Editor's note: DirtonDirt.com managing editor Todd Turner (pictured left) of Louisville, Ky., on Aug. 10 was inducted into the National Dirt Late Model Hall of Fame. This is his acceptance speech:

When I was a kid in the early 1970s watching cars go around in circles while devouring every auto racing story in the Courier-Journal and Louisville Times, I never could have imagined a career as a short-track motorsports journalist. To say it was a dream wouldn’t be accurate — it wasn’t in the realm of possibility.

So to stand before you now is humbling, gratifying and equally hard to imagine. My immense thanks goes to all the Hall of Fame administrators, voters, the King family and everyone who has helped create this special honor. And my congratulations goes to my fellow inductees, many of whom I’ve pestered for interviews at dusty dirt tracks or in late-night phone calls over the last 30 years.

Among my non-racing friends, a fair question over the years went something like this: When are you going to get a real job?

But most of us here — the true believers of Dirt Late Model racing — realize there's not much more fertile territory for someone who likes to tell stories than dirt tracks around the country.

• The vagabond promoter in a musty van touring dirt tracks with his dog ...

• The Missouri racer whose liver transplant campaign adorning his Late Model ends with life-saving surgery for his 21-month-old son ...

• The Nebraska driver in a 40-lapper with such frenetic action that he went straight to the pits after the checkers, not realizing he'd won the race ...

• The California driver who caught a ride to the track with a racing friend — and had an awkward trip home after wrecking his friend to win the feature ...

• And the silver-haired Louisiana racer, his ALS-withered body forcing him to park his race car, who watched his son win one last race ...

The vacuum left by mainstream media has been a joy to exploit.

Of course, the Dirt Late Model media landscape is far different today than when I logged into AOL in April 1995 and, on a virtual whim, began the fledgling DirtNews Digest email newsletter.

I've been blessed to ride that wave in the development of a media environment that spotlights a sport that's long been overlooked. A race in 1985 that might've had four paragraphs and the top five finishers in a 20-page tabloid delivered by a mail carrier six days later is now live-streamed to fans worldwide.

To help bring a journalistic approach to Dirt Late Model racing — where accuracy, ethics and professionalism are just as important as trophies, wrecks and slide jobs — has been gratifying.

My thanks to all the drivers who've endured my annoyances, whether it was cluttering up their hauler's work table with my laptop and camera bag, badgering them with repeated questions in search a different answer or bringing up the cruel truth that there's only one winner each night — and it wasn't you.

Thanks also goes to promoters who've embraced professional media coverage and have treated so many of us with respect.

And finally personal thank you's, which there are many. If you can please indulge me in a chronological trip of those who believed in me, pushed me, supported me, cajoled me, influenced me and edited me. (I fully acknowledge a better editor might’ve told me to sit down and shut up by now.)

• To Nancilyn Kroushl, who plucked me from a fourth-row seat in freshman English and put me on a Thomas Jefferson High School newspaper staff reserved for juniors and seniors.

• To Cary Willis, who as editor of the Fern Creek Neighbor, annoyed my teenaged self by his insistence to produce multiple-sourced stories and elicit meaningful quotes.

• To journalism professors Bob Adams and James Ausenbaugh at Western Kentucky University, who along with dozens of College Heights Herald peers, instilled and burnished my writing and editing skills.

• To colleagues at Owensboro’s Messenger-Inquirer including Tommy Newton, Hunter Reigler and the late Rich Suwanski, close friends who were part a talented staff at a great little daily newspaper.

• To writers, photographers and rockers Tim and Susan Lee, who opened doors as I transitioned from mainstream journalism into full-time motorsports writing.

• To Brian and Carolyn McLeod and Bob Appleget, for hiring me at National Dirt Digest and providing me virtually free rein to mold one of short-track racing's best rags.

• To Michael and Amber Rigsby, who asked me to join them on a journey with DirtonDirt.com that we were equally sure was an undeniably fantastic idea while we simultaneously questioned whether we needed our heads examined. I’ve loved every minute of it.

• To tremendous dirt racing media colleagues over the years including Kevin Kovac, Robert Holman, Joshua Joiner, Alli Davis, Andy Savary, Kyle McFadden, Aaron Clay, Derek Kessinger, Ben Shelton, Dustin Jarrett, Bob Markos, Mike Sullivan, Michael Despain and too many more to name.

• To my father, who by introducing me to auto racing as a toddler, had me etching car numbers onto Matchbox sedans and spending countless hours cradling the trigger controllers of an AFX slot car track. He has enthusiastically supported me every lap of the way.

• And finally to my lovely wife Julie, who didn’t run the other way when I told her that watching cars go around in circles and writing auto racing stories was what I loved to do.

Thank you all.