NASCAR Canada Series (NCS) drivers Jason Hathaway and Mark Dilley will join forces for this weekend’s double-header at Riverside International Speedway in Antigonish, NS. As Hathaway continues his second return from retirement, Dilley will begin his retirement tour, with both drivers competing out of the Ed Hakonson Racing (EHR) stable.
Hathaway initially retired after winning the 2016 finale at Kawartha Speedway; he returned for three races the following season, where his streak of competing in the first 123 races in series history came to an end. He un-retired in 2019, winning two races and finishing fourth in points. He won three races and the points title in a shortened 2020 season before retiring yet again.
After spending last season as crew chief for his father-in-law’s EHR team, Hathaway made the decision to return to driving duties for a full 2024 campaign.
“Collaborating with my family first, wife and kids and car owner; just looking at the whole team itself, with everything we have going on and having Dexter and Wallace (Stacey) as well…and the sponsorship opportunities we had kind of played into it as well,” said Hathaway. “We’ve got a family-knit team and it’s always just one big family, so my guys wanted me to get back in the car. I feel pretty good, I feel just as well as I did in 2020, so I said let’s do it.”
Hathaway seems to be hitting his stride in the later years of his career. He recorded 13 wins and 27 podiums in six full seasons between 2013 and 2020, compared to one win and six podiums in six full seasons before that. He had five wins and eight podiums in his last 11 races entering this year.
The St. Thomas, ON driver says that his team jokes that he’s like fine wine, getting better with age; he gives credit to his crew and the equipment, saying that the success has been a sum of all parts. With his youngest son, Maxson, born in September 2019, there’s some extra motivation to keep that success going.
“We’ve been fortunate to win a bunch of races the last bunch of years in my career and it’s been good,” said Hathaway. “I ‘gotta get another win. My youngest son, Maxson, he didn’t know I was a race car driver until we announced that we were coming back and we showed him a couple of pictures. I guess we better figure out how to get in the winner’s circle for him.”
Hathaway has gained a reputation for closing down race tracks, winning the last NCS races at Kawartha in 2016 and Autodrome St-Eustache in 2019. Unlike those two tracks, Riverside remained active after its last NCS event, which was won by Hathaway in 2019.
The series’ return to Riverside is notable for both Hathaway and Dilley. Hathaway is close friends with the Chisholm family, who own the track, and considers it his favourite track on the schedule, while Dilley’s first career NCS win came at Riverside in 2007, a week after his mother passed away.
Dilley will compete in three races for EHR this season – the two Riverside contests and the race at Saskatoon’s Sutherland Automotive Speedway. The Barrie, ON driver will hang up his helmet, at least for NCS, calling it a career following those three starts.
“The decision was pretty easy, I’m getting old…I hate to say it but things don’t happen as fast when you’re older,” said Dilley. “I’ve got some physical stuff, racing these things for 40 years, my body’s pretty beat up, so it’s good timing. Saskatoon is the Leland 250, Leland being a sponsor of mine for over 20 years, so I thought that was the appropriate time to say this is it for the NASCAR side of things, as far as driving.”
Dilley will pilot the No. 64, with continued support from Leland Industries, which also joins Hathaway as a sponsor of the No. 3 car, with ASSA ABLOY. The veteran racers have a combined 289 NCS starts, sitting fourth and fifth in that category individually; this is the first time that they’ll race on the same team.
Hathaway started the 2024 season with finishes of 12th, seventh and sixth, which currently places him fifth in the points standings. Dilley will be making his first start since the 2022 finale; he was inducted into the Canadian Motorsport Hall of Fame during the Canadian International AutoShow in February.
There will be two 150-lap races, one each day on Saturday and Sunday, for the NCS at Riverside.
