Austin Theriault has been on the fast track since he got behind the wheel of a Late Model V-8 for a car race at Spud Speedway in Caribou at the age of 15.

“He ran a good, clean race,” fellow driver Ricky Morse told the Bangor Daily News in 2010. “I don’t think his car had a scratch on it.”

Now 30 and a first-term state representative, the former NASCAR driver is again putting pedal to the metal in a bid to unseat three-term U.S. Rep. Jared Golden, a Lewiston Democrat.

Theriault, who won a primary in June to become the Republican nominee, quit the racing circuit in 2017 but stayed close to the business. He runs a successful firm that helps train drivers.

Theriault hails from what he describes as “a multigenerational logging and farming family with deep roots in Aroostook County’s St. John Valley.”

At Fort Kent Community High School, “Theriault was one of the top students in his class” and a good wrestler as well, the Portland Press Herald reported in 2014. It said that “his analytical mind enjoys breaking down history and politics.”

Austin Theriault celebrates in Victory Lane after winning an ARCA auto race at Daytona International Speedway in February 2017. Now the former race car driver is angling to pick up the checkered flag in his race to represent Maine’s 2nd Congressional District.  Associated Press file

He moved to North Carolina right after graduation, he later told a reporter, because achieving his dream of racing at NASCAR’s highest level required moving to the sports’ hub.

“At the end of the day, if you want to be involved in racing, whether you want to drive or work on a pit crew, you’ve got to come down here to be close to the action,” Theriault told the Bangor newspaper in 2013.

The following year, Theriault’s race car wound up as a political football after former Gov. Paul LePage gave the young driver $50,000 of state cash to sponsor the vehicle with the slogan “Maine is open for business” in the first public-private sponsorship of a race car. Democrats at the time called it an election-year ploy by the governor.

During his decadelong career, Theriault won races at the Oxford Plains Speedway and New Hampshire Motor Speedway but never met with the success he hoped for nationally.

His worst day on the racetrack occurred during a NASCAR Camping World Truck Series race at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway in 2015.

When a teammate lost control of his truck and slid along the track after just 14 laps, it smacked into Theriault’s vehicle, tossing it headfirst into a concrete wall along a straightaway. The 21-year-old Mainer emerged with a compression fracture of his lower back, news reports said.

But Theriault was well enough to fly home in a brace the next day. He recovered enough to race competitively during one more season in 2017. He gave up on driving competitively in 2019 after disappointing results on the track.

“It’s a tough business,” he said at the time.

Starting so young as a driver, Theriault didn’t begin attending college until he started taking classes part time at the University of Maine at Presque Isle a couple of years ago.

His lack of education didn’t hurt him in the industry that surrounds NASCAR in North Carolina.

Nor did it keep him from winning his first foray into politics when he returned to Maine and won a state House seat in 2022.

Theriault is not married and doesn’t have any children.

Theriault has assets worth at least $700,000, according to his financial disclosure form filed with the U.S. House, which includes retirement accounts worth at least $265,000 and a townhouse in Charlotte, North Carolina, worth $380,000.

He reported in 2023 that he has three salaried positions that each paid between $16,000 and $22,000 annually: his state House job as well as two part-time driving-related ones, for TNT Road Co. and AT Racing.

Theriault’s only liability is a car loan of at least $15,000.