Tyler County Speedway
Tyler County ace girded for new tour's invaders
By Robert Holman
DirtonDirt.com weekend editor
Kyle Thomas owns eight Tyler County titles. (Zach Yost)
Late Model ace Kyle Thomas is confident heading into April 15’s Castrol FloRacing Night in America event at Tyler County Speedway. And there’s no reason why the 34-year-old Pennsboro, W.Va., driver shouldn’t be.
Thomas owns multiple track championships at the quarter-mile bullring in Middlebourne, W.Va. — including a sweep of Super and Crate divisions in 2019 — and he led flag-to-flag to capture April 3's season opener in the Super Late Model division. | Watch on FloRacing
With both Castrol FloRacing Night in America events getting rained out in March, it’s tough to predict who will show up Thursday at Tyler County for what will now be the upstart tour’s inaugural event, but Thomas expects plenty of competition.
“Yeah there’s going to be a lot of heavy hitters there this week,” Thomas said. “Bobby Pierce is on the schedule and I think Tyler Erb is coming. There’s a lot of good cars, but I mean we’ve raced against them before. We should be all right, I think. Get a good qualifying lap, start up front in the heat race and we should be pretty good. The early on that’s what helps the best because everyone is right on their game nowadays. It’s not like it used to be. One fast car could run away with it. Now everyone is usually on top of their game and everyone is pretty much close to an equal playing field.”
Since 2010, Thomas has racked up eight track championships. He has two Crate titles at Elkins (W.Va.) Motor Speedway (2012, 2014), along with four Crate championships at Tyler County. Both of his Super Late Model titles — Thomas moved up to the higher-powered division in 2015 — came at Tyler County (2018-19).
“There’s probably only a couple of us that’s got as many laps at Tyler County around that place, me and another guy, Stevie Weigle,” Thomas said. “I would say that we stand a pretty good chance no matter who comes. I’d say the surface would be the normal Tyler County. It’s usually hammer down. Depending on the weather you know if it’s going to get dry or not. We were pretty much neutral last week (April 3) and walked away with it.”
Part of his comfort level stems from knowing he’s finally getting his 2-year-old Punisher Chassis tuned to his liking. He’s one of just a handful of drivers utilizing the fledgling chassis brand from Chuck Kimble's shop in Rayland, Ohio, about two hours north of Pennsboro. Despite having tons of success Crate racing, Thomas said finding success after jumping into an unproven chassis brand hasn’t been easy.
“I used to help (Kimble) back when we ran Crate,” Thomas said. “I helped him out when we were winning a bunch of Crate races. He told me one of these days he’d thought about building (his own) chassis and I told him, 'Well if you ever start building them, I will get one and we will work together and see what we can come up with.' And that’s pretty much how it’s been since. It’s close to other cars, but it’s got a few changes that me and him come up with. Really what we’ve come up with fits my driving style pretty good."
The car has a "different feel" than other chassis that Thomas prefers, and he's among only a few other drivers — Brian Baumberger among them — competing in the Punisher.
"It’s been pretty tough actually," Thomas said. "We had some basis off of some other cars that we raced, but nothing really worked out and we just kept changing stuff on the chassis suspension-wise and we have a pretty good piece right now.”
The entire process took Thomas a bit longer than he’d hoped.
“It took a good while because I’m not one to go test and rent racetracks and stuff like that,” he said. “I’m like your local Saturday night racer, so it took a little while to get some good notes and some feedback. Of course when I switched everything we went to a different shock package and all that, so it’s learning all over again.”
Thomas said his family plays an integral part in his race team. A union boilermaker by trade, Thomas is married and has three children.
“My dad is the crew chief and I have a couple buddies who help out every week on the cars. It’s kind of just a big family ordeal,” Thomas said. “If I didn’t have them guys I couldn’t do it, taking three kids along and everything else and usually on Saturday nights we normally run two cars. I used to run Crate (in addition to the Super Late Model) and this year we went to an AMRA modified. I’ve got help from Powell & Son Farms, Dodd’s Sporting Goods, the Pizza Box, Ed Wilson Mobile Homes, Jenkins Auto Parts and then are some other people that don’t like their names on the car, but I appreciate all of them.”
