JERRY RUSSELL launched the Eagle Racing chassis in October 1997.  He and machining supervisor Randy Colliver began jigging the first Eagle sprintcar in November and by the time the first week of December arrived they had produced the all new state of the art Eagle for the PRI trade show in Indianapolis.

Fast forward to Florida in February and Eagle had three new cars sitting in the pits.

With business in overdrive, Jerry hired Shon Moore as a supervising welder, Alex Liehr as finishing welder and Rick Freer as a craftsman machinist while Roni Baker took over as business advisor and accountant.

In 1999 Jerry added a powder coating booth and oven to his growing Eagle headquarters in Springfield, Illinois.

Expansion came sooner than later and so did extra staff, including Steve Selby to the parts counter, Shawn Vaughn to powder coating, Troy Landrey to head up the second jig team. Jeff Cooper was appointed second welder, Jeff Freer as quality machinist and Kristi Sims as executive secretary.    

The success of Eagle has not been restricted to World of Outlaws sprints although Danny Lasoski catapulted the brand into the headlines with his WoO championships in 2001 and 2002.

He also won the Knoxville Nationals in 2003 while long time Aussie tourist Chad Kemehah won the Haulmark All Stars championship back to back in 2002 and 2003.

And to round out the circle of champions Travis Rilat collected the 2003 ASCS 360 sprintcar points title to prove the new generation Eagle is checkered flag friendly and offers unsurpassed engineering quality.