Hutter’ s racing career started with late-model racing at his native northern Ohio’ s short circle tracks, competing in regional series that opened doors with NASCAR teams in the south. James Finch of Phoenix Racing hired him to drive one of his ARCA entries on the big speedways before moving up to a limited NASCAR Busch Series schedule. Eventually, the driving opportunities dried up and Hutter was tired of moving around the southeast to work as a fabricator and over-thewall tire changer in between driving gigs, so he moved back to Chardon, Ohio to work with the expanding family business.

Since Hutter’ s father, Ron, was building massively successful engines for mountain-motor Pro Stock team owner Billy Dingman, the Hutters decided to build their first drag car upon Matt’ s return. They started with a bracket car and moved up to a faster bracket car before reaching that car’ s limitations. Then came the opportunity to buy their current car, a former Erica Enders wind tunnel test car built by Jerry Haas. A nitrous-fed small block was dropped between the frame rails, but the combination proved to be costly and ill-tempered, so Matt coaxed his father into switching to turbochargers for the 2016 season.

“ We tried to run nitrous up until this year, and every now and then there were little hits of success, but overall a lot of inconsistency,” Hutter admitted.“ We took a step back at the end of 2015 and looked at our options and decided that turbos would be the way to go. It was a little bit of

a learning curve, but about halfway through the season we hit on some stuff in testing.”

Whatever it was that Hutter found during testing worked well for the rest of the season.“ We won two races, set the ET mark for a door car in the series with a 3.91 and had to split one final. We were up at Empire Dragway and the program just ran late and they ended up splitting it. But we had lane choice going into the final there. So of course, being a racer, you’ d like to think that would have been your third win,” Hutter laughed.

Hutter is quick to credit the racer mentality

he and his father developed in the circle track racing world, a Talladega Nights-esque“ first or last” attitude that anything less than first place isn’ t good enough, for being a driving force behind the team’ s championship finish.

“ That’ s just the way we race,” said Hutter, who admits his desire to win caused his fair share of wrecks during his oval racing days.“ And not to say everybody isn’ t like this but we’ re just always looking for an edge, always looking for wherever we can nitpick or pick up the next little bit of power or get the car a little bit lighter or how we

PHOTOS: COLE ROKOSKY