Brandon Overton shared how he is mentally preparing for the upcoming 2026 season after a disappointing 2025 where he finished 7th in the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series and only won one race on the tour.

In an interview on The Dirt Parlor Podcast, Overton was asked by host Gordy Gundaker, “When you recap a year like you had, how do you wipe the slate clean going into next year? We all say, ‘Yeah, you can forget about it.’ But we know as racers, we don’t forget about it. But how do you preparing to get into next season and just really mentally how does that work for you?”

Overton responded, “Man, it’s tough. Honestly, I’ve been telling myself for the last two years, ‘Dude, I got to change. I got to do something. I got to get back going. I just feel like I’m in a slump. I feel like I’m in a slump and I can’t get out of it. The last two years we’ve been trying to build a car. So trying to learn that with Eric when we were in the Wells stuff. That’s a lot on top of racing. Then you’re talking about, it ain’t talking about shocks and springs this week. It’s talking about different tubing and [expletive] that I have no idea about. And then on top of that trying to race and take care of all the crew guys and get ready to go to the track. And then I did this [Longhorn Factory Team] deal [with Riggs Motorsports]. You think, “All right, this is my chance to turn it all around. I can focus again. I can restart.’ And like I said, obviously, this hasn’t gone the way we all thought it was going to go.”

“The only way to do it is do what got you there in the first place,” he continued. “Just like you said, you read all the [expletive] on the internet, everybody says they’re going to quit, you’re going to be out. That’s the way I kind of use it. I just keep telling myself, ‘Don’t give up. I’m just going to keep doing what got me here. Keep digging. Don’t listen to nobody.’ Just keep my nose down and just figure it out. I just got to figure it out.”

“That’s what I did the first time. I just figured out what I needed to win,” Overton said. “It was no secret setup. I would do what I thought was right and I just trusted myself and that’s what I did.”

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Overton will have the chance to figure it out as Riggs Motorsports will no longer be the Longhorn Factory Team car and the team’s operations will be moving to Georgia where Overton will take a more “active day-to-day role” according to FloRacing’s Kevin Kovac.

Overton has not hid how he was not involved in the day-to-day with the car this year. In FloRacing’s DIRT season, he said, “For the last 10 years, I have been doing all the crew chiefing, all the driving the truck, working on the cars all day, just taking car of my whole racing operation. And then I got a call from Scott Riggs one day and he had a little offer for me and decided last year that I would swap over and drive the Longhorn Factory car. We have a crew chief. We have a tire chief. We have a full blown crew to work on the car. I don’t have to sit there. I don’t have to be there every day. Which is refreshing because for the last 15 years I’ve pretty much done all this. So I almost feel like now I’m a race car driver. This is the first year I’ve probably felt like this is your job, you’re a race car driver now so get used to it.”

Additionally, Scott Riggs shared with Kovac that “Brandon’s ready to dig in, and we’re as excited as we were last year when they all came in. We’ve got great motors, we’ve got great cars, everything we have is really good stuff. We’re looking forward to a new direction.”

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