At 41-years-old, Michael McDowell isn’t ready to retire from the NASCAR Cup Series but knows exactly when he would like to.
“Tristan McKee is really switched on, focused, and he’s the real deal,” McDowell said earlier this season. “I’ve been asked a lot when I’m going to retire. I’m going to quit when he’s ready to go Cup racing, Lord willing.”
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That’s high praise for a driver that is still just 16-years-old and will not make his Truck Series debut until Friday night at Richmond but literally everyone around the Spire Motorsports prospect has that kind of belief in him.
This stats with NASCAR everyman Lorin Ranier, the son of former Cup Series team owner Harry Ranier, who now specializes in driver development for Chevrolet. Ranier first took notice of a 10-year-old McKee when he sat on pole in his Late Model Stock debut at the Christmas Clash at Carteret County Speedway.
10 YEARS OLD.
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But that’s what made the story so fascinating — that a track announcer referred to him as 14 because that’s what McKee was registered into the event under. When the truth came out, it was kind of a mess that needed to be sorted out, with NASCAR even banning him from certain tracks until he turned 14.
This happened to Carson Hocevar too, by the way.
Nevertheless, a year afterwards, veteran racer Brandon Setzer (and the son of NASCAR legend Dennis) tested McKee in their Pro Late Model and Ranier took notice of the speed and potential race craft.
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He moved fast to work alongside the McKee family.
It was during the CARS Tour weekend at North Wilkesboro in 2023 that Ranier pitched to Josh Wise adding him to their performance program. It was during a MX-5 Cup test at Virginia International Raceway that Ranier formally asked Lane McKee if they could sign his son.
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Throughout the entire process, McKee has been fast but also a work-in-progress too.
There was a running joke after the prestigious Martinsville Late Model Stock race that every adult racer was waiting for McKee to turn 18 so they could fight him. There have been several conflicts throughout his Late Model and ARCA tenure stemming from an aggressive style that needed to be reigned in.
“The thing people forget about Tristan is that he’s 15,” said Wise last month. “Think about being a teenager dealing with things at the level he’s dealing with and it’s pretty crazy when you think about it like that.
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“But our philosophy is simple: When something happens, we get back to work on ourselves and our character. We work on our communication and our skills. There’s no noise when a driver comes to us. We just get to work.”
To that point, McKee has never taken the bait when asked by the media about the various controversies. Instead, McKee simply says he’s working hard every day to be the best version of himself.
“There’s a balance there, trying to win but crossing a line, but I don’t feel like I have to prove anything to anyone else,” McKee told Motorsport.com earlier in the summer. “I’m on my own path. I’m just working on myself each and every week and just learning everything I need to learn to be ready for the next step.
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“I have really good people in my corner, all the really good people, like Jeff Dickerson and Bill Anthony, who care about me and want me to get better and be on the ascent, going up.”
Get it? The ascent? He’s a Spire Motorsports Ascent development driver.
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But seriously, Spire co-owner Dickerson and team president Anthony believe entirely in his development and have been willing to go through the highs and lows with him over the past 18 months.
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As Dickerson explains it, when Rainier and Wise told him this is the next top prospect, there was no arguing with two of his best friends. He just offered the contract. McKee has spent time driving Late Model Stocks for Matt Piercy Racing and ARCA for Pinnacle Racing Group, where he won last week in Iowa.
There’s also the TransAm TA2 schedule with Scott Lagasse Jr. But arguably the most important part of his development has come in Super Late Models this year because Dickerson paired him with Richie Wauters.
This was important because Wauters doesn’t have the same level of equipment as Wilson Motorsports or Anthony Campi Racing but Dickerson wanted to pair him with the ‘maniacally’ driven to succeed Wauters because that’s exactly what he did with Kyle Busch 25 years ago.
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“With Richie, it wasn’t, hey, let’s try to go win Super Late Model races, but instead, let’s go build a driver that can win races on Sundays,” Dickerson told Motorsport.com.
Dickerson said everything they are doing with McKee since 2025 has been about winning Cup races someday and not about winning Late Model or ARCA races. There have been victories along the way, but that was a bonus, and not the entire development strategy.
Dickerson believes McKee’s various run-ins over the past three years has actually been developmentally beneficial.
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“We are only trying to change six percent of the equation,” Dickerson said. “We don’t want to change what makes our drivers who they are. With Tristan, there was a moment where everyone was coming after him, but you know how it is with these kids, they are resented and have a target on their backs when they are signed-up with a team or OEM.
“You catch everyone’s best punch, because they want to show the world they are as good as this kid that someone believes can race on Sundays. It’s that or they believe a kid hasn’t worked as hard as they have. But at the end of the day, that’s short track racing and those guys all kind of run into each other, you know what I mean?
“For us, we’re not going to tell Tristan, just like we didn’t tell Carson, you have to fix this and that. We just tell them ‘time and place.’ We just don’t want the run-ins to come on Lap 4. We’re trying to get Tristan, just like Carson before him, ready for 500-mile races. How silly is it to run into someone on Lap 6 of a 350-lap race? That’s the only thing I want to impart on these younger drivers.”
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McKee has done exactly that over the past calendar year. There hasn’t been a public spat since that night in Martinsville last September. Everyone who watches him on a weekly basis has seen the developmental growth, and Ranier says McKee is arriving in the Truck Series at the perfect time.
For one, Ranier credits Dickerson for telling McKee to just focus on racing and Spire will handle the business end.
“That’s a race team that understands what development looks like,” Ranier said. “Jeff and I go back 25 years when he first came down here from Indy. I worked at Spire the agency and I know he understands development.
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“You saw it with Carson. He knows what he’s doing. So, Tristan could not be in a better position, especially because their Truck Series program is really good right now. He’s in a position to showcase where he’s at really well the rest of the year.”
McKee is going to run every race he’s eligible for at 16-years-old the rest of the way and Ranier says his prodigy can do a burnout every week for all he cares if he finishes in the top-15 with clean races.”
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