next year.
“My goal was to finish top five my first year and I think we’re going to end up seventh. Didn’t quite reach that. That’ll obviously be our same goal next year. Try to finish a few spots better.”
Rice also addressed praise from Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series Announcer James Essex who has repeatedly described Rice as a threat to win the championship in 2027.
“I think it’s obviously possible,” Rice said. “The first step is going to be getting through Florida. Obviously Florida was not pretty last year for us. We didn’t really have a set program. We was kinda still putting stuff together come December and we’re hiring guys a week or two before we leave. And I was like, ‘This is a mess. There’s no way this will ever work.’ Once we got through Florida and we got to where we could regroup for a night or two and then we should’ve won the first night out. That just shows what we’ve kinda come from. There the start it was a mess. There’s no downgrading that.”
“But, obviously, once we got Dan and then Snack and then Zack was like our last piece of the puzzle. And it’s been really cool to have these guys.”
Rice starts the Dirt Track World Championship in 9th alongside Chris Ferguson. He’ll be looking to add that to his final Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series win column. And with the win he’s also looking to take home the $25k Big River Steel Bonus Program for the top performing driver in positions 6-15th in the points standings. Rice currently has a 35 point advantage over Max Blair.
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