“My favorite part of racing is the adrenaline rush you get before and during the race and the visible results of all of your hard work.”
Conner Zbozien ’26 gives new meaning to the phrase “learning curve.”
Zbozien, a Mechanical Engineering major, expertly negotiates many curves while racing Outlaw Super Late Models. He placed third in the Moran Chevrolet Stan Yee Memorial 150 in Flat Rock on July 22. With three races left this season, Zbozien leads the point standings at Flat Rock Speedway.
“The hardest parts of racing are learning the setup of the race car and trying to make it go faster in a super-competitive field where there are many adjustments that can change the car in many different ways,” he said, “and the weekly maintenance that requires countless hours at the shop every week to fix the car from the last race, prepare the car for the next race and clean the car between races, which isn’t difficult, just very time-consuming.”
Zbozien loves it. He has been racing for 15 years, getting his start at 6 years old driving Quarter Midget cars. Zbozien got into racing through his father, who worked with Michigan Motor Sports Hall of Famer Artie Sommers.
“My favorite part of racing is the adrenaline rush you get before and during the race and the visible results of all of your hard work,” he said.
Outlaw Super Late Models have a full tubular frame, quick-change rear ends and coil over suspension. They typically have V8 engines and the series is run on asphalt tracks.
Zbozien primarily races at Flat Rock Speedway but has also raced at Owosso Speedway, Birch Run Speedway and Toledo Speedway. He’ll race at those tracks again this year and add Delaware Speedway in Ontario, Canada, to the list. So far, Zbozien has only raced on asphalt but would like to compete on a dirt track someday.
“I race for points at Flat Rock, so 99% of our focus is on racing Flat Rock almost every weekend,” he said. “But we carefully plan races at the start of the season and schedule races we know won’t affect our performance at Flat Rock.”
The ultimate dream is to pursue a racing career in NASCAR, which Zbozien said is tough to break into because of the high costs. To race in his current series, it costs at least $15,000. By comparison, Zbozien said it would take $2 million to $3 million to participate at the lowest level of NASCAR.
“I would consider myself maybe two to three steps under NASCAR. My next step would probably be a Template Body Late Model, where, unlike the Outlaw body style, the cars look more like production cars, and all the bodies are very similar and have strict rules,” he said. “But with that car, you could travel anywhere in the country racing against some of the best drivers in racing, where some could arguably be better than a good portion of NASCAR drivers. The next step would be the ARCA Menards Series, which are older-generation NASCAR cars that bridge the gap between short-track racing and NASCAR. It is a little more cost-friendly than NASCAR and is typically seen as the step before you reach NASCAR to acclimate to the larger tracks and race against other future NASCAR competitors.”
If he doesn’t make it to NASCAR, he’ll take a career in the automotive industry. He co-ops at Angstrom Electric, where he conducts automotive wire testing.
He heard about Kettering from some racing friends and decided to attend because he liked the Co-op program.
It can be a juggling act between school, his Co-op and racing.
“It is tough to balance school in April through June as we start testing in late April and racing in May, but it’s nice to have July through September off [when he’s at Co-op] as it is the busiest part of the racing season,” Zbozien said. “It’s not hard to balance racing with my Co-op because I can work on the race car after work.”
His next race is 7:30 p.m. this Friday, Aug. 4, in Flat Rock.
“I’m looking forward to the rest of the season,” he said. “In a points battle, there is always added stress going into each race, and at any moment, you can throw everything away. It requires 100% focus the entire day because one wrong change on the setup and you can lose a good finish, and one wrong move on the track and you tear up the car. With such a competitive field, one bad race can ruin the entire season. I haven’t finished outside of the top five this season, and it is still a really close battle.”