Combining proven design with state-of-the-art manufacturing, Schnee-Lawson Chassis has attracted some of the country’s top sprint car teams and scored wins at major events. And that’s just in the past 12 months.

It’s been just one year since retired racer and lifelong entrepreneur Dan Lawson acquired the EMi division of Speedway Motors and renewed production of Schnee Chassis sprint cars. Since then, cars from the newly formed Schnee-Lawson Chassis have won the Knoxville Nationals and, said Lawson, “pretty much every big event in the country,” with a roster of drivers that includes Kyle Larson, Rico Abreu, Tyler Courtney, Ryan Timms, Chase Randall, and Paul Nienhiser. 

In October, Schnee-Lawson moved into an all-new, state-of-the-art facility at the I-70 Motorsports Park in Odessa, Missouri, about 15 minutes east of Kansas City. “When we opened, we had 40 sprint cars on back order and a deadline for each car,” said Lawson in January. “Fortunately, we are on track to meet all of our customers’ season-openers. Our mission isn’t to become the largest sprint car chassis manufacturer, it’s to be the best—through excellence in design, build quality, and safety.” 

Racing Toward Success

A self-described “second-generation open wheel racer,” Lawson “grew up with my dad driving midgets and sprint cars—and I followed in my dad’s footsteps. Racing is where I developed my work ethic. I learned early on that racing demanded a lot of time and a commitment to excellence if you wanted to reach the top.”

Lawson was 16 and a high school senior in 1974 when he drove his first race in a non-wing sprint car. He graduated to wing cars two years later. At 22 he founded the business that became Design Source Flooring, “and I spent the next several years focusing on that business. Then I got back into racing and won three championships as a driver, and then I put a younger guy in my car and won a couple of championships with him, too.”

By then it was the 1980s, and Lawson “kind of retired” from racing a second time, again to grow his flooring business. (Today, Design Source Flooring employs 125 people at locations in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri.) He returned to open wheel racing in 2020, as sponsor and mentor to young racers Xavier and Natalie Doney—more about that later—and purchased EMi in April 2023.

Brian Schnee, Lawson reminded us, “has been designing and building sprint car chassis for over 35 years and is known as one of the best designers, builders, and TIG welders in the country.” 

Schnee (say Shuh-nay) welded up his first chassis in 1985 and quickly earned a winning reputation with Doug Wolfgang at the wheel. That reputation, and Schnee Chassis sales, extended worldwide by the time Schnee merged his company with Speedway Motors’ Eagle Motorsport (later EMi) in 2013. Lawson stepped in when Speedway announced its intention to close EMi and end production in March 2023. Now Brian and Jean Schnee, his wife and longtime collaborator, have moved to Odessa, where Brian continues as designer, fabricator, and welder with Schnee-Lawson.

Quality Through Consistency

Initially, Lawson leased the former EMi shop from Speedway and resumed production of Schnee’s sprint car chassis in Lincoln, Nebraska, while building his new plant in Odessa. The Schnee chassis was “tweaked” (Lawson’s word) a couple of years ago with input from team owner Paul Silva, and additional refinements have been made since then. But beyond good design, Lawson emphasized the consistent build quality made possible by the advanced production facility in Odessa. “The way we build our chassis is unique,” he said. An overhead crane system carries each chassis through a succession of specialized workstations, which Lawson called “an assembly-line approach, like GM or Ford…creating efficiencies and facilitating the highest level of quality control.” All tubing is US-sourced 4130 chromoly. “And we use precision-built jigs and templates, so the way we bend our tubing, the way the car is tacked up and then welded, is all repeatable.

“A lot of our competitors can’t say that,” he added, which is why “occasionally you’ll hear a racer say, ‘Man, I really liked that car, but I can’t get this other car [from the same manufacturer] to feel like that car.’ They really like our cars because each car feels similar to all the others.”

It helps, no doubt, that Brian Schnee’s cars were already noted for their consistency. “Brian was building my cars when they bought Schnee out from EMi,” said Jimmy Jones, team manager and crew chief for Ryan Timms Racing. “We haven’t seen any variance in them, and we’ve not had a car that hasn’t worked yet.” 

Schnee’s cars have certainly worked well for Timms, whose second-place finish at Red River Valley in August 2022 made him the youngest podium finisher in World of Outlaws history. (For then-16-year-old Timms, it was only his second ever WoO start.) In 2023, Timms scored eight wins in wing and non-wing 360s and 410s, including the Southern Sprint Car Shootout at Volusia.

Jones has ordered four Schnee-Lawson cars for the 2024 season. “Brian is a really good welder,” he added. “He’s been with Wolfgang forever.” Jones has also run an imported brand, “and they were decent cars, but they wore out really fast. They were a lot cheaper, but you have to buy a lot more of them. So I’m glad people are still manufacturing in the US. The craftsmanship is so much better.”

“If you are in the sport, you know who Brian Schnee is,” added Tim Clauson, co-owner of Clauson Marshall Racing. “He’s always had a stellar reputation. His cars are works of art. They are beautiful.” Still, when Clauson Marshall launched its current program, it chose another chassis that “everybody seemed to be winning with. And we were happy, we had good luck with them.” 

Clauson met Dan Lawson at a USAC race in South Dakota “a couple of years ago. I started keeping track of what he was doing with Xavier Doney, and we’d talk now and again.” When their conversation turned to business last summer, Clauson met Schnee and came away impressed. “His passion for what he does, and the way he does it, matched our passion for the sport.”

Clauson agreed to try a Schnee-Lawson car at the 2023 Charlotte World Finals. “We ran in the top five every night. We were quick time in our group one night, and second quick time the next night, and we won at Cherokee. After that, we were all in.

“We only had the one car they built for Charlotte, and we had to turn over our whole inventory,” Clauson continued. “But Brian and Dan have been phenomenal. They got two more cars done for us right away, to get us through Florida.” When we spoke in early February, Clauson expected delivery of a fourth car that month and a fifth around April.

Offering Options

Schnee-Lawson’s standard product line starts with a bare frame. Customers can also choose a Basic Kit, which adds a rear motor plate, torque tube hoop, and Dzus springs. A Dressed Kit adds body panels (carbon fiber is an additional option); and with the poplar Deluxe Kit, “they only have to put in a rearend, steering, and an engine,” said Lawson. Schnee-Lawson also sells axles, drag links, and tie rods, plus accessories such as nerf bars, although they leave shock absorbers to the shock experts: “That’s a whole ’nother world of specialization.” Lawson added. “But we can build a roller if the customer supplies the rearend and steering. They could pick it up, put in an engine, and go race that night.” 

While maintaining the baked-in repeatability described above, Schnee-Lawson can customize a chassis to meet a driver’s individual preferences—“as long as it meets our safety standards.” 

The shop has also modified existing chassis. Lawson recalled adding a pair of front wing mounts to Kyle Larson’s car on a Saturday when Larson’s team was in town. “He had just one wing mount on each side of the downtube, and decided he did not like the balance; he wanted more downforce further forward. So we added new wing mounts on each side of the downtubes, so he had four instead of two.” What may sound like a small change can make a big difference when a driver is “looking for that sweet spot where the car balances out.”

Another advantage of the new facility is ample room for repair work. “If they wreck, we have the space in the building for them to leave the car,” Lawson added. “We’ll do whatever we need to do to help them out.”

Promotional support is provided by Lawson’s son Justin, whose JDLawson Media maintains Schnee-Lawson’s Facebook page. Social media, said Lawson, has “helped brand Schnee-Lawson Chassis, while our customers and fans stay in touch with our builds, and with who is racing our chassis.” 

Beyond that, said Lawson, new customers are attracted by “our reputation for quality design, customer service, and how we treat people. Every customer becomes a friend. If someone is at the track, and they are struggling with a setup—or whatever—they can call us, and if one of us can’t answer, we’ll return the call in a matter of minutes. They can call us and reach us after hours—we’ll take those calls. We want to make sure our cars are successful, and that everybody wins, so we’re willing to go the extra mile to do whatever we need to do to help out our customers.”

Building The Future

Even before buying EMi, Lawson was not only looking for a way to get back into racing, but to give back as well, “to the sport that’s been part of my life since birth.” Lawson thought the best way to do that would be to help develop some younger drivers. So in 2020, “I began going to the race tracks around the Midwest, just watching different drivers and their families,” not only “spotting talent” but also observing family dynamics. “That’s how I discovered Xavier and Natalie Doney. The whole family was involved, working on the cars at the track. And these kids were phenomenal. They were doing great, driving older cars with older engines, because that’s what mom and dad could afford. I decided I could help the Doney family take their kids a lot farther than they would be able to on their own. It’s been an incredible ride.”

Xavier and Natalie had been racing since they were 5 1/2 and 4 1/2, respectively, starting in quarter midgets and then moving up to micros. Natalie is now driving a 305, while “we put Xavier directly into a 410 when he was 14,” said Lawson, “and into a 410 wing car about a year ago.” Here too, social media has provided a boost, helping “fans keep up on our in-house Doney-Lawson Racing team.”

Xavier has also demonstrated his potential as a builder; mentored by Schnee, he “has become an incredible welder just in a matter of three months.” Their father, Mike Doney, is now general manager of Schnee-Lawson. “After Brian and I put together our deal,” said Lawson, “I approached Mike, who was looking for a career change, and he came aboard.

“Over the next couple of years, we want to build up our racing program, make it bigger, and allow the kids to go even further and really showcase their talents.” (The team sponsor is yet another Dan Lawson enterprise called Motor Haven, a storage facility for cars, boats, and RVs, situated on the same property as the Schnee-Lawson facility.)

 Additionally, “Mike and I are growing and expanding our mentorship program, training and developing the next generation of Schnee-Lawson fabricators, designers, and welders. Two years from now, we will have mentored and trained several people to design, fabricate, and TIG-weld our race cars, so if any of our customers sets any of our chassis side-by-side, they won’t be able to tell if the car was built by Brian, or by any of our other awesome employees.”