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Brandon can take the “Lee Boy Paving Equipment”-sponsored
’63 Corvette completely apart and put it back together,
totally by himself. “There’s not a part on the
car that he doesn’t know how to work on. I taught him
the way I like it done, and that’s what I like about
him – he does it my way. He doesn’t argue with
me,” Stott says.
“Brandon has learned to read the race track, he’s
the one who takes care of all the between-round maintenance,
and that frees me up to make tuning calls. Used to, I’d
have to do that myself. I had to be there to oversee the maintenance,
then I had to make tuning calls, and then get in the car and
drive it. Brandon has freed me up from having to oversee all
that,” Stott says.
And yes, Brandon schedules his college courses around Stott’s
racing. He works with Quain through the week, half-days some
days, other days 9 to 5, then he goes to school until 9 o’clock
at night, and he’s using the money he makes with Stott
to help pay his way through college. He gets a salary plus
bonuses every time Quain scores high in a big Pro Mod race.
Additionally, he’s a fast learner. “I’ve
never seen anyone learn as fast as he has. To be as young
as he is … most young people are not that dedicated
to anything. Brandon still likes the girls, but he doesn’t
drink, don’t party, he’s 100 percent living and
breathing this racing, he’s so dedicated to it. I’ve
had young kids before that was good, but they weren’t
as dedicated. He won’t let a girlfriend come between
him going to a race. If he’s got a girlfriend, and she’s
bitching about him going to the races, he’ll put her
on the road,” Stott said.
Howard has known Quain for a long time. He has always been
a family friend, and Brandon had always looked up to him.
At the time, Howard was working for his cousin, Steven Howard,
on a Hooter’s Pro Cup circle-track car, and he was tire-changing
for him. He had heard that Quain had an opening in his shop,
so Howard went to him to see what he needed done. Within a
few months, he had gone from sweeping floors to working on
the car, and then started traveling to the races with him.
 Now
he does everything --- “Any maintenance that is done
is all by me. I oversee the crew doing all the work at the
track, I try and keep everything orchestrated and get it ready
to go racing. That means everything – I build all the
motors, transmissions, rear ends. Quain taught me every bit
of it, within an eight-month span of time. Within a year,
I was building motors,” Howard says.
Doing all that and going to college full-time can be tough.
But Howard has it figured out. “At the beginning of
every semester, I know what I need to take, and I also know
my race schedule by then, and I try and get all my classes
in the middle of the week. If it means going from 12 o’clock
at lunchtime to nine at night to get it done, I do it, just
so I can go racing on the weekends,” he says. That usually
means leaving the shop at 11 o’clock Thursday night,
and if it means driving all night to get there, so be it.
Howard does the driving as well. And get this --- it’s
always him and a couple of other crew members, Dee Braggs
and Greg Waldrop, who set out each racing weekend in a little
GMC van that Braggs owns. Quain drives the motor home and
the rig to race. They’ll all meet up at the track.
The racing sometimes puts Howard behind. “Some nights
I’ll go to 1 o’clock in the morning studying,
but I get it done,” he says. He’s currently a
sophomore with a 3.0 grade point average.
Right now, even with his studies and all, Brandon doesn’t
think he could leave Quain, because he’s learning so
much about big-time drag racing, and that gives him the freedom
to learn more.
So why not learning something more up your alley, he was
asked, like, say, mechanical engineering? “I like where
I’m at. I feel like I’m learning more where I
am now than I would behind a textbook,” Howard answers.
And he may drive someday. Quain and engine builder Gene Fulton
have put together a car to try and teach Howard how to drive.
It was a ’88 Olds Cutlass Top Sportsman car, once raced
by Fulton, now in the process of being rebuilt. It will be
an “experience” car, probably for bracket racing
and some seat time.
“Hopefully, I’ll drive a Pro Mod someday,”
Howard says.
“I expect Brandon will make a good tuner in the future,”
says Stott. “As time goes on, he’ll be able to
be a tuner and crew chief for some big team. Hopefully me,
if I’m still in it.” 
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