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Jeff Batten does it for fun

North Carolina Late Model racer maintains an independent spirit

By Dan Hodgdon

At nearly every zMAX CARS Tour race, nestled among the stacker haulers, paid crew members and NASCAR prospects, lies the humbler operation of driver Jeff Batten and B&J Racing.

Batten has been a mainstay in straight-rail racing across the Southeast for nearly two decades. Currently, his attention is focused on Pro Late Model competition. At the track, the team for his No. 49 Chevrolet usually consists of him, his father Bobby, and spotter Stephen Dunn, proprietor of GXS Wraps.

Batten, 40, races for the fun of it as his work and life schedule allows. His intention is not to climb the ladder, unlike many of the youngsters he battles on the track.

“We’re one of the last of the Mohicans when it comes to the family team,” says Batten, who hails from Red Oak, North Carolina, in the northeastern portion of the Tar Heel State. He lives in nearby Nashville, North Carolina.

“I’m at a disadvantage because we’re not spending the money everybody else is, but it is what it is,” he adds. “I’m not going to go broke racing. It’s a hobby.”

Jeff Batten (L), his father Bobby Batten and spotter/GXS Wraps owner Stephen Dunn (R) often make up the entire team at an event.

The Batten family owns a flooring company—Batten Ceramic Tile—and Jeff and Bobby each work full-time from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. during the week. Jeff handles the residential side of the business, while Bobby helms the commercial side. (In fact, the company was responsible for the tiling in the bathrooms at Southern National Motorsports Park in Lucama, North Carolina, the track where this interview was conducted).

The duo then wrenches in the evenings or on weekends if they aren’t racing. Work on the cars takes place in a 40x60 shop behind Bobby Batten’s house on the family farm.

“We build everything,” Jeff Batten says. “We get a frame from Dean Clattenburg [of Clattenburg Racing Fabrication] and the lowers and uppers from Dean. Then we put everything else together ourselves. We do our own interior. We hang our own bodies.”

Batten works on his car in the shop and at the track.

Batten comes from a long line of racers who learned how to work on every inch of a car and fabricate whatever was needed. His step-grandfather, Roger Matthews, was primarily a Dirt Late Model racer in North Carolina, and he got Batten’s father and six brothers involved in the sport.

Jeff began racing Pro Late Models in 2010, following in the footsteps of his uncle John, who found great success in a Super Late Model for many years. When John’s career wound down, Jeff stepped up to a Super himself. Other family members remain embedded in dirt racing.

Amazingly, Batten was 26 years old when he began racing. He had the chance to race a Super Truck when he was 14, but it wasn’t until years later that he decided he wanted to drive.

“I never raced go-karts, I never raced locally,” Batten says. “The only thing I’ve ever driven is a straight-rail car.”

Batten and team push their car through the tech line during a zMAX CARS Tour race at Southern National Motorsports Park in Lucama, North Carolina.

Batten primarily competed on the Pro All Stars Series (PASS) Pro Late Model and PASS South Super Late Model tours in the early-to-mid 2010s, then added the CARS Super Late Model Tour in the latter half of the decade and early 2020s.

In 2022, with PASS having moved back to its northern roots and the CARS Tour transitioning its straight-rail class to the crate engine-based Pro Late Models, Batten shifted his program to focus on the class as well.

He has four cars in his stable, along with two built engines and two crates, meaning he can also enter the occasional Super Late Model race when the Southern Super Series ventures out of the Deep South.

If he had his choice, Batten would run a Super all the time, preferring the finesse of those cars to the wide-open nature of the lower-powered Pro Late Model.

“You’ve got to run these things like you’re qualifying every lap,” he says. “With a Super, you can relax. If you have enough motor and you make a mistake you can correct out of it. You’re on the edge with these all the time.”

Over his years in the sport, Batten has seen competition grow ever younger and the racing get more physical as the stakes have grown higher. He attributes much of that to the fact many young drivers don’t work on their own cars or put them together. Plus, for many, the idea is that short track racing is a stop along the way.

“There’s so much pressure on those kids because they’re trying to make a living out of this,” Batten says. “There’s only 70, 80 spots on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. They’re just trying to make names for themselves, and they put themselves in bad positions.

“And then you get the old saying, ‘He did what he had to do.’ I’m from the era where if you couldn’t pass a man without wrecking him, then you didn’t need to pass him to begin with.”

Incidentally, Batten is the father of two children—daughter Kaydin and son Caleb—who are around the same age as many of the drivers he races against.

Batten at speed during a qualifying run.

Outside of racing, Batten worked full-time as an EMT for 15 years before the stresses of the job forced him to stop and return to the family business. His wife, Ashley, also works on the highway patrol in Raleigh.

“We were a public service family to some extent,” Batten says. “I’ve still got my certifications, but I kind of let it go. I was doing that full-time; you only work seven days a month, but when I say days, I mean 24 hours. It’s an okay job, it’s just you see stuff and that stuff sticks with you … when you’re in that field of work, you have an altered reality.”

Batten, an avid deer hunter and a fan of riding side-by-sides with his son and visiting the mountains, is easy to root for. Part of his appeal is the underdog nature of his operation. But part of it is the fact that he is an everyman, someone who could be your buddy or neighbor who happens to have an ultra-cool hobby.

He has racked up multiple top-fives and top-10s in his touring Late Model career but has yet to capture a checkered flag. Still, he remains realistic about his standing in the sport.

“I’d love to win one of these races, but I think my window for that opportunity may be gone by now because there’s just so much money out here,” he says.

He’d also love to give road course racing a shot, but has yet to work up the courage to ask someone to drive a car.

Batten knows he may be in the twilight of his career, but he is still simply happy to be at the track whenever he can.

“I told my dad I’m 40 and I know I’ve slowed down a lot,” he says. “I told him, ‘I’ll keep doing it until I’m not having fun.’”

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