The most staggering part of Gary Stuhler’s racing career that’s now spanned a remarkable half-century might not lie in anything he’s accomplished.

And that’s a long list: Nearly 400 career Super Late Model wins (more than two-dozen of them 100-lappers), track championships in four different decades, six World 100 feature starts (with a podium in 1989) and victories with the World of Outlaws Real American Beer Late Model Series and during Georgia-Florida Speedweeks.

Racing into his 70s is a feat itself as the National Dirt Late Model Hall of Famer turned the big 7-0 on April 13. 

But the most staggering part of Stuhler’s long-lasting racing career might be the fact he never raced Path Valley Speedway Park until Tuesday’s Selinsgrove Ford Appalachian Mountain Speedweek event. That’s right, somehow, someway, it took the Greencastle, Pa., legend until his 50th anniversary season to race at the quarter-mile oval that’s only 45 minutes from home and has been open since 1986.

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“I’ve pretty much ran every place,” said Stuhler, who recalls he hasn’t raced on a quarter-mile since the defunct Dorsey Speedway in Elkridge, Md., that was “kind of like” Path Valley in terms of its bowl-like layout.

And the old Dorsey Speedway, swallowed up by Baltimore’s sprawling suburbs as the current site of a business park, shuttered in 1985. Based off that math, it had been roughly 40 years since Stuhler has pitted his half-mile-specialized talents on a quarter-mile.

Four decades later, Stuhler turned in one of the most impressive drives on Tuesday evening by going 20th-to-eighth in a blemish-free 35-lap feature. Like he’s long done, Stuhler finished the night with his race machine virtually squeaky clean. No wrinkled nor even scuffed-up sheet metal. No door dings or indication he made contact with anyone during the feature.

Racing smooth and clean is what Stuhler’s taken the most pride in throughout his career. It’s also what’s kept him away from Path Valley for so long.

Gary Stuhler on his way to an eighth-place finish from 20th on Tuesday at Path Valley Speedway Park. (wrtspeedwerx.com)

“I just don’t like tearing my stuff up. And there’s always cars tore up here, it seems like,” Stuhler said. “Not everybody, but cars do get tore up.”

To be fair, Path Valley is one of the few bullrings in Pennsylvania that hosts Super Late Model events, but the quarter-mile didn’t start hosting sporadic Super Late Model races until 2016. Since then, only nine open-competition events have been completed at the track, including Tuesday’s

The track does host weekly steel-block Late Models but is more known for their open-wheel racing. Later this year, the High Limit sprint car series visits the quarter-mile, and for the first time since 2018, it’s back on the Pennsylvania Sprint Speedweek schedule.

Stuhler was an avid attendee of the PA Sprint Speedweek race at the quarter-mile from 2014-18. He’s attended many other races over the years at Path Valley, too, like last year’s Appalachian Mountain Speedweek race at the track where he showed up as a fan simply because a midweek race was hard to prepare for with his small team.

“Every year, I’ve been wanting to race here. It’s just something’s gone haywire, or a bad motor, motor issues, didn’t have a motor,” Stuhler said. “I just said this year, if everything is going good, I’d have a car ready and that we’ll try. Like I said, I can’t stand tearing my s— up. … A lot of times, it ain’t even your doing.”

Stuhler recalls last year when D.J. Myers’s race car ended up on top of Jason Covert’s, and Shaun Jones’s flip during a race last year and Dillan Stake’s tumble at the quarter-mile this year.

“It can be bad,” said Stuhler, who kept himself out of harm’s way Tuesday at the tricky track, clawing his way forward after selecting the worst pill draw of the night before qualifying.

“I just got behind at the beginning of the night being the last car to qualify, the racetrack slowed up,” Stuhler said. “It is what it is. We didn’t have anything to go off of notebook-wise, we just started changing stuff.”

Stuhler can also say he’s now won a race at Path Valley — a consolation race, that is. He qualified 23rd of 28 drivers, which buried him in his heat race where he started seventh and finished sixth, one spot out of a transfer.

It put him on the pole of the 10-lap B-main, though, and the extra laps around the quarter-mile gave Stuhler a little more time to figure out what his Longhorn Chassis needed.

“We started tightening our car,” said Stuhler, who added “it seemed like we made the car better every time we went out. I was happy. Survived. Didn’t get tore up. Yeah, I’m happy for the first time being here.”

Stuhler, who sits 11th in miniseries points after finishes of eighth and 11th (Saturday at Port Royal Speedway), says he’s not going to Thursday’s Speedweek event at Selinsgrove (Pa.) Speedway.

He might be back in action Friday at Bedford (Pa.) Speedway and Saturday at Lincoln Speedway in Abbottstown, Pa. Stuhler carefully picks and chooses his races nowadays. This year, car owner Mark Langenfelder of Baltimore, Md., has provided Stuhler with a brand-new Longhorn and wide-bore Vic Hill Racing Engine, a combo that has the 70-year-old feeling “like I can keep up” with the Northeast’s best.

In April’s Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series event at Port Royal, he finished 12th, one spot behind national touring regular Brandon Overton in a race “I really think we could’ve had a top-10.”

“(Mason) Zeigler got into me on one restart, I lost like two or three spots. I had to get them back. If that wouldn’t have happened, I think we could have gotten a top-10,” Stuhler said. “I was happy. I was happy just to make both shows.

“My stuff is good,” continued Stuhler, who added “them guys nowadays race a lot more, they test. I just don’t have enough … I just, like tonight, I have no clue what I need in my race car.”

At age 70, Stuhler admits that Father Time is catching up with him. When asked if he ever thought he’d raced into his 70s when he started racing in 1975, Stuhler chuckled and said “no, no,” while shaking his head.

“A lot of times, when I’m getting in and out, I think I’m crazy,” Stuhler said. “But it’s all I’ve ever done. I get a little worn out, but I still feel like I can keep up. When I quit, I don’t know what I’m going to do. … I’m a full-time racer now.”

Indeed, Stuhler has been a full-time racer going on three full seasons now ever since he retired as a school bus mechanic for Washington County Public Schools, the county where Stuhler’s picked up 138 of his 355 career wins in the Northeast, at Hagerstown (Md.) Speedway.

Gary Stuhler after his 100th feature win at Hagerstown (Md.) Speedway in 2002. (wrtspeedwerx.com)

He’s also been a full-time race fan where he makes annual trips to the World Finals at The Dirt Track at Charlotte each November and is a regular attendee of the World 100 at Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio.

Partially why Stuhler is carefully picking his choosing and his races this year is that he wants to get back to a particular crown jewel in which he was a podium finisher many moons ago.

“I’d like to go back to the World 100 at the end of the year,” Stuhler said. “Haven’t been there in forever. It’s not a positive, but I’d like to.”

The last of Stuhler’s half-dozen World 100 starts came in 1996 when he finished 11th. Stuhler hasn’t won a feature since 2021, and before that he had gone four years between victories, so in total, he’s only tallied one feature victory over the last eight years.

But despite his drop-off in win totals, Stuhler still feels like he can find his way back into victory lane this year if the circumstances fall his way.

“I’m happy with my car and motor program,” Stuhler said. “It’s just, we don’t have no races to run. Port Royal is like our main deal, and they’ve already lost a few to rain this year. Two or three have been rained out. Yeah, I don’t know. We just need some races. That’s the problem with us. We haven’t raced enough to get a handle on what we need to do.”

If all goes well, count Stuhler in for the World 100 in September. There’s also potential for him to race the World Finals, but that might be stretching it for he and his small team.

“We’ll see how the year goes. But it’s a lot of money spent down there,” Stuhler said. “I know last year everybody down there was talking about how many tires they went through. Hell, (Jonathan) Davenport told me he went through 20-some tires in three days. That’s a lot of freaking money. And then the pay is OK to win, but not so much back through the field.”

Stuhler, of course, would be making the trip to Eldora for the World 100 to celebrate his 50th year in racing. He wants to run Eldora one more time before he hangs it up, which he’s expressed numerous times might not be very soon. In fact, he quipped Tuesday night that he thinks about how many more years left he might have in his life — not just racing — than he does merely racing.

“I think about that everyday when I wake up,” Stuhler said through a laugh. “Maybe I’ll be like Red Farmer, race ‘til I’m 90.”

Stuhler thinks he has the race car and powerplant to give himself a chance at making the World 100 field. Would he be a long shot? Sure. But he at least knows he has the goods to make it happen. One-hundred laps, though, at Eldora would be daunting for his age.

“I’d have to get oxygen or something,” Stuhler said through another laugh.

Stuhler’s extremely grateful for his car owner Langenfelder, who he met through a mutual friend he went to high school with. Stuhler first heard of Langenfelder, who owns Langenfelder Mechanical Contractors of Baltimore, Md., through an advertisement he saw of his on Hunt the Front’s YouTube channel years ago.

Stuhler never thought anything of it other than he was a business owner who supported racing in the Northeast. Then Stuhler realized Langenfelder sponsors Tyler Erb before then realizing that Langenfelder had sponsored sprint car racer Robbie Kendall, the grandson of Bob Hyne, who he went to high school with.

Kendall sold his family sprint car team a few years ago, right around the time Stuhler’s car owner, Charles Phillips, passed away in September 2023. Stuhler didn’t know what he’d do at the time in terms of racing upon Phillips’s passing, so the Kendall family suggested he reach out to Langenfelder.

“Bob said, ‘You ought to call him and see if he’ll help you.’ So I called him and it started out as a small talk,” Stuhler said. “When my car owner passed away, Mark asked, ‘What’s going to happen with all your stuff?’

“Charlie’s wife decided to sell everything. Mark wanted to get a price, and he bought the trailer and the Rocket car. He said he wanted to get a new car, and he was leaning toward the Longhorn. We sold the Rocket and he bought that, bought a truck over the winter. We have pretty much everything we need.”

Stuhler says his relationship with Langenfelder is rock solid and so strong that “he calls mostly every other day, if not everyday.”

“He went to Eldora last week because he sponsors Tyler Erb,” Stuhler said. “He went out there to spend the week with Tyler.”

Langenfelder, like virtually every race fan in the Northeast, didn’t need an introduction from Stuhler, who upon the very first conversation came to find out that the Maryland-based business owner and eventual car owner of his had been a huge fan all along.

“That’s what helped when I called and talked to him. As soon as he answered the phone, he said, ‘I’ve been a big fan of yours for years,’” Stuhler said. “And it kind of like broke the ice. He used to run Dorsey. He drove himself. He used to run back in the 70s, like Lincoln. He knew about me so I didn’t have to sell myself too much.”