Be yourself; Everyone else is already taken.
— Oscar Wilde.
This is the first post on my new blog. I’m just getting this new blog going, so stay tuned for more. Subscribe below to get notified when I post new updates.
As mentioned in the previous post, Park Jefferson Speedway and The New Raceway Park held races over the weekend but without fans. The call was made to not have fans do to pressure from the community involving death threats towards the promoter. In my opinion, it was the right call to not have fans so the risk of an outbreak would be far smaller. Fans were still able to watch the dirt fly live on Speed Shift TV Saturday and Advantage Racing TV Sunday. Now the races itself was pretty good itself too. Brock Zearfoss from Jonestown, Pennsylvania took the win in the 410 Sprint car race Saturday night while Ricky Thornton Jr. of Adel, Iowa bested the field of IMCA Modifieds. Sunday night saw Anthony Clark from Omaha, Nebraska win the Sport Compact feature, Johnathon Logue from Logansport, Iowa win the Sports Mod, Sioux City, Iowa’s Craig Clift won the Hobby stock feature, Travis Barker out of Sioux City, Iowa won the Stock Car feature, and Ricky Thornton Jr. went back to back on the weekend besting the field of IMCA Modifieds.
Jefferson, South Dakota, towards the way southeast corner of the the state, is home to not one, but two race tracks. Park Jefferson Speedway, which is a 3/8th mile, semi banked dirt oval will feature the IMCA Modifieds and 410 Sprint Cars on Saturday, April 25th for their Open Wheel Nationals.
The following day the modified drivers will be able to just travel right across the road to race at The New Raceway Park which is a 1/4th mile gumbo dirt oval for their season opener. Also racing will be IMCA Stock Cars, IMCA Northern Sports Mods, IMCA Hobby Stocks, and IMCA Sport Compacts. Both tracks have but a limit on the number of fans you can attend as well as driver entries. Also everyone will be required to wear a mask.
Kyle Larson is a very well liked and respected race car driver. Some would say the 27 year old NASCAR phenom is only now entering the prime of his career after joining the cup series in 2014 when he won Rookie of the Year with Chip Ganassi Racing and has been with them ever since. Kyle came up through the racing ranks starting in a sprint car which is ran on dirt so that is where he has my respect from. With this whole pandemic going on all sporting events have came to a halt… including racing. There has been an alternative however to fuel the need for speed in “Iracing”, which is an online racing simulator game. In the latest online racing event, Larson was under the impression his mic wasn’t working and let out a racial slur comment. Well his mic was indeed working so the whole world heard him say “hey n****r” on live broadcast. Larson almost immediately lost his McDonald’s, Credit One Bank, Clover and Chevrolet sponsors. The sponsors will however continue to work with Chip Ganassi Racing. On April 14, 2020, Chip Ganassi Racing announced they are parting ways with Larson. Larson has made an apology video via Twitter and is required by NASCAR to take sensitivity training before he can return from his indefinite suspension.
I never used to be one to worry about much growing up. Being raised on a farm near a small town doesn’t present to many things to cause anxiety. This Virus literally came during the worst time possible for me personally. I just changed my major in January of 2020 and was really getting comfortable with my new classes. Also I’m a huge sports fan so I was really looking forward to watching my Oregon Ducks bring home the titles this year. Now I’m okay with all the online classes and well I already know the Ducks were going to cut down the nets. Also I had pretty much been social distancing for the past 20 years of being a home body. Hey, at least I still have racing to look forward to… they can’t cancel the race season. Oh but they pretty much did. This is when it became personal, Corona went to far. In a way to sum up all of the clutter above, I’m back home with my family, board as heck and got nothing to look forward to. Thanks China.
Brown County Speedway is under new management for this coming 2020 race season and the racing community has reason to be excited. During the last 5 to 10 years of racing at the speedway there has been many different promoters bringing along many different inconsistencies. Brown County Speedway is actually owned by the Brown county so promoters don’t know how long they may have the track. This inconvenience has discouraged past promoters to make an investment in the track to make improvements. With all this being said the new promoters instantly started to make major improvements to the track by bringing in new dirt and reshaping the track back to it’s old glory.
There are so many talented Super Late Model drivers in the county but these 20 are the ones I feel are on another level. This is my top 20 Super Late Model rankings for the 2020 season.
20. Shane Clanton #25. Shane had a pretty successful 2019 season coming off with 8 wins and has committed to run the Lucas Oil Late Model Tour in 2020.
19. Dale McDowell #17m. Dale has been fast right out of the gate this year picking up a win at Volusia during speed weeks. He looks to continue his early success going forward in his 36th year of racing.
18. Chase Junghans #18. Chase has really been improving year after year and showed a lot of promise at the Wild West Shootout in January. Chase also picked up a Strawberry Dash win at East Bay Raceway in Gibsonton, Florida.
17. Billy Moyer Jr. #21. Billy Moyer Jr. made the switch to Capital Chassis race cars this year. After being involved bad wreck to start the year in early January, BMJ bounced back during speed weeks with some very strong top 5 finishes.
16. Darrell Lanigan #29. “The Bluegrass Bandit” is coming off 4 wins in 2019 and has ran very strong to start the year in 2020 picking up multiple top 10s during speed weeks.
15. Mason Zeigler #25z. Mason was fairly quiet in 2019 but started 2020 off with a bang picking up an exciting win during speed weeks. He had also been running up front all week but had unfortunate issues to cause DNFs.
14. Kyle Bronson #40B. Kyle is a throttle smasher and it pays off. After a horrific wreck with Jonathan Davenport early in speed weeks he got out his backup car and had good success finishing in the top 10.
13. Bobby Pierce #32. Bobby is another throttle smasher with the ironic nickname of “The Smooth Operator”. Pierce hasn’t had luck on his side so far this year but because of his amazing resume, the 23 year old wheel man makes my list.
12. Mike Marlar #157. Mike now 2 years removed from his 2018 WOO championship looks to get back to his winning ways in 2020 already picking up one in the World of Outlaws series at Smoky Mountain Speedway.
11. Devin Moran #9. Devin has always showed speed and potential from years past but finally put it all together and had an outstanding speed weeks picking up a win and multiple top 5s at East Bay. This early success may come as a surprise to many beings he has bounced around from team to team the last few years but I think he’s got a good one here with Tye Twarog Racing.
10. Brian Shirley #3s. “The Squirrel” got off to a steaming hot start in 2020 picking up 3 wins out of the 6 races during the Wild West Shootout and has had some consistently good runs since.
9. Brandon Overton #76. “Big Sexy” made the move from Rum Runner Motorsports to Wells & Sons this year. He has been another one of those drivers who just needs a bit of luck to go his way. He has three 2nd place finishes this year that could’ve ended up in wins.
8. Tyler Erb #1. “Terbo” started off his year in Australia where he picked up the win down under. He had a relatively quiet speed weeks only getting one top 5 but he had really good speed every night just had some qualifying issues.
7. Josh Richards #14. “The Rocket Man” has started off his 2020 season a bit slow with only one podium finish. He is still this high up because he has a resume that anyone would be proud to have.
6. Ricky Weiss #7. “The Manitoban Missile” started off his season right collecting a win, a 3rd, and a 5th place finish at the Vado Speedway Park. Ricky also has a great racing resume wining 5 Wissota national championships.
5. Chris Madden #0M. “Smokey” won pretty much every race that was 50k or more to win last year and won the very first race of the 2020 season and has had 3 more top 5s.
4. Tim McCreadie #39. “T-Mac” switched teams to Paylor Motorsports for 2020 and started it off right winning the first race of the Lucas oil tour series at Golden Isles Speedway. He also picked up another win at East Bay and one more at Volusia.
3. Jonathan Davenport #49 “Superman” is the Defending Lucas Oil tour champion and looks to get his 4th championship this year. His 2020 season started off a bit rough but he eventually found victory lane at All-Tech Raceway.
2. Jimmy Owens #20. “The Newport Nightmare” struggled with consistency early in the season but when speed weeks shifted to Volusia he won 3 nights in a row to end speed weeks. Funny how he went from never winning a race at Volusia in his Hall of Fame career to knocking off 3 in a row.
1. Brandon Sheppard #1 “B-Shepp” is coming off of a stellar 2019 season that saw him claim the World of Outlaws tour championship. He started his 2020 season at Vado Speedway Park with three 2nd place finishes. He then drove his family owned late model at the Wild West Shootout where he found himself in victory lane 3 out of the 6 nights and never finished worse than 4th. During Speed weeks he picked up another 4 wins and a total of 9 top 3s with a worse finish of 10th in the 10 races he took apart of.
Trevor Nelson is a second generation race car driver who can just straight up wheel a car. He started his racing career in the Super stock class in 2013. He got his first career win in 2014 and never looked back as the Warner, SD native is at exactly 50 feature wins in his young racing career. With those 50 wins he has also managed to win 3 track titles, 2 at Casino Speedway in Watertown, SD and 1 at Brown County Speedway in Aberdeen, SD. Trevor is also a very humble and down to earth young man. You would think for a 25, soon to be 26 year old all this success would get to your head and make you cocky but Trevor just knows how to handle himself professionally.
The sport I love and grew up around has been growing and experimenting to make it better and more appealing to other people. One unique way it has made a stride in going forward would be the event, “The Gateway Dirt Nationals”. A man by the name of Cody Sommer had a dream that many thought was impossible and completely wack. He wanted to have an indoor Late Model and Modified race in December.
On December 15th though the 17th of 2016 the inaugural Gateway Dirt Nationals was born. The event took place in the Dome at America’s Center in St. Louis, Missouri and drew in massive car counts and a huge crowd. The event was even broadcast live on dirtondirt.com so thousands more tuned in.
Beings the race took place in a football stadium it was extremely small: just a 1/5 mile. To put that into prospective, Bristol Motor Speedway in Bristol, TN hosted a college football game in their infield and the track is only a 1/2 mile. Now due to the small size of the track there was a lot of wrecking going on which frustrated many drivers and fans. Despite all the wrecking and the track being quite choppy the Feature events were action packed and provided some great door to door racing. The event has now been run four years in a row adding the Midget class in 2018. They already have dates out for the 5th annual running of the event this coming December.
Lorin Johnson is another wheel man to be considered one of the greatest to drive a race car in the northern part of the country. The Miller, SD native has been racing since 1982 or 1983 (I know its one of these two years) and has been virtually unbeatable to this day. In 1983 he won his first track championships at Dakota State Fair Speedway in Huron, SD and at Miller Speedway in Miller, SD. He now has too many track championships to keep track of to go along with a Wissota Modified national championship. Over his 36 year career he has accumulated over 330 feature wins as well. Lorin is also a guy who has time to lend a bit of advise to anyone new to the sport or anyone who’s been doing it for a while.
Kent Arment is arguably the greatest of all time when it comes to dirt track racing in the northern part of the country. Kent is a second generation driver out of Aberdeen, SD and has piloted his Wissota Modified and Late Model to over 600 wins, 5 national championships and 60 plus track championships so you can about imagine why he’s nicknamed “showtime”. All of those accolades and he is still adding to them. Kent is also one of the most helpful and nicest guys at the racetrack always willing to help and offer advise to the other drivers.
Weekly Racing Blogs with the11Z 