DirtonDirt.com Dispatches
Dispatches: Hoffman's first big Late Model win
Nick Hoffman in victory lane at Muskingum. (Zach Yost)
The latest notes and quotes from Dirt Late Model special and sanctioned events during the weekend of May 19-21, including Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series events in Iowa and other action throughout the country:
Great backup plan
When Saturday’s scheduled World of Outlaws Case Late Model Series event at Port Royal (Pa.) Speedway was cancelled around noon due to impending rain, Nick Hoffman of Mooresville, N.C., didn’t have to think twice about his next racing option. He simply pointed his hauler west and headed to Muskingum County Speedway in Zanesville, Ohio, a track located just a half-hour from his car owner Tye Twarog’s home in Coshocton, Ohio.
The rare opportunity for Hoffman, an open-wheel modified ace chasing the WoO tour in his first season as a full-time Dirt Late Model driver, to race in his boss’s backyard couldn’t have gone any better. Leading a charge of five WoO regulars who made a beeline for Muskingum after Port Royal’s rainout, the 31-year-old marched to his first victory for Twarog in the 41st annual Jim Dunn Memorial that was part of the XR Working’ Man Series.
“This race means a lot to Tye, so we wanted to come over obviously after getting rained out at Port Royal,” Hoffman said. “We were able to make a couple dollars.”
Hoffman’s collected $10,000, to be exact, a bounty that represented the richest triumph he’s recorded in his limited amount of Dirt Late Model action in recent years. He earned it by overtaking Brian Shirley of Chatham, Ill., for the lead when Hoffman’s fellow WoO regular slid up the track in turns one and two due to contact while lapping another WoO traveler, Todd Cooney of Des Moines, Iowa.
“I just followed him for the first little bit,” Hoffman said of pursuing Shirley. “I was watching his (signal) stick guy probably more than mine just to make sure I stayed close enough to him that he would keep the sticks close together to pressure him and try to get him to abuse his stuff a little bit.
“Once I showed (Shirley) a nose he got aggressive there in lapped traffic and that’s ultimately what won the race, but our (Longhorn) race car was good all night. I lost to him in that dash deal and I knew I was gonna be pretty good for this 50 laps. I got a little tight there at the end and was able to manage."
Hoffman had to withstand several late-race restarts to finally beat Tyler Carpenter of Parkersburg, W.Va., to the finish line.
“Man, at those last two or three restarts they kept saying (over the one-way radio), ’28,’ and I’m like, ‘Who the hell is the 28?’” Hoffman said. “Then I was like, ‘Ah, it’s Carpenter! I’m used to it being Dennis Erb (on the WoO circuit).”
Carpenter — trying to score a win on his son’s third birthday — wasn’t able to off Hoffman a serious challenge as he spent the final circuits just seeing “a whole lot of ass-end of the number 9.”
Hoffman, who sits fifth in the WoO points standings with two top-five finishes in seven feature starts, gained some confidence for the series grind ahead with a victory in a race run in memory of the first Dirt Track World Championship winner.
“It’s awesome,” Hoffman said. “I didn’t know Jim Dunn personally, but I lined up behind his (restored) race car (that was used for a pace vehicle) and I was just checking it out and I’m like, ‘That’s a bad-ass piece.’”
Unzicker streaking
With big money on the line in his home state last week, Ryan Unzicker didn’t sugarcoat his subpar performances in Castrol FloRacing Night in America and Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series action.
The 41-year-old El Paso, Ill., driver finished seventh in a consolation race at Banner’s Spoon River Speedway, was 19th in Lincoln Speedway’s main event, scratched from a Farmer City Raceway consy and retired from Fairbury Speedway’s feature for a 23rd-place finish.
While the four-race stretch drew rugged competition for events paying between $23,023 and $30,000 to the winners, Unzicker’s performances were far below his standards.
“Last week,” Unzicker said Sunday at Adams County Speedway in Quincy, Ill., “we pretty much sucked for Illinois Speedweek.”
Unzicker might’ve been blunt, in part, because he’s suddenly turned things around. Sunday’s flag-to-flag 40-lap victory on the MARS Championship Series in Quincy gave him his second straight $5,000 victory on the Illinois-based circuit, and he’s leading the points on the tour he captured in 2022 after Friday’s runner-up finish to Jason Feger at Kankakee County (Ill.) Speedway and Saturday’s victory at Charleston (Ill.) Speedway.
“It’s just a great feeling to be able to win two in a row,” Unzicker said.
He was also glad to finish out a victory at the 3/10-mile oval after last season’s MARS event, when rookie upstart Tommy Sheppard Jr. slipped under Feger and then Unzicker in the final laps to grab a career-high $7,000 payday. Unzicker kept Feger and Sheppard in check this time.
“Heck of an awesome racetrack right there. Cars were everywhere. They did a phenomenal job (preparing the track) and, you know, it just reminded me of last year (when it was) Feger and I and (Sheppard) … it was a heck of a good battle last year. It was shaping up to be a real good one here again tonight, but the car was really just balanced” in carrying Unzicker to victory.
Feger was hot on Unzicker’s heels most of the way but never made a serious bid for the lead in a race slowed by two cautions, including one that eliminated fast qualifier Tyler Erb when Erb was collected by Doug Tye’s turn-four spin.
“I probably should’ve moved around a little bit more, but I just kept trying to be patient,” Feger said. “I kind of got to him there in that lapped traffic a little bit, and I clobbered (an infield) tire getting into (turn) three and folded my left-front nose down ... then I definitely didn’t have anything for him. I couldn’t steer at all. I was happy to be able to salvage second there. I wish we’d have been a little better so we could’ve gotten up there and mixed it up with him a little bit more.”
Sheppard fell two spots shy of his 2022 glory but he said he was grateful to team owner Bob Gardner for keeping his dream alive of competing in Super Late Models.
“Any time you can run third to Unzicker and Feger on this deal, that’s nothing to hang your head at,” said Sheppard, a cousin to four-time World of Outlaws Case Late Model Series champion Brandon Sheppard. “I made a few wrong changes to the car for the feature. I really couldn’t move to the bottom (groove) like I wanted to, so we’ll take a third.” — Staff reports
Such a roller coaster
Up. Down. And back up again.
The Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series’s Iowa doubleheader was a whirlwind 24-plus hours for Ricky Thornton Jr., who shined brightly by sweeping the Friday-Saturday events at Farley’s 300 Raceway and West Burlington’s 34 Raceway but in between experienced a nightmarish moment on the highway.
After completing his perfect weekend — on the track, at least — with a $15,000 triumph in Saturday’s CRST Transportation Solution 50 at 34 Raceway, he stood in victory lane shaking his head over arguably the wildest two-day stretch of his racing career.
“It’s definitely been all over,” the 32-year-old said when asked about his weekend. “We won last night there at Farley and when I was leaving I just barely got the trailer off the road (about 20 minutes from West Burlington) and I ended up flipping my apparel trailer (which he was pulling with his motorhome). Luckily me and my family (his three young children were riding with him in the camper that stayed upright in the accident) and everybody was safe.”
The crash en route to 34 Raceway that effectively destroyed his merchandise trailer didn’t bring down Thornton on Night 2 of the national tour’s Hawkeye State swing. He simply picked up where he left in winning $12,000 at Farley.
After chasing leader Tim McCreadie of Watertown, N.Y., for the feature’s first 17 circuits, Thornton ducked low off turn two under a lapped car and McCreadie to execute a nifty three-wide for the top spot on lap 18. He controlled the remainder of the distance, beating Brandon Overton of Evans, Ga., to the finish line by a margin of 1.741 seconds.
“I really didn’t know how good we’d be here tonight, and we were really good,” Thornton said. “It’s nice to be able to bounce back from that (highway accident). I gotta give a big thanks to everybody who cheered and bought stuff today. It definitely helps us out.”
Thornton’s series-leading fifth victory of 2023 moved him back into the Lucas Oil Series points leader by 40 markers over Hudson O’Neal of Martinsville, Ind., who finished sixth on Saturday. It also gave him a satisfying burst of success in a state that he once called home when he lived in Ada, Iowa, while running open-wheel modifieds and in the early days of his Dirt Late Model tenure with SSI Motorsports that started in 2020.
“It shows how hard we’ve worked over the winter,” said Thornton, who pushed his 2023 win total to eight. “We’ve had speed all year. Here the last few weeks we’re hard on ourselves. We had really good speed, just not the finishes we were hoping for.
“It’s nice to come out here and be in Iowa … I felt like I’ve run enough here in Iowa to be able to get two wins.” — Staff reports
Harrison improving
Following May 10’s 17th-place finish in the Castrol FloRacing Night in America main event at Spoon River Speedway in Banner, Ill., Mike Harrison refused to get down on himself or his team. The 48-year-old modified standout from Highland, Ill., was confident that his outing against a stacked field in an event that drew 48 entries and was won by reigning World of Outlaws Case Late Model Series champion Dennis Erb Jr. of Carpentersville, Ill., wasn’t as bad as it seemed, despite it being his worst finish since joining forces with Illinois car owner Steve Lampley last October.
“I’ve been in modifieds all my life and this is a whole new game to me,” said Harrison. “So it’s just learning. Just learning everybody. Learning the way everybody drives. Learning the way I need to drive this. It’s like a new job. It’s like starting a new job and, you know, I got to take my bruises, my black eyes and the punches and move on like it don’t happen.
“We’ll get better. We’re learning as a team. We’re learning each other. Me and Randy (Korte have) got to learn each other … what I like, what the car likes, what the car needs, what I need. I know that I’ve got to get better myself in these cars, but you know, we all got to get better together. That’s why Randy’s mad. He made the wrong adjustment on the car (at Spoon River), and I told him, ‘It’s not you. It’s all of us as a team.’ I mean it, it’s just that’s the way it is.”
Ten days later — following his career-best MARS Late Model Championship finish — the eight-time DIRTcar modified champion’s words at Spoon River seemed a bit prophetic. Driving Lampley’s Korte-wrenched Rocket Chassis with the familiar No. 33, Harrison matched his best MARS finish with a sixth-place effort Friday night at Kankakee (Ill.) County Speedway and then improved that by three positions with his third-place finish in Saturday’s Graves 40 at Charleston (Ill.) Speedway.
Through five MARS races, Harrison has finishes of sixth, 10th, eighth, sixth and third. Saturday’s podium finish at Charleston moved Harrison into third in the series point standings, 25 markers behind Jason Feger of Bloomington, Ill. It’s been a great start, but Harrison knows there’s still room for improvement.
“My expectations are always high, but I know who I’m racing with. I know what I’m racing against,” Harrison said at Spoon River. “So that really puts it into perspective for me. Just making the show (at Spoon River) through the heat race that was a win. I myself got to get better in the features, the long races. But like I said, we’re still gelling. We’re still learning what we need for me and what the car wants out of me and what I need to get out of the car. We just got to keep working at it as a team and get better and learn each other and it’ll come.” — Staff reports
Will he do it?
Everything seems to be pointing toward Brandon Overton making a run at this year’s $200,000 Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series title. After all, he still holds perfect-attendance status as the national tour heads to Lucas Oil Speedway in Wheatland, Mo., for Memorial Day weekend’s Show-Me 100.
But the 32-year-old driver from Evans, Ga., hasn’t yet officially committed him and his David Wells-owned team to chasing the entire 2023 schedule, so after his runner-up finish in Saturday’s 50-lap feature at 34 Raceway in West Burlington, Iowa, he was asked by pit reporter Dustin Jarrett if he’s ready to make that declaration.
Overton smiled slyly and sounded as if it’s likely he’ll roll down the highways with the Lucas Oil Series for the remainder of the season, but he stopped just short of explicitly saying that.
“We’ll go to Wheatland and see what we got there and sit down and have a discussion about it,” Overton said. “As bad as I don’t like doing it, I need to do it, to get back on the road. It makes me better.”
Of course, Overton has been pretty good already in Lucas Oil action this year. He owns two victories and Saturday’s second-place finish was his 11th top-five and 15th top-10 run in 17 feature starts, consistency that puts him third in the series standings, 90 points behind leader Ricky Thornton Jr.
And Overton’s strong positioning in the points battle comes despite the fact that he’s visited new territory in recent weeks, including 300 Raceway and 34 Raceway.
“I’ve never been to these places so I just over-adjust or I don’t adjust enough,” Overton said after feeling his Longhorn Chassis wasn’t quite where he needed it to be on Saturday night. “I couldn’t run down in and steer right around there. I’d just shove out, or either I’d sheer it loose and slide up the hill.” — Staff reports
Bad end to great night
Ricky Thornton Jr. enjoyed a perfect Friday night at 300 Raceway in Farley, Iowa: overall fast time, heat win, $12,000 victory in the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series-sanctioned You Call We Haul 50.
The only blemish for the 32-year-old native of Chandler, Ariz., who now lives in Martinsville, Ind., came shortly after he left the track — and it was definitely a buzzkill.
As Thornton was driving his motorhome toward 34 Raceway in West Burlington, Iowa, for Saturday’s Lucas Oil Series event, about 20 minutes from the track his apparel trailer behind the camper slipped off the roadway as he was rounding a corner. The trailer broke off at the hitch and flipped, leaving it “junk,” according to Thornton, and the merchandise inside it a mess.
Fortunately, Thornton’s RV didn’t go over with the trailer and thus wasn’t damaged, while RTJ and his three young children — two sons and an infant daughter riding with him — weren’t injured. His wife, Shae, was just ahead of the motorhome and trailer driving her car.
Thornton thanked “everyone that stopped” at the scene of the accident and added that “we are all safe and that’s what matters most.” His mangled trailer was towed away by fellow racer Jason Rauen, who is from Farley, Iowa.
The incident certainly wiped away some of the post-race glow from Thornton’s superb outing at the 3/8-mile Farley oval, where he overtook Mason Zeigler of Chalk Hill, Pa., for the lead on lap 11 and maintained command for the remainder of the distance.
“We got to lapped traffic and it was hairy there for a little bit,” Thornton said of the race, “but it worked out for me.”
The triumph was Thornton’s series-leading fourth in Lucas Oil action this season and his seventh overall of 2023, continuing his best campaign since the longtime open-wheel modified ace switched to regular Late Model competition in 2020 with the SSI Motorsports team.
“It’s been a really incredible year for us,” said Thornton, who moved into sole possession of second in the Lucas Oil points standings. “Hopefully we can keep it going.” — Staff reports
Zeitner’s charge
Justin Zeitner of Malvern, Iowa, started outside the fourth row in Friday’s Malvern Bank Super Late Model Series event at Boone County Raceway in Albion, Neb. — and he was still running eighth after a half-dozen laps.
That wasn’t going to get the job done in chasing the $3,000 winner’s purse.
“I putted around up there on that top and it didn’t feel bad,” Zeitner said. “I’m like, ‘Well (shoot), I’ve got another to lose, let’s let ’er rip.’ ”
And that’s what he did, stealing the lead from Jake Neal on the 13th lap and leading the rest of the 30-lapper for his first series victory of the season and eighth of his career.
Zeitner’s aggression came partly from critics close to him that “have been on me and on me about how I’ve been conserving and how I need to quit that and just get after it,” Zeitner added. “So I just told myself, ‘I’m going to burn the right-rear up on this son of a bitch and win this race.’ So I did.”
He kept cousin Corey Zeitner in check through lapped traffic the rest of the way in racing to victory.
“I wasn’t getting to (the lapped traffic) as quick as I wanted to do there at the end, but I did look down there, and I seen on the (score)board it was (No. 26) in second,” Justin Zeitner said. “I was like, ‘Well, if anybody’s going to go by me, it’s going to be Corey.’ So if he wins, and I run second, it’s not the end of the world. But I told my dad (that) for us to be up front, I mean, it means the world to me to deliver (the victory) to him tonight.”
After racing extensively in recent seasons, Zeitner planned to take the rest of the weekend off and attend a family member’s graduation. He’s trying to do right by his family and spend a little less time with his race program.
“I’ve got to thank my wife and kids, first and foremost,” he said. “They put up with a lot with me being out in the shop all the time. It’s a lot on a family and I’m scaling back this year, believe it or not.” — dirtcrown.tv reports
Uplifting outings
Tim McCreadie and Mason Zeigler had reasons to smile despite falling short of victory in Friday night’s Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series-sanctioned You Call We Haul 50 at 300 Raceway in Farley, Iowa.
For McCreadie, a runner-up finish helped snap him out of a month-long slump. As for Zeigler, leading laps 1-10 and placing fourth continued his dramatic change in fortunes since he ended his run as the Barry Wright house car driver and debuted a new Rocket Chassis two weeks ago.
McCreadie, 49, of Watertown, N.Y., has struggled in recent weeks with his Paylor Motorsports Longhorn Chassis house car, tallying just three top-five finishes — all of them fifth-place runs — in 11 starts entering Friday’s program since he was the runner-up in April 18’s Castrol FloRacing Night in America event at Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio. His finishes in five Lucas Oil shows during that span (10, 15, 5, 14, 13) were especially frustrating for the tour’s two-time and defending champion.
But T-Mac shook off the doldrums at Farley, performing strong from the start of the night (heat race winner) to the end (grabbing second from Zeigler late in the distance).
“It’s just nice to put a normal night together where you’re not running B-mains or not changing everything on the car every time you come in,” said McCreadie, whose only victories this season came back-to-back nights Feb. 14-15 in DIRTcar-sanctioned events at Volusia Speedway Park in Barberville, Fla. “Maybe this is the start of something good.”
Pulling out a newer car despite his fears that the Farley track surface might be treacherous helped fuel McCreadie.
“I saw the rain last night when I was here and I thought, Man, I’ve been here before when it rains. It’s usually a real tough track,” said McCreadie, who moved back to fourth in the series points standings as he matched his best finish of the season on the circuit. “I didn’t want to tear up this other car because we’ve been running the car we were running at the end of last year. (The crew was) like, ‘No, let’s unload it, let’s do something,’ and we went to work.”
The 30-year-old Zeigler, meanwhile, made his decision to bypass this weekend’s scheduled World of Outlaws Case Late Model Series event in his home state — at Pennsylvania’s Marion Center Speedway and Port Royal Speedway — pay off with an uplifting performance. He contended throughout the feature en route to his fourth top-five finish in five starts with his new Glenn Elliott-owned Rocket.
“We went a little different on tires,” said Zeigler, who was victorious in his first outing with the Rocket (May 5 at Pennsylvania’s Bedford Speedway) and hasn’t finished worse than eighth driving it. “I don’t think it really hurt us, but I made two mistakes and that’s all it took to run fourth. That lapped car moved up and I had to lift for him and (eventual winner Ricky) Thornton was there to slide me (to take the lead), and then before we got back to traffic the next go around the caution just killed me when I felt like I could sort of get a run on him.
“That last restart (on lap 32) I had a good run and I was gonna slide (Thornton) — I wasn’t gonna check it getting in (the corner) — and he did everything right. He didn’t lift getting in on that last restart and I ended up getting a little sideways and McCreadie got underneath me … that’s just the way it goes.
“For what this is, what, the fourth or fifth night out for this new car? I can’t complain,” he added. “I’m just excited moving forward.” — Staff reports
