Hinckley native Matt Tifft sells team, gets back into racing

Things have been moving at full throttle for Matt Tifft. For the Hinckley Township native, that has brought a lot of change in and around the racetrack. In recent weeks, Tifft got back to competing as a driver for the first time since having a seizure before a NASCAR race at Martinsville Speedway in 2019. He and partners B.J. McLeod and Joe Falk also made the decision to sell Live Fast Motorsports' NASCAR charter to Spire Motorsports. Tifft noted that the changes in NASCAR's landscape since they founded the team in 2020 with the NextGen racecar and the barriers to operating a race team from a financial perspective made this the right move for the organization. "It got to the point where we knew we had to keep putting more and more capital in, and NASCAR had outgrown us by a little bit," he said. "We got to the point where we were about the smallest fish in here and made a smart decision for the charter of our team and went down the road to cash out on this." Tifft said he was unable to disclose how much Live Fast's charter was sold for due to legal reasons, but multiple media reports have the sale listed at a NASCAR-record $40 million. The move gives Spire Motorsports, owned by Jeff Dickerson and T.J. Puchyr, a third charter on the NASCAR Cup Series. There are 36 charters in NASCAR that guarantee a team a spot in every race and 40 cars compete in each race. Tifft said Live Fast is looking to continue racing on a part-time basis in one of the four open slots when possible. "When we bought the team in 2020 the goal was to be successful in competition, performance and development and business side," he said. "We wanted to make sure we were running successful business and making a livelihood, somehow. "NASCAR has really changed a lot and I think in a lot of ways for the better, but back in 2021 the barrier to enter as a race team was quite a bit lower." As for the return to the track as a competitor, which Tifft did just over a month ago at Marshfield and Golden Sands Raceways in Wisconsin, it gave the 27-year-old an opportunity to re-open a chapter that had been taken from him. After working with his team of doctors, Tifft said he was feeling really good this year and confident he could return to the driver's seat. "It's hard to take the driving piece out of racing, especially when you've been a driver," he said. "After everything transpired the way it did, I really didn't think I'd get another chance to get in a racecar. "I got to this year and I was feeling pretty good and working with my doctors. This might be something I can try to do." Prior to competing in Wisconsin, Tifft ran some test runs in North Carolina, where Live Fast Motorsports is headquartered, and the racing bug came back as soon as he stepped on the accelerator. "With everything that happened in 2019, I didn't get to go out on my terms," he said. "I didn't know if I'd ever get to drive a car again. Feeling that again felt like I had climbed a mountain. There's not that many things in life for me that make you feel that range of emotions for how long the race lasts." "Four years of rust, I hit the brakes in Turn 1 and knocked it all off." In Tifft's first race of the weekend at Marshfield, he finished fifth. He then added a fourth and a seventh later that weekend at Golden Sands running Super late model cars that he said are comparable to those you see racing on television. Despite his success Tifft did note that after four years away, the timing of everything took awhile to return. He compared returning to the track after four years to Browns quarterback Deshaun Watson needing to regain his rhythm and adjust to the speed of the game after nearly two years away from football. "You remember the big things and how to do the big things, but you forget a lot of the little things," he said. "A lot of things were moving around me fairly quickly. I felt comfortable, but some things were just a few tenths of a second off from where they used to be." Tifft said selling the charter at Live Fast Motorsports helps him free up time to race, but he is still mapping out his next steps. He is open to racing in sportscars, on oval tracks and would even like to explore returning to his roots in Northeast Ohio to do some dirt track races. While an eventual return to NASCAR is possible, that is not where his focus is at the moment. Right now just returning to the racetrack and receiving the outpouring of support he has from those back home and across the country is enough. "One of the big fears I had was just announcing my return to racing, because I didn't know how people would perceive it," Tifft said. "From friends, family, racing colleagues that I had when I was 10 years old and NASCAR stars, all the people that reached out were so happy I was back. "People stopped and hugged me at the track and it was really special." Contact John Urchek at jurchek@medina-gazette.com.