15-year-old Zach Stroupe is one very talented young racecar driver.

That is something that his father Mike knew as soon as Zach started racing go-karts. SPEED TV personality Bob Dillner recognized it right away when he started observing Stroupe in a Legends Cars at Lowe's Motor Speedway's Summer Shootout Series a few years ago. Now fans of Super Late Model racing are beginning to notice it after watching Stroupe run with the big dogs and finish a strong fourth in the prestigious Easter Bunny 150 at Hickory Motor Speedway (NC) with the Pro All Stars Series South Tour.

“This is great; I'm just so glad that we finally could get a good finish with this car,” said Stroupe, who was supported in the event by Chili's of Hickory. “It's a little hard to believe. I knew that the team was capable of this, but I wanted to be realistic, so we set a top-10 finish as our goal for this race.”

The race, which opened up the 2008 PASS South season on Saturday night, was only Stroupe's eighth career start in a Late Model type car, but the Pro Challenge Series graduate was able to race wheel to wheel against proven winners like 2007 PASS North champion Ben Rowe, 2006 the

PASS South champion Mike Rowe, short track racing legend Butch Miller, 2007 PASS South champion Ryan Lawler and eventual Easter Bunny 150 victor Corey Williams over the course of the 150-lap event.

“Ben and Mike are both great drivers,” said BDI Racing / Team Chevy driver Stroupe. “I really loved racing with them. I knew that they would give me a little room and race me clean. I knew that Ryan races clean too, so at the end when he was racing Corey, I gave him a little room too.”

If it wasn't for a multi-car wreck with less than 50 laps to go, it might very well have been a battle between Ben Rowe and Stroupe for the victory. Both cars were right in the tire tracks of leader Jeff Choquette when a lapped car had a problem ahead of them and triggered a big multi-car wreck. That incident dropped Rowe out of contention for good and sent Stroupe back several positions with a bent racecar.

“I was running behind Ben early on, and I think that he was just waiting for a chance to get around the #70 (of Choquette), but the #70 was holding us up a little bit. I was waiting for Ben to get by him and I was going to try and follow him to a good finish, but unfortunately there was a wreck in front of us. We all got stacked up, and that bent the front end up. After that, we weren't as fast as we were before. It was real tight.”

That is the only time all weekend that Stroupe's Chili's of Hickory/Mac Tools Chevrolet was even a tick off in the handling department. The young racer credits the addition of Bond Suss as crew chief for making the right calls for that.

“The car was great and I need to thank Bond for that. Starting to work with him was a turning point. We should have finished in the top five at the Snowflake 100, and we finished fourth tonight. He is teaching me a lot that I need to know about the Team Chevy/BDI Racing Impala SS. When we went to Pensacola (for December's Snowflake 100), he had to stay home, but he did everything he could over the phone to help us. This was our first race working at the track together and it went very well.”

Stroupe isn't the only talented racer in his family. Also at Hickory on Saturday night, his younger brother Nick posted a strong finish in the Pro Challenge feature. 12-year-old Nick wheeled his BDI Racing entry to a second-place finish in that event.

Zach Stroupe's next scheduled race will take place when the PASS South Series visits Watermelon Capital Speedway in Cordele, GA, on Saturday, April 26th .