As a NASCAR Cup Series crew chief for Team Penske, Jeremy Bullins doesn’t exactly have much spare time. His work schedule — at the shop in Mooresville, N.C., and away from it on race weekends — is a whirlwind virtually every day of the week during the racing season and beyond.

But a guy has to have some sort of respite from the grind, some sort of hobby that lets him clear his head.

For the 44-year-old Bullins, that stress reliever happens to be a Dirt Late Model.

Bullins, who captains the Penske Cup car driven by rookie Austin Cindric, owns both a Super and Crate Late Model. He doesn’t get to enter them in many events; his only action last year was November’s Blue-Gray 100 at Cherokee Speedway in Gaffney, S.C., where Devin Moran of Dresden, Ohio, piloted his Super, and currently his only definite plans for competition this season are at Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio, for April 12’s Castrol Flo Racing Night in America event and June 8-9’s Eldora Million with 410 sprint car star Tyler Courtney driving. But just having the machines in his garage gives him an outlet for his mechanical and dirt-track desires.

“I’m at the (Penske) shop every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday till at least 5 (o’clock), sometimes later,” Bullins said, noting that a modern-day NASCAR crew chief’s day-to-day duties don’t involve a great deal of hands-on work with the race cars. “I feel like all I do is sit in a management meeting or some other setup meeting or wind tunnel meeting. It’s a lot more of a management role at this level. That’s one of the reasons I love having a car at home. I can come home and tinker with it and change stuff around or build a quarterpanel or whatever.”

While he admits his work schedule is “way too busy” to put in the hours he’d like on his Late Model, he manages to find the time to turn some wrenches on it.

“It’s a lot of just working at night, or if I get a Thursday off I’ll work all day on it,” Bullins said. “That’s why I don’t really race a whole lot because it takes some time with my schedule to get everything turned back around, cleaned up and ready to go again. It’s just too hard for me to do a whole lot, but it’s fun for me to get something together and try to hit a few races a year. It’s been fun to get back into it, especially at the Super level.

“I’ve always loved Dirt Late Models,” he continued. “You hear people talk about, ‘Oh, I love sprint cars.’ I love, love, love Dirt Late Models. Having one is just sort of an opportunity for me to stay current with what’s going on. They’re such cool race cars and there’s so many things you can do, and the rules are not totally locked down (as much as in NASCAR) so you can kind of have some fun with it. It’s just a great way for me to think outside the box vs. what we do every day.”

Bullins has worked in NASCAR since 1999 following his graduation from North Carolina State University with a degree in mechanical engineering and reached the pinnacle of the sport last month when he captured the Daytona 500 with the 23-year-old Cindric, but his heart will always be in the Dirt Late Model division. It’s the class he grew up watching, the one that began his infatuation with motorsports.

A native of Walnut Cove, N.C., Bullins was introduced to Dirt Late Model racing at the nearby 311 Motor Speedway in Pine Hall, N.C., by his father, who worked on a car driven by Gary Mabe of Danbury, N.C. At a young age Bullins became a crew member for Mabe as well.

Bullins’s background in Dirt Late Models never extended far beyond 311’s weekly action, however. There were no extended road trips to tracks in other regions of the country.

“Growing up we always ran 311 Speedway,” Bullins said. “We would occasionally go to Friendship (N.C.) or somewhere else, but probably the farthest traveling we ever did was, my senior year of high school, we went to Dixie (Speedway in Woodstock, Ga.) for the Hav-A-Tampa Shootout.”

“I wish that I’d gotten the opportunity to travel with a Late Model,” he added. “So I’ve always joked to (wife Tina) that the first year I’m not Cup crew-chiefing I’m taking a leave and going on the Hell Tour (DIRTcar Summer Nationals) with somebody because I think that would be awesome” to see so many tracks.

VIDEO: Sprint Car ace Tyler Courtney recently tested Bullins' Late Model at Cherokee Speedway. 

Bullins’ career goals took him away from dirt. He pursued an engineering degree at N.C. State with an eye on a job in NASCAR (“I would never want to be an engineer outside of racing,” he said), and in October 1999 he landed his first position in the major leagues with Wood Brothers Racing and driver Elliott Sadler. He went on to work for ST Motorsports in the Xfinity Series and Robert Yates Racing before joining Richard Childress Racing in 2005 as an engineer for drivers Kevin Harvick and Clint Bowyer.

Bullins became a crew chief for the first time in 2012 when he was hired to head Penske Racing’s Xfinity Series and worked with Brad Keselowski, Parker Kligerman, Jacques Villeneuve, Ryan Blaney, Joey Logano and A.J. Allmendinger over the ensuing three seasons. He returned to the Cup Series in 2015 as crew for Blaney and the part-time Wood Brothers team, which had an alliance with Penske Racing. In 2020 Bullins was reassigned to Penske’s No. 2 team with Keselowski and won four races, including the Coca-Cola 600, and finished second in the Chase. After winning once and finishing sixth in the 2021 standings with Keselowski, the Michigan driver left Penske and Cindric was promoted from the Xfinity Series to race the No. 2 car under Bullins’s tutelage this season.

Bursting out of the ’22 starting gate as a Daytona 500 winner with Cindric “was a pretty cool day,” Bullins said with a smile. The monumental victory also came after Bullins had spent the previous evening at nearby Volusia Speedway Park in Barberville, Fla., visiting with Moran and scraping mud off the standout racer’s Tye Twarog-owned Late Model during the World of Outlaws Case Late Model Series program that closed the DIRTcar Nationals.

Bullins stuck it out to the end of Volusia’s Saturday-night show, too. He considered leaving early with his big Daytona 500 day looming, but he decided to forego a little extra shuteye to watch the WoO feature that ended shortly before 11:30 p.m.

“Well, it’s one of those things,” Bullins said. “I don’t get to see a ton of features through the year, and I talk to those guys (Moran and his brother Wylie) all the time so I wanted to hang out because I hadn’t really gotten to go racing with them at all through Speedweeks. So I was like, ‘I’m staying.’

“It’s funny, because we sat down in the stands to watch the feature and (Shane) Clanton (who set fast time but didn’t qualify for the feature) sat down next to me and he said, ‘What are you doing here still?’ I said, ‘Ah, I should probably be in bed,’ and he was like, ‘Yeah, you probably should.’ I told him, ‘I’ll be all right.’ ”

Perhaps seeing some Dirt Late Model racing gave Bullins an extra shot of adrenaline for the following day’s Daytona 500. That’s how much the division means to him, after all.

The financial security that comes with being a high-level NASCAR Cup Series crew chief is what brought him back to the Late Model world as a participant. In 2016 he purchased a Crate Late Model and had Chris Ferguson of Mount Holly, N.C., run a dozen-or-so events in it over the ’16 and ’17 seasons. He sold his car after a quiet ’18 campaign, but he purchased another Crate machine in 2021 and entered a handful of events with Keselowski behind the wheel before conversations with the Moran brothers prompted him to step up and obtain a brand-new Longhorn Chassis and Durham Ford engine (“Gotta keep the Ford in there,” he said, noting that Team Penske runs Fords) that Devin debuted in November at Cherokee.

Bullins hopes to reconnect with Moran again to run some late-season events this year (the Blue-Gray 100, the Peach State Classic at Georgia’s Senoia Raceway and even December’s Gateway Dirt Nationals at The Dome at America’s Center in St. Louis, Mo., are all possibilities), but the return of the Eldora Million whet his appetite to try a crown jewel show outside his home region. He just needed to find a driver since Moran is committed to running Twarog’s car in the June race that pays $1,002,022 to win.

“When they announced the Million, I had finally gotten my Super car together and I was like, ‘Man, that would be fun to go to,’” Bullins said. “But everybody with a Late Model is obviously gonna go. Why wouldn’t they? So we were like, ‘We’re gonna have to think outside the box here … man, we need a sprint car guy who’s good at Eldora.’ And Tyler’s name was the first name that came up.

“But I was like, I don’t know. I don’t know him. I’ve never talked to him. I don’t even know how to get up with him. So I really kind of put it to bed for a little while, didn’t think about it anymore.”

Earlier this year, though, Bullins was connected to Courtney, a former USAC national sprint car and midget champion who last year captured the All-Star Circuit of Champions title in his first full year of winged sprint car action, by an unlikely figure: Dirt Late Model star Brandon Overton of Evans, Ga., who met Courtney during last year’s double Dreams at Eldora.

“I had texted Brandon one day and was like, ‘Hey, help me out with some ideas here. I’d like to send my car to Eldora and a couple places. You got any ideas?’ ” Bullins said. “He said, ‘Can I call you?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, sure,’ so he calls and he says, ‘What about Sunshine (Courtney)? He’s wanting to find a car.’ So I said, ‘Absolutely. Send me his number, because that’s who we were already talking about.’

“So I called (Courtney) and we started talking about what I had for a car and what he wanted to do and what I wanted to do, and it seems like it’s all gonna work out OK.”

VIDEO: Tyler Courtney spoke to FloRacing about his interest in racing Late Models at December's PRI Trade Show. 

Courtney, 27, of Indianapolis, Ind., recently tested Bullins’s Late Model — the same car Moran drove last year — at Cherokee. Bullins wasn’t there, but everything he heard about the practice session — from Courtney and Ferguson, who coached Courtney at the track — indicated that he open-wheel star adapted to the full-body vehicle.

“They told me it went real well,” Bullins said. “I had to work; we were actually gone to Daytona to put our (Penske) car in Daytona USA from the 500. He did really well, seemed like he had a good time and got up to speed real quick.

“I think that the sky’s the limit for him personally (driving the Late Model at Eldora),” Bullins added, noting that Courtney has won at the famed half-mile oval in every form of car he’s driven there. “I think he’s done such a good job at Eldora, and he’s fast whatever he gets in, I’m sure he can be competitive. I also know and I’m realistic about how hard it is just to make the races with as many cars that will be there, so I guess we just go and do the best we can and try to be as prepared as we can and see how it shakes out.”

The NASCAR Cup Series schedule is more grueling this season with teams having to spend additional time at the track — Covid-19 prompted NASCAR to condense weekend schedules to largely one-day affairs for the last two seasons — but Bullins is hopeful that he’ll be able to attend his planned events with Courtney at Eldora. He said getting to the Tuesday-night Castrol FloRacing Night in America show in April “is gonna be tough” for him, but he’s clearing his slate to be at the Million, which will be contested on a Wednesday and Thursday.

“I have told my boss I’m going,” Bullins said. “We’ll see if that actually works out. I just put the word out there that I’m taking those days. The Million is the week of Sonoma (Cup race in California), which is really good because our truck will have to be gone by Tuesday night so it shouldn’t be a problem. We should be in good shape there.”

Bullins has never seen a Dirt Late Model event in person at Eldora — at least one with the division’s regular drivers.

“I did go one year to the Prelude (to the Dream) with Harvick one year when I worked at RCR,” he said, recalling the Eldora event in which Cup and other national drivers competed in Dirt Late Models. “I’ve been to a couple of the truck races there, but I’ve never been to a Late Model race so I’m excited.”

Bullins would love to have Courtney excel in his car at Eldora so he’ll have something to talk about in the garage area with his dirt-loving NASCAR friends.

“There’s a ton of guys (on NASCAR teams) who either have some sort of dirt background or are fans and keep up with it,” Bullins said. “I think other forms of racing are a big topic of discussion among the racers in the garage. ‘Did you see the World of Outlaws race last night? Did you see the Lucas race last night?’ Guys talk about that stuff a lot.”

One way or another, they’ll be discussing Bullins in April or June.