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(Martinsville, VA) When the Cup cars roll into Martinsville Speedway April 7th for the Cook Out 400 Kaulig Racing has announced that Josh Williams will make a start in the no 16 car.
The race at Martinsville will be the 2nd Cup start of the season for Williams and 5th overall. Josh was involved in a multi car crash on lap 2 in Atlanta that ended his day.
Williams realizes that competing against the Cup field is not going to be an easy task given his lack of experience in the Gen 7 car and Kaulig’s lack of success at the half-mile oval in recent years, but he believes that he can do a good job when the green flag flies.
“I kind of know what I’m looking for in the feel of the car here and I know that the Kaulig cars have speed”, Williams said recently at Martinsville Speedway. ” So we just have to put a lot of time into making changes to the car to be better here and I think we can run in the top-10.”
Thoughts on running two races and 650 laps at a physically demanding racetrack.
“I’m looking forward to it. I have run a couple of doubles -Cup and Xfinity- so it should be fun here at Martinsville. I guess the biggest challenge is swapping back and forth between the cars because they are so different.”
The Port Charlotte, Florida native comes from a family involved in racing and started driving go-karts when he was only four- years old.
Williams was made to work on cars at a young age.
“I have always worked on my own equipment.” Williams said. “My dad said if I wanted to race, I had to be able to work on it so that is what I did all these years. If I tore it up, I had to fix it. I try not to tear stuff up but that is not working out too well for me this year.”
Williams came to North Carolina when he was 12 years old to pursue his racing dream and found success in the short track ranks before making his ARCA debut for his own team in 2009.
The team struggled not only to be competitive on track but in the search for funding to run the operation.
Eventually through hard work and determination Williams performance improved to the point where he was able to pick up two ARCA wins in 2016.
The run garnered the attention of longtime friend and Xfinity car owner Mario Gosselin who put the young racer in his car full-time starting in 2019.
Williams enjoyed modest success with the underfunded team but never consistently ran among the leaders
No Doubt William’s big break in racing came last year when NASCAR ordered him to ‘park’ his car after an on- track incident at Atlanta Motor Speedway. Well literally, Williams did park his car but not in the garage area- he parked it on the start-finish line.
Obviously, NASCAR didn’t like that too well and the action got Josh a fine and one- race suspension but it gained a lot of attention not only for him but the sport.
“I think that was a pivotal moment in my career,” Williams said. I was talking to Kaulig Racing before that happened (about a job) but after that incident the conversations escalated. I think that was the best thing I could have ever done for myself.”
“I was thinking as I was walking across the infield, ‘There is a wrong way and a right way to handle this situation’,luckily I chose the right way”.
So far this season has been anything but stellar for Williams who has 2 DNF’s in 4 starts. He competes full-time in the Xfinity Series for Kaulig and his best finish to date is a 14th at Las Vegas.
“It is super tough,” Williams stated. “You want to run good and be successful but sometimes luck is not on your side. I always say it does not matter what happens this week because next week will be another race. So we keep going until the end of the year and hopefully our luck will turn around.”
Off track Williams started a children’s hospital tour in 2015 where he provides hope and love for kids and their families. Williams says the tour aims to raise funds for non-profit organizations. To date more than 150 stops have been made.
Williams said his first hospital visit was to a 7-year-old girl battling leukemia.
“We brought our ARCA car, our speedway car from Daytona. We got to be with her and some of the kids came down and checked out the race car. We go to leave,everybody says bye, we load the cars up and I’m crying. That’s the toughest thing I’ve ever done, and it changes your outlook on life.
Well said Josh! Keep up the good work.
