Darren Dilley, amateur racer and schoolteacher, to make NASCAR debut at Portland

Road courses tend to mean the enlistment of drivers familiar with the track even if they have little to no experience in NASCAR. As the NASCAR Xfinity Series heads to Portland International Raceway on 4 June, RSS Racing will do just that by entrusting the #38 Ford Mustang to Darren Dilley, an amateur sports car racer who mainly works as a primary school physical education teacher.

Dilley races in the Sports Car Club of America in a family operation called Cheap Fast Racing, which is overseen by his father Bert. The team began competing in 1990, with the younger Dilley having taken his Mazda RX-7 to the SCCA National Championship Runoffs; he finished sixth in the Class E Production category in the 2021 Runoffs at Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

The opportunity arose when Dilley’s marketing director Jeff Hanken spotted an RSS Racing post on Facebook recruiting drivers who are familiar with Portland, which is a new stop for the Xfinity Series.

“That was a great opportunity because Portland is my home track, so they were really excited to have a road course racer who had experience at Portland,” Dilley told local news network KPTV. “Because they don’t get to practice at Portland at all and we have thousands of laps.

“If I ever got in the winner’s circle and it happens this weekend? I am going to the East Bank because that is where I grew up watching the races out on the East Bank so that is where the car will park, and we will celebrate together because that’s the people that matter most to me.”

The 55-year-old will team up with RSS owner/driver Ryan Sieg in the #39. The #38 is split between multiple drivers with C.J. McLaughlin doing the bulk of the starts, while Will Rodgers drove it in the season’s first road race at COTA in March.