ROAD SCHOLAR

Brandon Howard goes to school with Pro Modder Quain Stott

By Dale Wilson
5/5/05

ollege student Brandon Howard loves racing Pro Mod with “Lee Boy” Corvette man Quain Stott so much that he schedules his courses around the weekends that Stott’s team won’t be on the road.

Howard attends the University of South Carolina Upstate, in Spartanburg. And his classes have nothing to do with the low 6-second, 230-mph blown 'Vette that Stott shoes; they’re all in the criminal justice curriculum. Brandon, 20, is studying to be a narcotics officer.

“I want to try and make a difference somewhere. I see that drugs are really affecting our communities, so I’d like to have one of those small opportunities to make a difference in somebody’s life … something for the communities of our country,” Howard says.

But in the same breath, he says this: “I would like to follow racing, though. I hope I have a future in it. My main goal is in racing, but I want to have something to fall back on (hence a degree in Criminal Justice). I want to make it as a crew chief tuner one day. I really enjoy Pro Modified, but I’d like to see what Top Fuel would bring.”

Is this guy confused? Hardly. Both pursuits have been dreams of his since he was a young teenager. And he is now living both of those dreams.

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Quain Stott, 44, an IHRA Pro Modified Top 10 finisher and winner of eight national events since he began racing the eliminator in 1995, is the one man who could --- and does --- make Brandon Howard’s current dream come true. Since hiring him three years ago as a gofer and shop floor sweeper, he has seen Howard grow as a crew man and tuner, to where today, Brandon is his main crewman.

“He knows everything about my car,” the Spartanburg, South Carolina, racer says. “He does all the maintenance work on it. He builds the engines, the transmissions, the rear ends … there’s not a piece on the car that he doesn’t know about.”

It took Stott just three months after he hired Howard to see that. “I saw he was going to be more than just a floor sweeper. I could tell he had potential to be a crew chief in time,” Stott says. Brandon had just gotten out of high school, and he had had just a little bit of experience with a round track race team. His cousin had raced round track, but he liked drag racing better. “That’s how we struck our deal up. He wanted to come to work for me in my shop. Then I saw he had mechanical abilities and skills. He was kind of a natural. Somebody who has been doing this for 30 years, I can watch how a man holds a wrench and tell if he’s going to make it or not,” he says.