For 23-year-old Dawson Cram, the final months of the 2024 NASCAR Xfinity Series campaign bring a fresh opportunity, as the young driver joins forces with second-tier series mainstay DGM Racing for five of the season’s final seven events.
Cram will serve as the anchor driver of the No. 92 Chevrolet during the Xfinity Series post-season, with his debut race being the playoff opener at Kansas on September 28. Additional outings with DGM will follow at the Charlotte ROVAL, Las Vegas, Martinsville, and the season-finale at Phoenix.
As a trading education platform dedicated to empowering individuals with knowledge and skills to navigate financial markets confidently, Cram’s primary sponsor in these five races, Trade With the Pros (TWP), represents integration into a new sector in NASCAR sponsorship.
The company currently offers in-person workshops featuring highly-qualified professionals in six different cities across the United States: Atlanta (Georgia), Kansas City (Kansas), Dallas (Texas), Charlotte (North Carolina), Washington (D.C.), and Phoenix (Arizona).
That partnership is fuel in the connection between Cram and the family-owned team, which has been active in the Xfinity Series since 2014 with Mario Gosselin at the helm. It’s that sense of family, experienced throughout Cram’s own career with his father Kevin, that ultimately drew the Mooresville, North Carolina native to DGM Racing for this endeavor.
Despite Kansas serving as the debut pairing for driver and team, there will be a level of familiarity within the partnership, thanks to crew chief Bryan Berry.
“I’ve worked with him in the past,” Cram said about Berry. “He was my boss at JD [Motorsports] for a little bit when I was a mechanic there, and then he did some one-off races for me in the Truck Series, and we found success at two of the tracks we’re going to. It’s exciting stuff, I look at Bryan Berry as extended family and I’m excited to be part of their family organization.”
Originally scheduled to run full-time for JD Motorsports in 2024, a mid-season bankruptcy filing and subsequent closure left Cram scrambling, managing to scrounge up three runs with Mike Harmon Racing at Pocono, Darlington, and Atlanta.
That returned Cram, a rather inexperienced driver, to an untenable position of needing to qualify for each event on speed. With the No. 92 in a solid owner points spot, that should be a weight off of the driver’s shoulders.
“It’ll be a different plan of attack knowing that we’re locked into the race,” said Cram. “We usually showed up with those cars with [more of] a qualifying setup and then we’d get in the race and we would have to start to backtrack. So, it’ll be a good change of pace to show up knowing that when I go out and practice I’m not doing a mock run, I’ll be doing a race run, and just continue to work on my race craft and learn every chance I get.”
Having run for a myriad of smaller race teams like Mike Harmon Racing, JD Motorsports, and SS-GreenLight Racing, this opportunity with a mid-pack organization is undoubtedly the best of Cram’s Xfinity Series career.
“They have a lot of great resources and I’m just excited to be in something competitive and hopefully show some more of my capabilities like I have been able to do in the past.”
Needless to say, that has the 23-year-old pretty excited.
“I’m looking forward to all of them, I think I can succeed at all of them,” Cram said when asked about his schedule. “I always have a soft spot for Martinsville, it’s one of my best racetracks, it just always has been — three of my best racetracks in anything have been Vegas, Martinsville, and Phoenix, so I’m excited for those.”
According to Cram, the biggest challenge in his time with DGM Racing this season is likely to be Charlotte’s ROVAL, considering the driver hasn’t competed in an Xfinity Series road course event. However, looking for ideas to combat that inexperience, Cram doesn’t need to look very far, with DGM Racing teammates Josh Bilicki and Ross Chastain both having extensive road racing resumes in NASCAR.
“I’ll definitely try to reach out to them. I’ve talked with Ross [Chastain] a little bit about this deal in passing and he’s excited for me to get this opportunity. I’m sure that if I reach out and ask him for a lending hand, he won’t hesitate to help me a little bit.”
It’s not lost on Cram just how many successful road racers are at his fingertips by being part of the DGM Racing network, namedropping the likes of Preston Pardus and Alex Labbe, all of which he hopes to talk to and learn from before his first road course start in October.
There is no real underlying goal for Cram in his five-race excursion with DGM Racing, other than being able to put his true talent on display for the hundreds of thousands of people watching from their homes, and more importantly, prospective team owners that may be watching on from the racetrack.
Cram will get behind the wheel of the No. 92 Chevrolet for the first time at Kansas Speedway later this month, for the NASCAR Xfinity Series playoff-opener, the Kansas Lottery 300 at the 1.5-mile speedway in Kansas City, Kansas.
