Vado Speedway Park
Notes: Bailes wheeling latest AK design at Vado
By Todd Turner
DirtonDirt.com managing editor
Austin Kirkpatrick and his AK Race Car. (DirtonDirt.com)
VADO, N.M. (Jan. 3) — Austin Kirkpatrick typically drives his own AK Race Car, but as the North Carolina chassis builder grows closer toward producing a marketable product, he decided to tap Ross Bailes of Clover, S.C., for driving duties at the season-opening Rio Grande Waste Services Wild West Shootout. | Complete WWS coverage
Bailes will pilot the latest AK Race Cars design during the six-race miniseries at Vado Speedway Park that opens with a $25,000-to-win event Saturday at the 3/8-mile oval. The event continues with $10,000-to-win events on Sunday, Wednesday, Friday and next Saturday before concluding with another $25,000-to-win affair on Sunday, Jan. 12.
The 32-year-old Kirkpatrick appreciates the assistance of Bailes as well as a longtime friend from New Mexico for helping him get a jump-start on the 2025 season.
“This is kind of one of our prototypes for the design we're going to be hoping to run with this season,” Kirkpatrick said before Friday’s practice. "Robert Abercrombie, who's one of my longtime friends and sponsors, he lives really close to here and so we thought a really good place to test would be out here. And he kind of helped orchestrate and helped us get out here.
"Basically I wanted to focus more on just car-tuning and doing some R&D work, and so I called up my buddy Ross here and asked if he wanted to drive. He was gracious enough with his time and he came out here. He's going to wheel this thing.”
Having another driver behind the wheel of the black No. 69 car will allow Kirkpatrick to focus on critical details of developing the chassis.
"I wanted to eliminate the variable behind the seat, which is me driving,” he said. “Ross is obviously an accomplished guy and he's super-talented. It's gonna allow me to worry more about the R&D and the tuning of the car, and so we're going to come out here, hopefully spend a week out here running and learn some stuff, and hopefully be able to apply it to what we're trying to do here.”
Bailes will also give Kirkpatrick an unbiased opinion of the car.
"I fall in love with my creation sometimes. This is the case with almost all drivers. If they think it's going to work, it's going to work, just because they'll go out there and make that happen,” Kirkpatrick said. “And so being able to eliminate some of the biases that I might have will be beneficial — and Ross is probably better at giving feedback than I am anyways.
“So being able to just let him do his thing and me not have to worry about going out there and watching the racetrack and figuring out what I'm going to do driving-wise and just focus strictly on the car, I think is going to be a good combination. Hopefully we can get a few good runs in here and learn some stuff and have a successful rest of the season.”
While Kirkpatrick realizes putting the car on the track at a popular event isn’t “super secretive” as he builds toward an unveiling of a version of his AK Race Car he’ll plan to sell, he’s confident he’s developing a “product that can make a pretty big dent in the market.” An official announcement about the car is tentatively planned for later this season.
“My long-term dream has always been to get into the race-car making business, and so a lot of what I've built in the past has been more tailored towards just being good at Eldora (Speedway) or something more specific, have more of a specific application for it, whereas this car is going to be kind of more all-purpose,” Kirkpatrick said. “This is designed to be good in all conditions rather than just be really good at one thing. I'm really happy with how the design came out.
"We're looking forward to (the Wild West Shootout). It's going to be a fun time and we've got some good people here with us and hopefully we learn some stuff.”
East Bay replacement
Dirt Late Model will never be the same after the 2024 closure of East Bay Raceway Park near Tampa, Fla., a longtime fixture of Florida Speedweeks and among the sport’s most popular tracks. While most Speedweeks drivers will head to other Florida tracks, 25-year-old racer Seth Daniels of Jackson, Ohio, found a surprising replacement for his annual East Bay trip — Vado Speedway Park.
“I couldn't have thought of anywhere else to come really other than here after watching it for several years. The place races really well so we were excited to come out here,” Daniels said Friday. “We used to go to East Bay and that was a week(-long) deal and this is a little bit longer, but we all have jobs we work every day, so just to go anywhere for a week or two weeks, even three, it's like a vacation for us and we get to race and do what we love.”
Jackson, the runner-up on the Valvoline American Late Model Iron-Man Series circuit, made plans for the Vado trip in the fall.
“You're always looking ahead and towards the end of the year we really got to thinking that, you know, how East Bay wasn't gonna be there, so then you gotta think about something else to do to take up your time. That's when we started talking about this,” Daniels said. “We like getting out and racing in different places because the better competition you race, the different tracks you race, the better it makes you. And we ran that Iron-Man series last year that Chris Tilley put together and that helped us. I think we come leaps and bounds in one year, ended up second in the points to Rusty Schlenk in that deal and picked up one win at Atomic. We're gonna run that deal again. It's a good regional series for us and branch out, hit or miss some Northern Allstars stuff, World of Outlaws stuff and Lucas Oil stuff, and just have fun.”
The 26-hour haul to New Mexico was lengthy no doubt, but Daniels was glad to avoid some of the hilly highways en route to Florida, adding that it was a smooth shot once he reached east Texas. He was glad to find a Vado track that gave him some familiarity of a couple of home-state tracks, Portsmouth (Ohio) Raceway Park and Atomic Speedway near Chillicothe.
"It kind of puts me in the mind of a mixture of Atomic and Portsmouth, which we have back home,” said Daniels, whose family operates A&A Truck Stop. “It’s not quite as big as Portsmouth, but Atomic is a little bit smaller and more banked, so it's kind of a mixture of the two. We’ll see what we got here tonight and looking forward to racing tomorrow. We're ready to get started here and see what the week brings for us.”
Absent honoree
Alton Wilson of Clinton, S.C., has been a longtime official at the Wild West Shootout among other Dirt Late Model events, and he’d planned to retire from his racing duties after this year’s action at Vado. Unfortunately, health concerns forced him to miss the event, so a planned ceremony to honor Wilson won’t happen.
Race director Kelley Carlton, who has worked alongside the 64-year-old Wilson for more than 30 years at various racing events, is disappointed for his friend and realizes his retirement marks the end of an era.
“It’s hard to fill those shoes,” Carlton said before Friday’s practice. “In fact you can't fill them really — you gotta find a different pair of shoes, you know what I'm saying?”
Carlton hoped to send Wilson out in style with help from WWS promoter Chris Kearns.
“We had planned to do a deal on the front straightaway recognizing him for his retirement from racing,” Carlson said. “Chris had a custom buckle made with his name on it and the Wild West Shootout (logo). Then I had a plaque for him recognizing him for 31 years of loyal service. Unfortunately I have to do that when I get home now.”
Wilson hated to miss the event, Carlton said.
“He was really excited about coming here,” he said. “He's a guy who doesn't like to sit down and (health issues) was forcing them to not be able to do a lot, too.”
Wilson was more than Carlton’s right-hand man in working various series and independent events with KELCAR Motorsports, including the Castrol Gateway Dirt Nationals, Ultimate Super Late Model Series, Southern All Stars and more.
“He basically was my full-time employee because he kept up all our stuff, took care of the trailer and all that stuff,” Carlton said. “When he went home, he would take care of everything. He knew where everything was. If you came looking for something in the trailer, everybody went to Alton.”
Odds and ends
Two-time Comp Cams Super Dirt Series champion driver Kyle Beard of Trumann, Ark., is debuting a new Longhorn Chassis at Vado. … Hall of Famer Dale McDowell of Chickamauga, Ga., is at Vado for the first time with plans to run a few races in the Riggs Motorsports car of Jack Riggs. Assisting Jack and Jason Riggs in the pits, McDowell expected to let Jack Riggs run the No. 81j in the first few events with McDowell perhaps practicing tonight and Tuesday before seeing how the week develops. … Joel Collins of Princeton, Minn., is making his open-competition engine debut at Vado in a Team Zero Race Car. Collins, who normally pilots WISSOTA-sanctioned cars in the Upper Midwest, came thanks to sponsorship from Steve Hucovski of Sabre Plumbing, who also sponsors Chad Mahder of Bloomer, Wis., who Collins was pitted alongside. … Arizona native R.C. Whitwell is in the Vado pits crewing for Ethan Dotson of Bakersfield, Calif., but Whitwell isn’t ruling out a return to Super Late Model competition this season with the northwest Arkansas-based PCD Race Cars team that he’s driven winning modifieds for in previous seasons. Whitwell said his role with Dotson’s ASD Motorsports team would allow for him to slip away and race occasionally. … Justin Duty of Molalla, Ore., who left his equipment home as he plans to follow the Illinois-based MARS Championship Series again in 2025, is assisting fellow Oregon driver and longtime friend Bricen James in the pits at Vado. … While 45 Super Late Models were unloaded in the pits for practice, a few tentatively expected drivers apparently aren’t going to make the Vado trip, including December’s Snowball Derby winner Kaden Honeycutt of Bridge City, Texas, and Max McLaughlin of Mooresville, N.C., who is piloting a Niece Motorsports ride in 2025. Also no-shows are Valvoline American Late Model Iron-Man Series champion Rusty Schlenk, who needs more time to recover from broken ribs suffered at last month’s Gateway Dirt Nationals, and Morgan Bagley of Longview, Texas, who has the flu.
