Paul Lee, President of Wharton Automotive Group, was inducted into the SEMA Motorsport’s Products & Media Council (MPMC) Hall of Fame during the 2025 PRI Show, honoring his exceptional leadership, entrepreneurial vision, and lasting impact on the automotive aftermarket industry.

Lee is the owner of McLeod Racing, Silver Sport Transmissions, FTI Performance, Competition Clutch, and Independence Driveline. Through strategic leadership and a long-term commitment to innovation and performance, he has successfully assembled these respected brands under the Wharton Automotive Group umbrella, creating one of the most influential performance-drivetrain organizations in the industry.

The SEMA MPMC Hall of Fame recognizes individuals who have made significant contributions to the growth and advancement of the automotive aftermarket. Lee’s career exemplifies this mission through his ability to preserve the heritage of iconic performance brands while driving modernization, expansion, and operational excellence.

Beyond his business leadership, Lee is also deeply involved in motorsports. He is an NHRA Nitro Funny Car team owner and driver, bringing real-world racing experience to his companies and reinforcing their commitment to performance at the highest level of competition.

“Paul Lee’s influence extends far beyond individual brands,” said Brian Bohlander, SEMA MPMC Chair. “His vision, leadership, and hands-on involvement in both manufacturing and motorsports have helped elevate the entire aftermarket industry.”

“I am truly honored to be inducted into the MPMC Hall of Fame,” said Lee. “This recognition reflects the hard work of the teams behind each of our brands, our partners throughout the industry, and a lifelong passion for performance and racing.”

The induction ceremony took place at the 2025 PRI Show, one of the industry’s premier annual gatherings of performance racing professionals, manufacturers, and innovators.

This story was originally published on December 29, 2025.

Two additional suspects have been arrested in connection with a 2023 burglary at a Macedon motorsports store that resulted in thousands of dollars in stolen dirt bikes, police said.

The Macedon Police Department announced that Mia Fernandez, a 26-year-old Florida woman, and Cordae Terry, a 28-year-old Rochester man, have been charged in the March 2023 “Smash-and-Grab” burglary at Filer’s PowerSports in Wayne County.

Police said the burglary involved suspects driving a vehicle into a garage door on the side of the building to gain entry. Once inside, investigators said the group stole multiple dirt bikes before leaving the scene and later returning to take additional bikes. Authorities have previously estimated the value of the stolen property at approximately $67,000.

Seven suspects were indicted in Wayne County Court in November 2025. Four of those individuals were taken into custody that month. An initial arrest tied to the burglary was made in March, when a Rochester man was charged with burglary and additional offenses related to the case. The seventh indicted suspect was determined to be deceased.

Fernandez, who had relocated to Bradenton, Florida, was taken into custody at her workplace with assistance from the Manatee County Sheriff’s Office, authorities said. She waived extradition and was returned to New York by Macedon police on Dec. 2. She was arraigned in Wayne County Court, released, and is scheduled to appear at a later date, according to police.

Terry was located while already in the custody of the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision. He was ordered to appear in Wayne County Court on Dec. 18, where he was arraigned before being returned to state custody. Police said he is also scheduled to appear at a later date.

The investigation remains ongoing.

The fact that a defendant has been charged with a crime is merely an accusation and the defendant is presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty.

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Two people have been hospitalized following a huge fire at a home in North Carolina, which is owned by NASCAR star Denny Hamlin.

On Sunday night, the Lucia-Riverbend Fire Department responded to the scene in Stanley, North Carolina, to extinguish a blaze that had broken out at a property owned by Hamlin’s real estate company, One Real Estate. The property, a four-bedroom, three-bathroom house, sits on 1.76 acres of land and was built in 2015.

Shocking scenes show the house being ravaged by the inferno as firefighters attempted to put out the fire, which also led to two people needing to be taken to the hospital, with the pair unnamed. It comes following a recent announcement involving Jeff Gordon’s family.

“We are starting with some breaking news tonight where you can see some live images of a massive house fire in Gaston County, a house that is reportedly linked to NASCAR driver Denny Hamlin,” said a broadcast from NBC affiliate WCNC.

“We are told this fire started around 6 p.m. Sunday night. … Fire officials also confirming to us that Hamlin’s parents do live in the home … Gaston County officials say two people were taken to the hospital, officials did not share their condition, only to say one person at least had smoke inhalation.”

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The two individuals were, according to Lucia-Riverbend Fire Department chief David Toomey, outside the property when emergency services arrived to tackle the blaze. It took around five hours for the fire to be put out, with the final fire truck leaving the scene at around midnight on Sunday.

Posting an update on Facebook, the Lucia-Riverbend Fire Department wrote: “Multiple departments throughout Gaston and Lincoln Counties responded tonight to the 1100 block Blacksnake Road.

“Fully involved single family residential home. We are thankful for the multiple agency response and ask that the public be in prayer for the affected family and our first responders in fire, GEMs and police. This remains an active scene.”

Toomey also confirmed that the damage to the house was a total loss and that 40 to 45 percent of its structure was burning by the time they arrived on the scene.

Speaking to the Athletic, Toomey said: “They had some really expensive cars in the garage and some racing memorabilia and stuff, so all that was saved.

“We were able to save all that and get it out so it wasn’t damaged.”

A former NASCAR star once received a presidential pardon that he described as “a tremendous Christmas present.”

Junior Johnson, a NASCAR Hall of Fame inductee and renowned driver and team owner, once had a pardon signed by United States President Ronald Reagan that vindicated him of a crime he committed 30 years prior.

As a kid growing up in the foothills of western North Carolina, Johnson was born into a family involved in the whiskey business and known as bootleggers, a term used for those who illegally produce and transport alcohol where it is prohibited by law.

Johnson regularly partook in bootlegging as a child and young adult but was never caught or convicted, unlike his father, who spent nearly two decades in prison for his role in operating the family whiskey business.

A 25-year-old who was fresh off his first season as a NASCAR driver at the time of his arrest, Johnson spent one year in an Ohio prison for having an illegal still, an at-home production device for the popular spirit moonshine.

Over the next three decades, Johnson built a Hall of Fame-worthy career as a NASCAR driver and team owner. His resume includes 50 race wins and 148 top 10 finishes as a driver and six drivers’ championships and 132 race victories as team owner of Junior Johnson & Associates.

Johnson’s most decorated drivers include Carl Yarbrough and Darrell Waltrip, each of whom won three NASCAR drivers’ championships in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

All the while, Johnson was ineligible to vote in United States elections due to his status as a criminal. 

Reagan’s decision to pardon the NASCAR legend, who was 20 years retired from his driving career at the time, restored that right. Johnson “could not have imagined anything better,” he wrote on Motorsports Unplugged in 2012.

The pardon was signed on December 26, 1985, and was “a tremendous Christmas present for me,” Johnson wrote in 2012.

“Let me tell you that the loss of basic civil rights impacts you in a way you can’t imagine. You come to think of yourself somewhat less than an American citizen. It’s not a good feeling,” Johnson wrote on Motorsports Unplugged.

Johnson’s criminal status also kept him out of the North Carolina Sports Hall of Fame for 10 years, as the man in charge of the induction committee, Dick Herbert, refused to count votes cast for Johnson. 

In 1981, votes for Johnson were counted, and the North Carolina native was inducted into his home state’s sports hall of fame.

In 2010, Johnson was inducted into the inaugural class in the NASCAR Hall of Fame and was named one of NASCAR’s 75 greatest drivers in 2023.

Johnson died on December 20, 2019, at the age of 88.

Before becoming an all-time great NASCAR driver and a team owner, Brad Keselowski began his career at the lowest level within his father’s racing organization.

Keselowski’s father, Bob, owned and operated the now-defunct K-Automotive Racing team during Brad’s childhood, and the former ARCA Series racer subjected his son to some less-than-desired manual labor duties around his operation.

In a 2015 interview for USA Today with motorsports journalist Jeff Gluck, Keselowski detailed the specifics of his day-to-day to-do list.

“They let me sweep floors, and I ended up mowing the grass a lot and mopping,” Keselowski said. “I think I made like $20 a day, which was a lot of money when I was 16. I had to work 8 to 5 every day in the summer.”

First as a star for Hendrick Motorsports and Penske Racing, and now the co-owner of his own racing team, RFK Racing, Keselowski, who recently broke his leg in a skiing accident, has been at the top of the totem pole ever since he burst onto the scene in 2009 when he won his first Cup Series race at Talladega. 

His foundation as a regular employee in his father’s business laid the groundwork for the success that would soon come for Keselowski, although it didn’t look at all like the path some sons of NASCAR stars, such as Keelan Harvick, are taking to prepare themselves for a career in professional racing.

During the interview with Gluck, Keselowski recalled a specific, objectively gross detail of the everyday grind he faced when working for his father’s team.

Responsible for taking out the trash every day, Keselowski noticed chewing tobacco, which most everyone in the race shop used, spat all alongside the trash can due to poor aim. 

He would be forced to touch the sides of the can covered in the substance, and because the trash was only picked up once a month, the dumpster would often overflow, and Keselowski would need to find a way to fit in every last spit-covered piece of trash.

That led him to ask his parents if the trash could be picked up more often, a plea they rejected due to the cost being too expensive.

Years later, as a racing team owner of his own, Keselowski discovered the cost of one more trash pickup per month to be an extra $18, to which the NASCAR star realized his parents were trying to teach him a lesson back in the day, rather than being cheap.

“Are you (freaking) kidding me? I jumped in trash and chewing tobacco and risked losing my foot for two whole summers for like $15?” Keselowski said. “I guess it was good for me. My parents must have known that.”

Kyle Larson stunned fans at Australia’s Perth Motorplex on Sunday when he made a surprise appearance in bold fashion.

The second annual High Limit International event commenced on December 28 and Larson, the defending NASCAR Cup Series champion and a co-founder of the league, opted against a quiet and modest arrival.

The Hendrick Motorsports star instead dramatically descended from the sky in a silver helicopter before the first race of the three-day series began to deliver a briefcase containing $110,000 Australian Dollars, a record prize for an Australian sprint car racing event.

The helicopter landed on the racetrack before Larson emerged wearing a red fire suit, holding a black briefcase containing the winning prize, set to go to the winner of Tuesday’s main event.

The NASCAR star, who won the inaugural High Limit International race one year ago, walked to the infield and delivered the case to Perth Motorplex General Manager Gavin Migro.

“I was actually nervous because of how windy it is,” Larson said as he walked to the infield. “That was probably the smoothest helicopter ride I’ve ever been on.”

The two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion also noted that he’s only accustomed to taking helicopters out of tracks, which he has famously done twice before on ‘Double Duty,’ when he raced in both the Indianapolis 500 IndyCar race and Coca-Cola 600 NASCAR race on the same day.

Then came the race, the first of two prelims leading up to Tuesday’s main event, which pitted big-name drivers from the United States against high profile Australian racers for a $15,000 prize.

Larson’s HMS teammate Corey Day took the checkered flag, fending off Australian Kaiden Manders by a half second. Day, who began the race in fourth position, was briefly overtaken by Manders after Larson caused the lone caution of the race when he suffered a flat right-rear tire on Lap 22.

The defending High Limit champion and co-owner finished 17th on the night, an underwhelming result after his grand entrance.

Larson’s cross-globe journey to participate in High Limit comes less than two months after he captured the 2025 NASCAR Cup Series championship.

The 33-year-old won the title without leading a single lap in the championship race at Phoenix, outlasting Denny Hamlin, Chase Briscoe, and William Byron, all of whom suffered tire issues, to finish third. 

The former Chip Ganassi Racing driver won three races during the 2025 season and finished atop the points standings thanks to six top-seven finishes in the playoffs.

Unlike in 2021, Larson’s first NASCAR Cup Series title, he did not win a single playoff race en route to claiming the championship.