T-Mac’s Tenure: 14 Years Strong
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T-Mac’s Tenure: 14 Years Strong
By: Pete MacDonald
As I walked through the pits this past week at Volusia searching for a story I kept finding myself back at a specific car. In this day and age of professional auto racing, some popular drivers land a big ride and don’t perform right off the bat and can be released after only a few short races.
Tim McCreadie is the absolute polar opposite of that.
In 2016, McCreadie is entering his 14th straight season of piloting the Sweeteners Plus No. 39 owned by Carl & Ann Myers. Not many drivers these days can say they have been with a team for fourteen STRAIGHT seasons.
The only thing that I can think of that comes close to that on this level would be Jimmy Horton’s career with Statewide Racing back in the 70s and 80s or Pat Ward’s career with John Wight’s Gypsum Express team from the mid-2000s.
When McCreadie started his tenure with Sweeteners Plus, McCreadie has just about done it all in the world of dirt racing. In 2003 they primarily focused on running the big block modified in New York and traveling with the Super DIRTcar Series while dabbling with the Late Models here and there and at the beginning of the season down in Florida.
Early on during the 2004 season it was decided that the team would focus solely on Late Model Racing instead of the Modifieds weekly simply because there was more money in Late Model racing. McCreadie would hit the road and win Rookie of the Year with the World of Outlaw Late Model Series. 2005 Tim would lead the World of Outlaw Late Model Series in wins. 2006 started off really started well when “T-Mac” picked up the win in the Chili Bowl Midget Nationals, McCreadie would also go on to win the 2006 World of Outlaw Late Model Championship. Timmy would go off and try NASCAR in late 2007 and 2008 as part of a Richard 
Childress Racing development deal while running the dirt car part time but sponsorship never panned out and McCreadie returned to dirt racing.
After taking most of the 2009 season off with a broken vertebrae suffered at the Chili Bowl, McCreadie would return to the World of Outlaw Late Model tour in 2010 contending for a title. 2011 would be a season that Timmy would like to forget only winning one race on the WoOLM tour. 2012 and 2013 McCreadie would finish fourth and third in WoOLM Standings respectively. In fact every year since 2005 that “T-Mac” has run full time with the World of Outlaw Late Model’s he has only finished outside of the Top-5 in points once and that was a sixth in 2014.
2016 will be a slightly different change of pace for the 41 year old driver from Watertown, NY. McCreadie will compete on the Lucas Oil Late Model Series in search of a title instead of the World of Outlaw Late Model Series, other changes for 2016 is that McCreadie has made the switch to Longhorn Chassis, and has a new Crew Chief in Sam Epling replacing Tommy Grecco who had been on and off with McCreadie for a long time, he also plans on returning to his Big Block modified roots as much as he can wheeling the same car he has ran at the “Moody Mile” at the New York State Fairgrounds in Syracuse, NY the past few seasons.
Throughout all these years though one thing has stayed constant, the cars have been red and yellow No.39’s and they have been owned by Carl & Ann Myers with Sweeteners Plus on the side of them. Sort of sounds like another McCreadie you all might have heard of, Tim’s dad and Hall of Famer himself “Barefoot” Bob McCreadie. Bob’s cars were always the familiar orange, white and blue No. 9 with Kinney Drugs lettered on the side of them.
I really enjoy talking to Timmy whenever I can catch up with him, he has always treated me good and took the time to talk to me and not be a primadonna about it. Tim McCreadie has had an excellent career up to this point and has just about done it all, he’s 100% racer.
I can be reached via e-mail at racersguide@gmail.com or found on Twitter @PMacDonald51. Thanks for reading!
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