DirtonDirt.com Dispatches

Dispatches: First Sooner win for Muskogee teen

May 20, 2024, 8:40 am

From staff, series, track and special reports

Eli Ross in victory lane. (Aaron Sims

Among latest notes and quotes from around Dirt Late Model racing during a mid-May weekend with four scheduled World of Outlaws Case Late Model Series events and MARS Championship Series action in Illinois. Our coverage includes a primer on the weekend's streaming selections around the country:

Ross shines

What a difference one year can make.

Last season Eli Ross showed a lot of potential logging a second-place finish and two third-place runs during his rookie Late Model campaign. That potential came to fruition Saturday with Ross racing to his first Apex Healthcare Partners Sooner Series victory at Ada's Oklahoma Sports Park.

Starting fourth in the 25-lap main event, the 16-year-old Ross raced into second on the third lap, then chased down early leader Zach Nickell. Nickell was setting a strong pace in looking for his second career series victory. However, Ross bided his time and capitalized on a lap-12 restart, grabbing the lead.

“He kept bobbling in (turns) 3 and 4 and I was trying to run the bottom as hard as I can,” the Muskogee, Okla., youngster said. “When that restart came out I knew I was going to have something for him. I think he bobbled in 1 and 2 and I got under him. I wanted to race him as clean as possible.”

Nickell knew he could not make any mistakes with Ross right behind him.

“I knew if I made one mistake he would pass me and did my best to hit my marks, but my brakes were going away and it made it harder and harder,” Nickell said of losing the lead. “I made a mistake and he capitalized on it.”

Ross feels he has learned a lot from his rookie season and it was apparent watching him charge to the front.

“I feel like I am more aggressive,” Ross said of his driving style. “Tonight there were multiple lanes and I capitalized on that and made the pass for the lead.”

Ross climbed behind the wheel last season following the death of his brother Hayden in 2022 in a non-racing ATV accident. Hayden locked up the Sooner championship that season before his death driving the car Eli is now wheeling. Eli credits Hayden for helping him learn so quickly.

“I have been around racing for a while now since my brother was racing and I took note and am fortunate to race now,” Ross said. “When my brother was still alive me and him tested a little in his spare car and he helped me a lot getting in the right direction. I feel he guides me in every single race I do.”

Ross has also had help with car setup from well known racer Joe Godsey.

“Joe Godsey has been helping us all year and he is one of the best setup guys out there,” Ross said. “I can’t thank him enough. I think the year is going to be a fun year. — John Rittenoure

Spectacular performance

Chris Madden of Gray Court, S.C., thought he had broken the seal on victory lane with his long-awaited first win of 2024 in Thursday night’s World of Outlaws Case Late Model Series stop at Raceway 7 in Conneaut, Ohio.

Then the veteran hit the track on Saturday night at Marion Center (Pa.) Raceway and all the confidence he gained 48 hours earlier seemed to evaporate into thin air. He timed a dismal 15th-fastest in his 27-car qualifying group. He missed transferring in his heat by a spot before finishing second in a B-main to earn the 22nd starting position for the 50-lap Connor Bobik Memorial.

But Madden and his crew “just kept working on it, changing and changing and changing” their Longhorn Chassis in search of more speed, he said. “I think we changed everything but the driver — and he was next (the crew) said.”

By the end of night, all the toil paid off.

“I kept telling them guys, ‘We can’t keep tweaking on this thing. We gotta make some changes. We’re terrible,’” Madden related. “So we went to work and put our heads together and here we are.”

Madden, who celebrates his 49th birthday on May 23, made those comments while standing in victory lane after turning his evening completely around with a dramatic drive forward from the 11th row to grab the event’s $15,000 top prize. He steadily moved through the field in an A-main slowed only by caution flags on laps one and 28, reaching the top 10 on lap 15, the top five on lap 29, third on lap 32, second on lap 36 and, finally, the lead with a lap-46 pass of race-long pacesetter Kyle Bronson of Brandon, Fla.

After beating Bronson to the finish line by 1.316 seconds for his second consecutive WoO checkered flag, he wasn’t asked if he understood the significance of his extreme rally to emerge triumphant. But make no mistake — he had authored one of the most impressive performances of this, or any, Dirt Late Model season. National touring series features just aren’t won from so deep in the field very often.

Consider that before Saturday’s action, the average starting spot for a race winner in nine WoO A-mains this season was 2.67. (Fifth was the farthest a driver had come to win.) The Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series has an almost identical average starting spot of 2.63 for its race winners in 19 features this year. (Ninth is the deepest start for a victor on the tour that has seen eight features won from the pole.)

What’s more, just twice in 2023 was a WoO feature won by a driver starting 20th or worse: Hudson O’Neal of Martinsville, Ind., won from 23rd on Feb. 18 at Volusia Speedway Park in Barberville, Fla., and Mike Marlar of Winfield, Tenn., was victorious from 22nd on July 14 at Ponderosa Speedway in Junction City, Ky. And it’s been nearly four years since the Lucas Oil Series last had a winner start 20th-or-beyond: Aug. 15, 2020, when Tim McCreadie of Watertown, N.Y., captured the North-South 100 at Florence Speedway in Union, Ky., from the 20th spot. — Series reports

Feger hangs on

Reigning MARS Championship Series champ Jason Feger of Bloomington, Ill., grabbed his first tour victory of the season Saturday at Highland (Ill.) Speedway, but he wasn't sure if he should run the top groove or the bottom groove with a couple of speedy pursuers giving chase.

Feger started outside the front row and officially led all 40 laps, but he had his hands full with pole-starting Dillon McCowan of Urbana, Mo., Friday's MARS winner at Kankakee (Ill.) County Speedway and Daryn Klein of Fairview Heights, Ill., who owns more than a dozen Super Late Model victories at Highland over the past six seasons.

“I didn’t know where to go early,” Feger said. “Obviously Daryn’s really fast here and Dillon, he’s been good, you know, he won last night and he definitely had a really fast car tonight. So I wanted to be on that bottom, but I knew them guys were probably (race) by me on the top.”

From the outset it was tense with Feger, McCowan and Klein three-wide crossing the flagstand for the first time and Klein briefly getting out of shape and cutting through the turn-one infield. McCowan actually edged ahead of Feger several laps later — a move negated by a caution — then Klein got rolling on the high side and nearly got around Feger on the frontstretch but Klein ran out of racing room entering turn one.

Eventually, McCowan and Klein began mixing it up themselves with Feger out front, colliding at the end of the frontstretch to knock both of them out of the race before halfway.

“Luckily — I don’t know exactly what happened — they crashed out,” Feger said, who decided to stick with the bottom groove the rest of the way and thought “everybody else out there was going to the top. I thought we’d get down to the bottom. I’m a little more comfortable down there. This place is definitely treacherous on the high side.”

Feger was glad to finish off the triumph and ended his victory lane interview with a request: doesn’t anybody have a beer around here?

“We love coming here. It’s always a great, great crowd here with a lot of great fans. And we have a lot of fun down here,” Feger said. “We’ve had a lot of bad luck lately. We’ve been really, really fast (and) should have won a lot of races and we just keep having flat tires and bad luck. But hopefully the monkey’s off our back. We got the win tonight. This definitely helps us in the MARS points.” — Series reports

Persistence pays

Three times Dillon McCowan took the lead Friday at Kankakee County Speedway. The first was erased by a caution. His second bid out front lasted two laps before a high-running Kye Blight regained command. The third time? A charm.

Grabbing the lead on a lap-35 restart, the 20-year-old redhead from Urbana, Mo., paced the final six laps at the rugged quarter-mile oval for a career-high $5,012 payday and his first victory on the MARS Championship Series. A deflating right-rear tire held on just long enough for McCowan to take the checkers as it went flat by the time he reached victory lane.

"The way our luck's going, I just wanted to finish in the top five, you know?" said the fifth-starting McCowan, a second-year Super Late Model racer who picked up five victories last season, including a $5,000 payday on the Comp Cams Super Dirt Series at Super Bee Speedway in Chatham, La. "We had a couple of good restarts there and was able to get by those guys and I thought we may have a chance. Then I didn't know if my right-rear was going away or what. (Blight) was going away on the cushion and it come down to it and it was just elbows up, whatever you got to do."

In the 40-lap Richard Craven Memorial where speedsters Jason Feger of Bloomington, Ill. (flat tire while running second on the ninth lap; he ended up sixth) and Mike Harrison of Highland, Ill. (backstretch rollover just before halfway while running third; he wasn't hurt) fell from contention, it was Blight who led most of the way. The 31-year-old from Bunbury, Western Australia, was letting it all hang out on the high side in search of his first stateside victory in the Paul Stubber-owned No. 31.

McCowan slipped underneath Blight to lead laps 16-17, but the Aussie went back to work up top, frequently banging his car's right-rear quarterpanel off the turn-four concrete. With McCowan taking command on the final restart, Blight ended up slipping to third behind runner-up Bob Gardner on the final lap.

"If you told me 12 months ago, I would have run third in a MARS race, I would have been stoked," a disappointed Blight said. "But man, to lead 30-odd laps and then run third, that kind of sucks."

McCowan knew his right-rear tire felt iffy in the final laps, but he also knew the lap-34 caution gave him his best chance to regain the point from Blight.

"Kye was fast up there and I knew the only way I could get around him was just get one good run off of a restart," McCowan said. "And that was the only way I was gonna catch him. (McCowan's spotter was) about to have a heart attack down there trying to get me to go to the top, but I definitely didn't want to."

McCowan ran the low side after taking the lead, then jumped to the high groove to protect his edge for the final two laps. He took the checkers a half-second ahead of Gardner.

Madden ends skid

In dominating Thursday’s 40-lap World of Outlaws Case Late Model Series feature at Raceway 7 in Conneaut, Ohio, Chris Madden of Gray Court, S.C., ended a 21-race skid on the national circuit.

The 48-year-old driver notched his first WoO victory since Aug. 4 at Cedar Lake Speedway in New Richmond, Wis., ending his second-longest losing streak on the circuit during seasons when he’s run the full schedule. (Madden had a 30-race slump in 2021, failing to win again after capturing three consecutive races in May, including back-to-back victories at Pennsylvania’s Port Royal Speedway).

Madden, a three-time series runner-up but never a champion on the World of Outlaws circuit, gained ground by moving into third in the series points with the $10,000 victory, the 37th of his WoO career and third in Ohio (he won twice last season at Ohio’s Sharon Speedway).

Starting outside the front row, Madden led comfortably most of the race, but runner-up Kyle Bronson of Brandon, Fla., challenged a few times as the leader tried to negotiate slower cars.

“We had a good car right there,” Madden said in victory lane after winning his (and the tour’s) debut at the 4/10-mile oval. “I caught lapped traffic a little bit too fast right there at the end. I didn't want to run into lapped traffic again because (the track surface) had got pretty one-laned and kind of dusty around the top, so I wasn't gonna be able to step out, but we were able to get it done there.”

Bronson matched his best finish of the season in finishing second, one spot ahead of pole-starting Cade Dillard of Robeline, La.

"I thought I was gonna be able at least roll to the outside of (Madden) there before that (lap-25) caution come out,” Bronson said. “I felt like my car was extremely good there and we started having a tire (go) down there at the end, and like I said, I got really tight down there. I couldn't really turn as good as I'd like to in (turns) one and two. — Series reports

T-Mac’s fallen hero

Receiving condolences on the passing of his father, Tim McCreadie’s reaction was what you’d expect from one of Dirt Late Model racing’s best racers upon the passing of one of big-block modified racing’s best racers.

“I’ve lost my hero,” McCreadie responded.

Bob McCreadie of Watertown, N.Y., died Wednesday after a period of declining health. The winner of 507 career feature races was 73. Affectionately known throughout his distinguished career by his Barefoot Bob nickname, McCreadie became a short-track cult hero by excelling far-and-wide on a high level while maintaining a humble personality and home-grown racing effort that usually included him towing his car to the track on an open trailer. His appearance was unmistakable — thin frame, bearded face, glasses and ever-present hat atop his head — and his No. 9 machine was iconic in the modified world.

The legendary driver’s long list of special recognition includes his induction to the Northeast DIRT Modified Hall of Fame, the Eastern Motorsport Press Association Hall of Fame and The Dirt Track at Charlotte’s Walk of Fame.

Tim McCreadie originally followed his father’s tire tracks into big blocks before shifting to Late Models in 2004.

Bob McCreadie’s back and other health problems since the motorcycle accident in May 2006 that ended his driving career largely prevented him from traveling to see Tim race in the Dirt Late Model division, but T-Mac never failed to check in with his father to receive breakdowns of his performance and ideas on how to improve.

Bob watched Tim race a Late Model in person only a handful of times, including a 2009 World of Outlaws Case Late Model Series event at Can-Am Motorsports Park in La Fargeville, N.Y., the track just 10 minutes north of Watertown where Bob was named grand marshal for the night. (Tim finished second.) The elder McCreadie was in attendance for two of Tim’s many Dirt Late Model victories: WoO features on June 23, 2009, at Land of Legends Raceway in Canandaigua, N.Y., and June 19, 2013, at Fonda (N.Y.) Speedway. Father and son were together in victory on both occasions with the Canandaigua success being especially memorable— it was Tim’s first win since returning the previous week from a Chili Bowl back injury that sidelined him for five months and it came at a track that both Bob and Tim called home during their modified careers.

Calling hours for McCreadie are scheduled for Sunday from 1-5 p.m. at D.L. Calarco Funeral Home in Watertown, N.Y. Tim McCreadie won’t have to change his racing plans because the Rocket Chassis house car driver had already planned to take the weekend off before his father’s passing. — Kevin Kovac

Editor's note: Updates with funeral arrangements; fixes Bob McCreadie's age to 73

Iowa duo

Todd Cooney of Des Moines, Iowa, has a hard time believing how well things have gone this season for his team’s co-driver Ryan Gustin of Marshalltown, Iowa, a two-time winner in 2024 including a $25,000 payday on the World of Outlaws Case Late Model Series at Mississippi Thunder Speedway in Fountain City, Wis.

“Oh man, I started this (WoO) deal with myself” at the beginning of the 2023 campaign, Cooney said. “Then Ryan and I talked in October of last year. But after (WoO’s World Finals in Concord, N.C.), we didn’t have a truck, a trailer, race cars or motors. We didn’t have anything for him starting off. It was just me, him, and (crew member) Noah (Bushman) . We had a dream that we were gonna make this deal happen. Noah found Tim Douglas to be the crew chief, and he fully believed in what we were doing, knowing we had nothing to offer.

“So to build a team from nothing against the best Late Models in the country and go out there to compete and win, it feels like a fairy tale, to be honest. I really don’t know how to explain it because I’m emotionally at awe. It still doesn’t feel real. I can’t think of anyone who built a team in this amount of time and can run with these guys. I’m speechless. I just tell everyone that this is a dream.”

Gustin was on Cooney’s short list of drivers he’d trust to drive his cars. With their families crossing paths through multiple generations, Cooney said he’s excited to continue the journey with Gustin for years to come.

“There’s only a few people I’d ever want to drive for me, and Ryan is one of them,” Cooney said. “When he said he wanted to do something different, I was completely bluffed that he would even consider driving for me. I’ve known Ryan since he was super little. I raced with his dad and our grandfathers raced together, so our family ties go way back. He knows how passionate I am about the sport. He believes in what we’re doing and it’s going to pay off in the long run.”

Shortly after the 2024 season commenced, the Todd Cooney Racing team made the change to the newly christened Infinity Chassis by Wells Motorsports, becoming the first national touring Late Model team to pilot the new car. While still working out some kinks, Cooney is certain they will make it work with the help of the Wells family on their side.

“Before the World of Outlaws, nobody knew who I was,” Cooney said. “I talked to Eric Wells and the whole family made me feel like home. They treat you like a million dollars and do what they say they are going to do. We knew this car was being made about a year and a half ago. Of course, we had to keep it under the radar. I told him I wanted to play ball and be a part of it. He’s done exactly what he said he would do. The process is much different to the other chassis builders.

The "teamwork has been unreal” among Wells Motorsports team members and the team’s driver, Brandon Overton of Evans, Ga. “Brandon has helped Ryan out by giving him ideas to try on his Late Model and it’s went well. I don’t care what anyone says, (Overton) is a team player and he is awesome. I’d like to think we’re giving back a little with Tim sharing things to Eric, and it’s been a whole team effort between all of us.”

Gustin and Cooney are scheduled to be busy in mid-May with WoO’s Ohio-Pennsylvania swing that starts Thursday at Raceway 7 in Conneaut, Ohio. Action continues in Pennsylvania on Friday-Sunday at Bedford Speedway, Marion Center Raceway and Spring Run’s Path Valley Speedway. — Matt Skipper