Mark Richards revealed that his son, Josh Richards, had plans to compete again in 2026, but instead chose not to in order to allow his dad to focus on the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series Championship.

Josh Richards competed in three events in 2025. He attempted to race at Lernerville Speedway on August 29th. He qualified third and started second in his heat, but suffered an engine failure and saw his night come to an end. Then at the beginning of October, he competed at Pittsburgh Pennsylvania Motor Speedway in the Pittsburgher. He finished 17th the first night and 9th in the Saturday feature.

There were plans in place for him to compete again this year, but unfortunately they did not pan out. Mark Richards explained why during an appearance on The Dirt Parlor Podcast, “He wanted to race a little bit this year, but he knew that we was in the middle of a point championship. And he didn’t want to put the stress on me.”

“He has a brand new car sitting here right beside of me right now ready to go that hasn’t been on the race track. It’s his car,” he continued. “We were going to run it at Pittsburgh again and then maybe come to Eldora and run the Lucas race there. And I got it set up where a friend of mine was going to take care of it, and house it, and basically where it wasn’t no pressure on us. And Josh said, ‘You guys are in too deep of battle with the championship and I don’t want to put no strain on you.'”

To that point, Richards talked about how stressful the championship battle was, “This was a strainful championship right at the end. I mean, truthfully, everybody has their nights. But the night at Florence when Brandon ended up getting taken out early in the race and we didn’t get to change anything or make up any points in the feature, the rear end got broke in half in that big wreck and we lost a massive pile of points that night.”

“We had a couple flat tires back in—. But everybody’s had issues. Hudson’s had issues. Moran’s had issues. I’m not saying that they haven’t had issues because everybody has, but by the time it was down to the wire, I’m thinking, ‘I don’t know how many more I got in me like this.’ I don’t know how many more championships I can do. And it was getting to where it was a lot of pressure on us and it was getting stressful. And I don’t like that stressful feeling I had for 25 years.”

Additionally, Mark Richards that the significant amount of stress he put himself under by not only running the Rocket1 Racing team, but also Rocket Chassis was one of the reasons that Josh Richards  stepped away from the sport, “I was stressed out and had 25 text messages and 10 phone calls that I needed to catch back up to and a race car that needed the engine changed, or the body changed, or something done. … I had to do all the work. When Josh was here, it was me and Josh, and one other guy. You remember, Don, when we had Matt here. And that was it. And we took care of this race team. Plus I worked in the shop on customer cars, and setups, and whatever else that had to be done.”

“And it’s one of the things that I think drove Josh away from this sport. I really think that Josh seen what it put me through,” he shared.

NEXT: Mark Richards Explains Why He Wants Race Purses More Evenly Spread Throughout The Field