In the leadup to the 2024 racing season, Jordon Mallett thought he was going to take a step back from the grind of the American Sprint Car Series National Tour.
With his first child on the way, he was content with scaling back. But then came the call from Brandon Anderson, who suffered a broken arm from a crash in May.
“He had gotten hurt in the car, was going to be out several weeks, and wanted to know if I had any interest in filling the seat,” said Mallett, who finished third in National Tour points last year. “Just had some conversations with him and with Kyle [Anderson] and got our heads together, thought about it, looked at it from my perspective of our team, we were running really well. We didn’t have any major scheduling conflicts with the proposed schedule they had laid out while he was going to be injured. It just mutually worked out.”
Anderson said he considered several different candidates for the fill-in position, but ultimately decided Mallett was the best option on the table.
“I looked at all my competitors, people that I had known in racing,” Anderson said. “He seemed to be the one that really carried themselves the best on the track and off the track.”
After receiving the green light from his sponsors, Mallett got to work beginning with the National Tour stop at Rush County Speedway on May 31. From that moment forward, Mallett has appeared to fit the Brandon Anderson Motorsports team like a glove, going a perfect six-for-six on top 10s, culminating in a second-place result at Tri-State Speedway to wrap up Speedweek. Nevertheless, Mallett believes there is still more left in the tank.
“We’ve had speed every night that I’ve been in the car,” Mallett said. “They’ve got really good equipment; they’ve got everything we need to be successful. Like I said when we started this deal, I felt like once we got in a routine, we were a consistent top-five contender every night.
“I wouldn’t be in the seat if I didn’t think we had the equipment and the brains capable of winning a race.”
For much of Mallett’s time behind the wheel of Anderson’s car, he seemed to have good speed in preliminary action, but struggled to maintain it in the Feature until Tri-State rolled around.
“Ever since we partnered up, we’ve just been really good and really consistent early on, and we’ve lacked something in the Feature,” Mallett said. “Just trying to get me comfortable in the car in the Feature to actually charge forward and have a good race car at the end of the show. Seems like we’ve had a good car at the beginning of the Feature and it just kind of went away, so Saturday night (at Tri-State) was a really good night that we could finally find that threshold that I’m a little bit happier with.”
The strong finishes also confirmed to Anderson that he made the right decision in choosing an experienced wheelman like Mallett to join his team.
“I see a little bit more maturity there, more patience,” Anderson said. “He’s able to articulate things a little bit better and really just keep his cool.”
Mallett’s search for his second Series win, and first with the Andersons, will continue this Saturday at Batesville Motor Speedway – about an hour away from his Greenbrier, AR home. Despite his close proximity to the track, Mallett doesn’t have nearly as many laps around Batesville as most drivers do at tracks in their home region.
“I think we’ve been there cumulatively maybe three times in my career,” Mallett said. “It is just a little over an hour from the house, but rarely do they run Sprint Cars very often.”
With Anderson expected to return to the cockpit later this summer, Mallett said he will return to the seat of his family-owned car on a part-time schedule. His No. 14 machine has already shown speed in 2024, as Mallett won a United Sprint Car Series event at Pine Ridge Speedway in Mississippi on May 27, his last race before moving to the Anderson team.
“As soon as Brandon is healed up, I’ll just go back to my seat in my car and continue on with our schedule like we had originally planned,” Mallett said.
Until then, Mallett is laser-focused on one goal: parking the No. 55B machine in Victory Lane.
“I don’t think I’ve got a car that can win,” Mallett said. “I know I’ve got a car that can win.”
Mallett and the rest of the ASCS National Tour competitors will continue their chase for the championship on Saturday night, June 22 at Batesville Motor Speedway in Locust Grove, AR. Tickets will be available at the gate on race day, while every lap will be streamed live on DIRTVision.
