Tanton Wooldridge: The Rookie Who Conquered the SLMS at 19
#01 Tanton Wooldridge - Photo Courtesy of Grizzly Photography
October 15th, 2025
Tanton Wooldridge was only supposed to learn in 2025. That was the plan: take a shot at a full season in the Super Late Model Series (SLMS), gain experience at less familiar tracks, bring the car home clean, and get better.
Instead, he became the youngest and only teenage driver to ever win a Maritime Late Model Touring Series championship.
"Yeah, I knew that," Wooldridge acknowledged when asked about being the youngest and only teenage champion. "I kind of learned about that a couple days before. It was pretty cool to hear that we had the chance to go and try to do that. But I just tried to keep that in the back of the mind and just go out and do the job in hand."
With focus on the race as his priority, and trying not to let distractions take hold: "It was just 400 left-hand turns on Saturday afternoon. That was all I had to do," Wooldridge said, recalling his mindset entering the SLMS finale at River Glade, Newbrunswick’s bull-ring Petty International Raceway.
And do that, he did. As if his achievement wasn’t already enough, records suggest he is almost certainly also the first driver to win a Maritime Late Model Touring Series title in his first full-time season (counting all regional touring series’ together). With limited prior Late Model experience, this additionally makes him the least experienced Late Model driver, with the least amount of races run, to achieve a championship of this nature.
“It was a good year. We didn't expect the year that we did, but we just kept going at it and seemed to have some good finishes," Wooldridge said. The SLMS season saw Wooldridge post finishes of: 4th, 3rd, 3rd, 2nd, 2nd, and 10th. That consistency carried him to the championship over Ryan Messer and Lonnie Sommerville. But it's not just the title that made this season extraordinary — it's how quickly he adapted and how cleanly he raced.
"It might have been my first full season, but the guys I had have been doing this for six or seven years now," he explained. "So it was really their experience that led it and they just told me what to do and I tried to listen. And it all kind of worked out in the end." Their preparation gave him confidence. "The crew spent a lot of time and also a lot of money on that race car before the season started to make it really good," he said. And as the results came in, momentum built. "Once we got one or two good races under our belt, the kind of vibe around the whole shop... it just built a whole lot of excitement."
The ripple effect was palpable: "It made it really easy to want to go and put in the extra hour or two hours or just an extra hour late at the shop to check every last nut and bolt."
Big Challenges at Every Track
“I would be pretty surprised.” Wooldridge said, when asked how he expects he would have felt to be told from the future, at the start of the season, that he would go on to win the SLMS championship. “I remember, it was the Mike Stevens race in 2024 that I kind of knew, you know, what the deal was going to be for this year. And all throughout the winter, the hype kept building until spring-time came around and just kind of looked at the list of who we were going to be racing against. And we kept looking at it and I was thinking: I gotta go up against Dylan Gosbee, and he's going to be in a brand new King Competition car. He's going to be really hard to beat on weekend, wherever we go. And, you know, you look down the list and Ryan Messer's there and he's got a brand new CRF chassis and he's going to be running that with all the bells and whistles and he's going to be hard to beat.”
Wooldridge recognized that not only was the SLMS full of strong contenders, but that there were some drivers especially adept at individual tracks. Having already acknowledged Messer, a driver who is especially strong at 660: “And then I gotta go to Speedway 660 and race against Greg Fahey, Lonnie Sommerville, Dave O'Blenis... It's just guys that have years upon years around that place."
The 2025 SLMS roster was stacked. Along with Gosbee, Messer, Sommerville, Fahey, and O’Blenis, Wooldridge had to face heavy hitters like Robbie MacEwen and Darren MacKinnon, especially at his home track of Oyster Bed. Then you had Braden Langille with very strong showings at Petty, and Ashton Tucker/Cory Hall making select appearances on top of it.
"No matter where we went, every place was going to have it’s ringers and top dogs. You know, for me, having relatively low experience, especially at Petty and 660, it was just kind of: go, hang on, and see what we could do, and then we really tried to capitalize as best as we could when we went to Oyster Bed."
No Wins, No Problem
While Wooldridge didn’t find victory lane, his consistency, strategy, and clean racing put him in championship form.
"Once all the excitement and adrenaline from winning the championship went away, there was a disappointment of having not gotten a win," he admitted. Though, after several weeks passed, his thoughts changed some: "But I think it's a blessing in disguise. It left me and the entire crew really hungry to basically just go right back to chipping away for next year."
He pointed to the long-term benefit of building momentum slowly. "If we win a race or two, it's easy to get complacent and think you've done what you need to do. Now we can go hunt for wins and be a little bit more aggressive."
And momentum is indeed a thing - there are endless anecdotes, including locally, of teams that do very well, but may have a drought that lacks in wins. But when they get a win, perhaps a major win, they just keep rolling in for a while. It should not be lost that, while a winless season for someone who is accustomed to earning wins on a yearly basis, for many years back, may be a bad feeling, it is the definition of normal for someone as young and inexperienced as Wooldridge, even for guys who went on to become some of the best drivers in Canada. And to already win a championship at this age, should not be discounted.
Finding the Line Between Clean and Aggressive; Respect Earned, not Taken
"There is an aspect to where I've got to race clean and take care of the guy that I'm racing against," he said. "But I've got to make sure the crew is even more happy. If that means making the guy that I'm racing against a little bit upset, then I'll worry about that next year. I'm there to win a race for my guys, not for another car."
At the same time, there is something to be said about his conservative, respectful approach to begin with. That balance of respect and competitiveness - when to push the line, and how much, and where to find that line, is a lesson he knows he’ll need to both find, and manage moving forward. "That's the next step. Just trying to find that balance."
The Pivotal Moment - Birth of a Championship: Race 3 at Speedway 660
It was 660 for race three. I think we got to start the race in sixth or something. We got up to maybe fifth early. On what must've been lap six, we could just feel something completely off on the race car. We had rebuilt the front shocks right before the race. We weren't quite happy with the bump package, and I thought for sure we had the shocks on backwards. I thought we had the left front on the right front, the right front on the left front.
Then all of a sudden the spotter just came on the radio and said, right front's down. We held on kind of rolling around the racetrack, just dragging, trying to hold on for a yellow. Eventually it drug the sway bar connection right off the race car. We went down pit road, when it was still under green. But before the leaders came around to pass, a yellow came out. So we were in the pits under green, and there was going to be no way we were going to hit the lucky dog; Basically we thought our night was over, and by extension, our championship hopes for the season were also over. We were two races completed in, and I think we were second in points, like 2 back on Dylan.
As soon as we heard yellow, the boys rushed to put a tire on it. They could see the sway bar just hanging on by a thread. So, I go back out, and I restarted at the tail. We go down to turn one and the sway bar just breaks right off it. We basically went in, and you can hear it's still hitting the racetrack. It was hectic for like the first three laps - Like it was dead sideways. We went back, watched the footage, you know, it was just a handful. And then just kept adapting to it and trying to figure out how are we going to drive this race car and get the best result that we could. And you know, we ran our best.
Then it was lap 60, and there's a red flag. I think Chris Duncan did a second roll over in two or three years. So you're just kind of sitting under yellow, and the boys come over the radio. They're like, you know, you got no sway bar, and your right front tire is what we ran at Oyster Bed. So we had a tire that had essentially 300 laps on it on the right front. Oh man. You know, it was kind of looking downhill; It was looking like it was just going to be a bad day and that we were probably going to go multiple laps down.
We hit a 30 lap green flag run, and I think we went from the tail, around P15, P16 from when guys pitted and we drove up to P4. Then we thought we had a piece, but the tires were going to fall off of it, with how cycled out they were compared to everybody else. We just kept digging all day, and then we were sitting there with 20 laps to go on a restart, sitting P4. We drove up to second and were reeling in Lonnie, and we thought we were going to win the freaking race. But ended up kind of falling off, and fell to third.
Once we got so many laps into a green flag run, the right front would just get so hot. And then it wouldn't grip up anymore compared to anybody else. The highs and lows of that race, and kind of thinking that the day was over… And then I think we ended up getting a P3 finish. So as soon as the race was over, the crew chief and spotter over the Radio came on, and we kind of all agreed: We said championship effort right there. So. Yeah. That was our pivotal moment right there.
2026: The Work Has Already Begun Again
No final decisions are made yet for 2026, but the team isn't sitting idle.
"We know that we're going to be back. We'll be back full-time somewhere. As far as what that's going to be, we don't know," he said. "We ran that final Pro Stock Tour race at Petty to try to prepare for next year. And by Monday night, the car was stripped and the trailer ready to go. So the work has already been prepped."
With the championship now crossed off the list, the 2026 goal is clear:
"Now we can go on for wins."
