Five-time national champion Josh Richards plans to end a nearly three-year absence from competition this weekend when he enters the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series-sanctioned Hillbilly Hundred at Lernerville Speedway in Sarver, Pa., his father, Mark, confirmed to DirtonDirt Monday afternoon.

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Richards, a 37-year-old native of Shinnston, W.Va., now living in western Ohio with his wife Andrea, will drive a car prepared by his father’s Rocket Chassis house car team in the two-day show. He tested the machine on June 16 at Sharon Speedway in Hartford, Ohio — his first laps in a Dirt Late Model since he made his last start in November 2022 — but did not immediately detail a date for his expected return.

Lernerville’s doubleheader, which includes a $10,000-to-win preliminary program on Friday and the $30,000-to-win Hillbilly Hundred on Saturday, will not only mark Richards’s first action since 2022’s World Finals at The Dirt Track at Charlotte in Concord, N.C. It also reunites him with his father’s iconic Rocket1 team, which he left following the 2016 season after winning four World of Outlaws Real American Beer Late Model Series championships over the first 13 seasons of his career.

It’s no surprise that Richards, who won the Lucas Oil Series title in 2017 driving for Best Performance Motorsports, would pick Lernerville for his comeback starts. He’s enjoyed plenty of success at the 4/10-mile oval, including a victory in the 2013 Firecracker 100. He also made his first-ever WoO start there as a 16-year-old on April 23, 2004.

Richards is a former Hillbilly Hundred winner, capturing the Carl Short-promoted race in 2019 at Tyler County Speedway in Middlebourne, W.Va., when he was driving for former NASCAR Cup Series regular Clint Bowyer’s team.