Darrell Lanigan is a guy who’s known to enjoy some casino gambling when he has some rare free time, so he seemed like a good person to put some odds on the likelihood of a driver earning the huge bonus money associated with the Keyser’s Quarter-Million Challenge during the Jan. 9-17 Keyser Manufacturing Wild West Shootout presented by Black Diamond-Club 29 Race Cars at USA Raceway in Tucson, Ariz. | Complete Tucson coverage | Order pay-per-view video

Does the 45-year-old Dirt Late Model star MORE

When Mike Hayes sets up Jimmy Owens’s souvenir trailer at Batesville Motor Speedway in Locust Grove, Ark., for this weekend’s 23rd annual Comp Cams Topless 100, memories of his first year handling Owens’s T-shirt sales in 2007 will come flooding back to him.

Stifling, sweaty memories.

“The way we were doing it back then was brutal,” said the 41-year-old Hayes, who joined with his wife, Amy, to take over Owens’s merchandising efforts the same season the Dirt Late Model superstar from MORE

A couple days before the start of last weekend’s Firecracker 100 presented by GottaRace.com weekend at Lernerville Speedway in Sarver, Pa., World of Outlaws Late Model Series traveler Boom Briggs of Bear Lake, Pa. — a quick-witted guy who’s always busting the chops of his buddies — stood in the pit area at Weedsport (N.Y.) Speedway and suggested that he wanted to do something special for his home-state track’s blockbuster event.

Briggs’s idea had nothing to do with his race car or his MORE