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By Richard Golardi

Bobby Santos III on the Road to USAC’s Fastest Track

Bobby Santos III at World Wide Technology Raceway, 6-14-2025

Story and photo by Richard Golardi

June14, 2025

After two late spring pavement sprint car wins, Bobby Santos III heads for USAC’s fastest pavement track tonight, World Wide Technology Raceway, Madison, Illinois, to attempt to win for a thirdtime at the odd-shaped 1.25-mile track. He currently leads all USAC drivers with two Silver Crown Series wins at the track known for being within sight of the St. Louis Gateway Arch (just look out past the back stretch). After Dave Steele’s only Silver Crown Series win at the track in 2001, Bobby won the next two races held there in 2013 and ’14. Bobby has had a recent win at a high-speed pavement track in USAC Silver Crown racing, taking the 2023 Hoosier Hundred at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park. That win (his 15th career USAC IRP win) also tied him for first place (with Kody Swanson and Tracy Hines) at IRP for most USAC feature wins.

Bobby won the Must See Racing winged sprint car feature race at Berlin Raceway on Saturday, May 31, and also won the 500 Sprint Car Tour non-wing feature race at Toledo Speedway on June 7 in the black No. 98 DJ Racing sprint car. The winged car that won on May 31 was the black No. 22A. That makes two Saturday wins in a row for Bobby, and a win tonight would be a third consecutive Saturday win. Just prior to his current win streak, during Indy Race week with the Hoosier Hundred Silver Crown race and Little 500 sprint car race, his team’s social media account declared, “Last weekend didn’t go as well as we hoped for.” Bobby was winless that weekend, with Tyler Roahrig taking the Hoosier Hundred win and Jake Trainor winning the Little 500 for a second time in the last three years. Bobby got 16th in the Hoosier Hundred and was fourth at the Little 500, at which his car seemed to fade a bit late in the race.

Bobby holds the record at World Wide Technology Raceway for the fastest 80-lap USAC Silver Crown race, which was completed at a speed of 120.563 mph on June 14, 2014. The fastest single lap was by Kody Swanson at a speed of 148.814 mph last year on August 16. There was one error listed on the entry list for today’s USAC race. The list released by USAC showed Colton Bettis in the Sam Pierce/ AP Driver Development car. This listing was done, according to Richie Murray of USAC, because he was told that Colton would be driving the No.126 car (I was also told this was likely). The team later decided to enter only one car, the No. 26 car for Kaylee Bryson. Aaron Pierce told me today that he will enter two cars for Colton for the upcoming races at Winchester Speedway later this month. That includes the USAC Silver Crown race on Friday, June 27, and the 500 Sprint Car Tour race at Winchester on Sunday, June 29.

Earlier today, Bobby Santos III was asked if he could win for the third consecutive weekend, and commented, “I sure hope so. We’ve got some momentum going on our team, so hopefully we can get our Silver Crown car running as good as our winged sprint car is. Obviously, I’ve got a good team behind me with Dick [Fieler] and DJ Racing. Hopefully we can do what we need to do to be out front at the end.” Bobby will start on the outside of the front row for tonight’s Silver Crown Series race.

In Remembrance, Jane Fieler:
On a sad note, Richard Fieler, owner of the DJ Racing Silver Crown and sprint cars driven by Bobby Santos III, told me that his wife, Jane, passed away in October 2024at 86 years old due to illness.Due to her care needs, Richard had not been seen much at the track before then. He has been seen at the track for Bobby’s recent wins, even getting into the winner’s circle photos at Berlin Raceway.He is 90 years old.

 

 

Little 500 Post-Race Interview, Davey Hamilton Jr.

Story by Richard Golardi

May29, 2025

For the first time in nine years, a Floridian had a top-three finish in the Unified Group Services Little 500 Presented by UAW, and it was achieved by Tampa resident Davey Hamilton Jr. with a third-place finish. His race was not incident-free, with contact on the front stretch at the green flag before the start/finish line preceding a portion of the early race that he led. The Flying Exhaust Pipe incident, when a piece of the right-side exhaust pipe fell off of DaveyJr.'s car on the back stretch, bounced off thecatch fence, and fell just behind the wall in turn four, might have had its origin in the early-race contact. Davey Jr. movedout and ahead of everyone early in the race when he easily pulled away from second-place Tyler Roahrig on each restart. After the first round of pit stops, he was not able to show this kind of speed, as the cars of Tyler Roahrig and Dakoda Armstrong seemed to be the fastest. They both had their troubles, were not able to compete for the win (Roahrig was out with a mechanical problem while leading), and a post-race DQ for the original winner, Dakoda Armstrong, slotted the Kirk Morgan Racing blue No. 14 into third. It was Davey Hamilton Jr.’s best Little 500 result (sixth place was his previous best) and bodes well for an evenbetter future result.

Describing the starting incident, Davey Jr. said, “There wasn’t enough room, I tried to do my best to hold where I was and it just kind of caused a melee butI don’t think it was really anybody’s fault. It was just kind of a racing incident. I feel like the whole incident started with problems from the front row on, and I think I was pinched, I know I was pinched because I was pinched going into three. I couldn’t really do anything except hold my line with guys behind us, it was kind of a slinky effect. When you get held up, everybody is kind of there and everybody ran out of space. Beyond that, the car was great. It was fast. About lap two, I lost some of my brakes, I was pumping them up every corner, and on restarts, it was horrendous. I wanted to pull off, but they kept telling me, ‘Just keep going for it!’ I was pumping them up the second half of the race and I’ll take a fourth [changed to third after post-race inspection was complete] for that, but we did have a winning car for sure. I don’t know what to feel – I’m sad, I’m mad, but at the same time we did finish, and we’re going home.”

Regarding his early-race domination as the fastest car near the beginning, he said, “I had a good run on Roahrig when he was leading the race initially, so I just decided to go for it and it just felt so smooth and comfortable. The car felt the exact same as last year, to be honest with you. One of these days we’ve got to finish and end up on top. I actually passed Trainor again with no brakes, because I sent it in there and I couldn’t stop. It was either going to be a crash, or … luckily, we were both smart enough to get out of that. It’s hard to pass properly when you have no brakes. I was right behind him, but you can’t really take a risk. We do have something to work on there, because we shouldn’t be having brake fade that bad. I felt good, I could go another 500 laps. I wish the car had some better brakes, that’s all. We’ll work on that and come back next year stronger. I’m excited to come back next year. It’s a whole year of waiting, but at least we’re doing the right things and doing the right stuff to be P1 one day.”

The most exciting thing that Davey Jr. has ahead this year is a new ride that he announced recently, which is with the Indy NXT Series for four 2025 oval races with the IndyCar feeder series. “The Indy NXT – I’m excited. The first race is June 15th at Gateway in St. Louis. I’ve been testing, I’ve been training quite a bit for that. I feel like it’s been making me a better driver even in this stuff, even though it’s totally different. I’m doing all the right things, and I’m excited for that opportunity. I’m doing all the oval races this year [June 15, July 12, August 24, and August 31] and if everything goes right, I could land my IndyCar license but I don’t want to get my hopes up. We’ve got to take it one step at a time.”

And the next step could be? “IndyCar – that’s the plan. I’ll be honest with you, I have no interest in doing any sort of road course racing or any other oval racing, I have no interest in that. The only interest I have is the Indy 500. Realistically, it might be IndyCar, but reality, it’s the Indy 500. That’s all I care about. So, in order to do that, you still have to have an IndyCar license. I’ve done a lot of two-seater experience, I did it all last year. It helped out a lot, I did some previous Indy NXT races. Hopefully this year we keep doing better. If all goes right, I could get my license, but everything has to go perfectly. I’m not gonna get my hopes up, but we’ll just take it one step at a time. I’ve had either three or four previous Indy NXT races. All these guys that are coming up, they all want to be full-time IndyCar drivers. That’s all they want, I don’t. I don’t have any interest, I’m not a Formula 2 guy coming to America – not at all. I have a great team behind me now, and an IndyCar team, Dreyer& Reinbold, they’re kind of behind me too. They do an Indy 500-only program. My dad is involved with them, my sponsor is involved with them, it’s a really good fit for me if we get there. So, I don’t want to get my hopes up, but I’m young, I’m going to get old eventually so I’ve got to jump on it now. I’m hopeful, Indy NXT is the next step for me and we’ll go from there.”

 

 

Interview with “Surprise Winner” of the Little 500, Jake Trainor

Story and photos by Richard Golardi



May25, 2025

LITTLE 500 LAP 85 REPORT, The Flying Exhaust Pipe: A piece of the right-side exhaust pipe fell off of Davey Hamilton Jr.'s car on the back stretch, bounced off the turn three outside wall, was kicked up by a car, bounced off the fourth turn catch fence just below the top edge of the fence, and fell just behind the wall in turn four, where it sat for the remainder of the race. Several spectators directly in front of where I satin the fourth turn watched the metal piece bounce around and ducked down as it headed for the catch fence. Most spectators never saw it and did not react.

LITTLE 500 LAP 175 REPORT, Davey Jr. Moves Out and Ahead: No. 14 car of Davey Hamilton Jr. easily pulls away from 2nd place Tyler Roahrig on each restart. Pits stops may be coming soon, they are under yellow now.

LITTLE 500 LAP 329 REPORT, The Long Train: For about 50 laps, a train of cars 1/8 of a mile long made lap after lap with little passing, only one or two cars falling out of the train, several with engines popping and sputtering (Seavey, No. 51).

LITTLE 500 LAP 434 REPORT, Dakoda Pulls Away With Ease: Dakoda Armstrong has nearly a half-lap lead on 2nd place and appears to easily pull away on each restart. No one can match his speed.

2025 Little 500 winner Jake Trainor at the Little 500 Autograph Session, 5-24-2025.

POST-RACE REPORT, PART 1, Asking Dakoda Armstrong About the Disqualification: The No. 1 Little 500 race-winning car of Dakoda Armstrong has been disqualified, Dakoda Armstrong just told me. He described the device on his car that caused the DQ as a "lap timer" that used GPS and that all it did was time his car's laps. I asked if it was an electronic device that was listed in the rules as not being allowed. Apparently, the rules list it as not allowed. "We had it last year, both cars had it last year," a member of Dakoda Armstrong's crew said angrily. Track owner Rick Dawson stated, "It is in the rule that you can't have an electronic device." The cars of Jake Trainor, Kyle Gara, and Davey Hamilton Jr. are next to be pushed into the post-race inspection area.

POST-RACE REPORT, PART 2, Jake Trainor Reacts to Winning: I interviewed Little 500 race winner Jake Trainor a moment after his car passed through post-race inspection, and it had passed inspection with no problems. He seemed like he was still processing that he won the race, and it was a little hard to believe. I will have my interview with Jake Trainor next. I also have a post-race interview with Davey Hamilton Jr. that will be in my column later on Sunday.

POST-RACE REPORT, PART 3, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Race Car Driver: As I was heading toward the pit exit at Anderson Speedway at the conclusion of the Little 500 and the post-race inspection on Saturday night, I saw Dakoda Armstrong standing by himself, leaning on his No. 1 car. I had already spoken to him shortly before this, when he told me about the device (a lap timer, he said). No one from the No. 1 car’s crew was approaching him. I walked up to him, which was difficult to do after what had happened to him with a Little 500 disqualification from first place.
All I could say was, "I'm sorry about what just happened to you. I feel bad for you."
He made a comment to let me know how he felt. Obviously, this was a dilemma that was very unpleasant for him.
I moved on. I looked back over my shoulder to see Dakoda had stayed close to his car, pacing quietly near it, alone in his thoughts.

INTERVIEW WITH JAKE TRAINOR, WINNER OF THE 2025 UNIFIED GROUP SERVICES LITTLE 500 PRESENTED BY UAW: A rookie driving miracle-worker when he won the 2023 Little 500 in just his second sprint car race, Jake Trainor was now facing an entirely different experience in his second win in the iconic race. As he and his crew waited in line to have their car pushed through post-race inspection, he learned that the car in line ahead of him, the No. 1 car of then-winner Dakoda Armstrong, had been disqualified. They waited as an upset crew member shouted his displeasure, and when it stopped, they pushed their car forward, passed inspection with no problems, and waited a few moments just past the inspection area. That’s when I approached Jake Trainor to ask about what just happened. Here is what he said:

Q: So, things have changed. You were in second place in the Little 500, or so you thought. Then what happened?

A: We got the news that we cleared tech and that we’re the new winner of the race. Not quite sure what happened, but we’ll take what we can get. We’re two-time Little 500 champions now. I definitely would have loved to race my way for it but we’ll take this. This is awesome, it’s an unbelievable feat.

Q: I saw that you were the fastest car on the track near the end of the race. At first, you were a half a lap back from the leader (No. 1 car, Armstrong), then you cut into that lead a little each lap. You were gaining ground with each lap. Did you think you had a chance, or what were you thinking?

A: Yeah, I mean, with like 50 or 60 to go, kind of behind that group of guys, I think it was Davey, Kyle, and Bobby Santos there, I knew I couldn’t stay complacent there, I knew I had to go. We were good enough to work by all those guys and I wish we could have had a yellow and race for it. It is what it is. We’re the winners now, I guess. We’ll see.

Q: So, it must feel kind of strange right now, and that you still have to process what just happened, so how do you feel right now?

A: I don’t know how to feel. But they told us we’re the winners, so we’ll take it.

Q. Yes. If the guy in front of you breaks the rules and is DQ’d, then, you’re the winner.

A. That’s how it goes, yeah.

Q. Dakoda Armstrong told me that the device that caused his DQ was a lap timer that uses GPS. It was an electronic device that supposedly is not allowed by a rule and it was found on his car. Do you have any reaction to that?

A. Yeah, I’m not quite sure on the fine print in the rule book, but whatever Rick [Dawson] says is how it is. I believe him. We’re the winners now.

 

 

Tension, Relief, and Heartbreak on Little 500 Friday Bump Day

Story and photos by Richard Golardi

May 23, 2025

Rylan Gray, the 19-year-old Little 500 rookie starting in 22nd place for Saturday’s Unified Group Services Little 500 Presented by UAW, credited engine builder Jeff Claxton for making the call to car owner Tom Brewer that got him his Little 500 drive. That was the call that was instrumental in getting him the seat in the No. 64 Speed Chasers sprint car for the 2025 Unified Group Servies Little 500 Presented by UAW. This will be Rylan’s first pavement sprint car race, as he has been driving sprint cars on dirt before this week, in addition to his full-time job owning and operating a lawn-mowing business in Greenfield, Indiana. He was in his car in the pits during Friday bump day, but his qualifying time already had him set for a mid-field start on Saturday, and he was not in danger of being bumped.

Scotty Adema at the 2025 Little 500, 5-22-2025.

Scotty Adema experienced a day of being in, then bumped out, and then back in the field for Saturday during Friday Bump Day qualifying. I was told that the car (a newly purchased Beast chassis, tested at Showtime Speedway) was not handling well and was a handful to drive on Thursday, and on Thursday practice laps, it could be seen getting squirrely upon acceleration. There were bump stops that were removed and other changes made that significantly improved the handling. Theimprovements to the caron Friday were significant, and after getting bumped in the early afternoon, Scotty quickly did his own bumping and was back in the field for the second consecutive year. The next bumping was the fist bumps all around for owner and crew, and the statement by Scotty, “We’re done for today.” He felt confident that his qualifying time was solid, and that there were very few cars still trying to bump into the field, with three cars unable to qualify (Chris Jagger, Nathan Byrd, and Jerry Kobza).

Rylan Gray at the 2025 Little 500, 5-23-2025.

Florida Drivers Qualified for the 2025 Little 500, Anderson Speedway, Indiana, 500 laps, Saturday, May 24, 2025:

Davey Hamilton Jr., Tampa, FL, Start - 2nd
Colton Bettis, Lutz, FL, Start - 3rd
Landon Butler, Bushnell, FL, Start - 23rd
Scotty Adema, Fort Myers, FL, Start - 29th

Florida native (now living in Indiana) Landon Butler qualified 23rd for his rookie start in the Little 500 after not posting a qualifying time on Thursday Pole Day. An early morning statement from Landon’s father, Florida racing champion Shane Butler, stated: “Excitement, disappointments, stressful, tired, so many emotions leading up to and during the Little 500 week. You name it we’ve had it this week … we are still standing today with a chance to put Landon in his 1st Little 500.” And they did just that on Friday, with two rookie drivers from Florida, Landon and Colton Bettis, both in the field.

There were a surprising number of 2025 Little 500 starters listed on the entry list for the USAC Silver Crown Carb Night Classic (Friday night at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park) with 13 Little 500 starters on the entry list. Three Little 500 startersfrom the first two rows on Saturday were starting the Friday Silver Crown race. Kody Swanson already has one feature win tonight, in the National Pavement Midgets. Then the main event of the night, USAC’s Hoosier Hundred Silver Crown race, brought victory for another Little 500 winner, with Tyler Roahrig adding a Hoosier Hundred crown to his growing list of racing achievements.

Rookie driving sensation Colton Bettis from Florida was basking in the good vibes after providing further confirmation that all the accolades are being rightly affixed to his name. It’s only been two years since a rookie driver won the Little 500 (Jake Trainor in 2023), so can it happen, will it happen again? It only seems like yesterday that Colton was another 11-year-old Floridian getting into a full-tilt sprint car and taking to the track (Tyler Clem was the last 11-year-old to do it in Florida). How Colton will finish on Saturday night is the unknown, and the known factor is that the Florida racing community is taking greater notice of the race, especially with two Floridians on the front row. When was the last time that happened? It was 34 years ago, in 1991, when two Floridians last started on the front row of the Little 500, with Jim Childers (Seffner, FL) on the pole and Wayne Hammond (Tampa, FL) starting in the middle of the front row. Welcome back, Florida.

 

 

 

Some Rain and Lots of Free Time for Little 500 Drivers on Wednesday

Story and photos by Richard Golardi

Kody Swanson at the 2025 Little 500 at Anderson Speedway, 5-21-2025.

May22, 2025

Kody Swanson was looking over and testing his cockpit tools in his Beast chassis car at Anderson Speedway when I asked if he was pleased to be back in a Beast chassis for this year’s Little 500 (he drove a Diablo chassis in the 2024 Little 500). He said that the Beast chassis is the one he was used to, he has much more experience driving, and that he prefers it. The Diablo chassis is still in the team’s possession, it has an uncertain future for now. With his most recent race, Must See Racing sprint cars at Lancaster, NY, getting rained out last weekend, he seemed upbeat and anticipated getting back behind the wheel. His updated racing schedule, revealed on social media, shows no USAC Silver Crown dirt track races confirmed for the year. He confirmed he will be racing in all the Silver Crown paved track races with Doran Binks Racing.

I asked Kody Swanson during Wednesday’s Little 500 practice day about the possibility of driving in the 2025 dirt Silver Crown races. “I had an opportunity with John Haggenbottom and that team, I was super appreciative of that,” Kody said.“For me, it was a question of how badly do I want to try to run for another title.I’ve been really blessed to have had great opportunities and to do it for a long time, but I’m probably ready to not have it [all Silver Crown dirt tracks] added for this year. He [car owner John Haggenbottom] was really gracious and great to work with. We started out with running the ones we wanted to run as they came. We’ll probably pick and choose for the rest of the year.”

Waiting Out the Rain at Anderson Speedway, 5-21-2025.

I asked Kody if he was saying that we might see him in some of the Silver Crown dirt races, but not all of them? “Yeah,” he responded, “I think so, at this point, with John Haggenbottom’s car, the No. 24 team. We’re trying to see which races make the most sense. I feel like I’ve always planned on doing them all because if you’re running for a title, you’ve got to do them all. As that context changes, we’re trying to figure exactly where we want to be and when.” Kody mentioned that he does not know which of the remaining 2025 Silver Crown dirt track races he will be competing in. He also confirmed that he does plan on driving the Dick Myers No. 50 pavement sprint car in more races this year. “They’re a great bunch,” Kody said of the Dick Myers team, “and there’s a few races we’re planning on. I know we’re planning on being at Berlin Raceway [Michigan] next Saturday night, May 31.”

Kody said of the Diablo chassis that he drove in last year’s Little 500: “We never did get it quite right. I feel like we made up a lot of ground with it for as little as we ran it – we’ve been running this Beast for a few years and I’ve got a lot of experience in other Beast chassis cars. I feel like we’ve been really good with this car before. This shortens that learning curve getting back to a chassis that’s more familiar.” Kody never drove that Diablo chassis car again last year, as he was focused on the full USAC Silver Crown schedule, dirt and pavement, and won his eighth Silver Crown driving title in 2024. His plan with Doran Binks Racing this year is similar, just the Little 500 sprint car race and the partial USAC Silver Crown schedule. Regarding his confidence level for this year’s Little 500: “I’m cautiously optimistic, I’ve been good with this car and this team before. We’ve had this exact same Beast chassis on the front row before.”

Rookie driving sensation Colton Bettis from Florida was firmly in the “all confidence, no doubts” frame of mind when I spoke to him in the pits at Anderson Speedway as a light rain fell. He made no admission of having any feeling of trepidation or unease (of course,Idid ask), but instead was excited and looking forward to his first Little 500 and first endurance auto race. Saturday’s 500-lap race will also be his first race with pit stops. He confirmed that the car and engine are the same as what he raced at Anderson Speedway in April, when he took a third-place finish in the Glen Niebel Classic on April 17. The car does have a new wrap with the name of a new sponsor (Zaki Ali Trial Lawyers), also seen on his new firesuit. Colton does not yet know when he will be racing in his next three planned 2025 pavement Silver Crown races, but this Friday’s Silver Crown race at Lucas Oil IRP in Indianapolis will not be on his schedule. His team, Sam Pierce Chevrolet, will not be entering a car for Friday’s race at IRP. AP Driver Development’s Aaron Pierce did tell me previously that he would prefer for Colton to drive in the Gateway (Madison, IL) Silver Crown race, which is on June 14.

 

 

 

 

Interview with Danny Ernstes, 2025 Jack Nowling Award Winner

 

Story and photo by Richard Golardi

 

May 19, 2025

 

Danny Ernstes at the 2022 Little 500.

 

I recently asked Danny Ernstes,the 2025 recipient of the Jack Nowling Award from the Little 500 Hall of Fame, to tell me about his background and what he does for the UAW and their involvement with the Little 500. Danny is the United Auto Workers Region 2B Coordinator, based in Indianapolis.

 

“OK, we got to get the Little 500 pace truck from Sam Pierce,” Danny said,“we got to get a charity involved, when are we getting the truck wrapped, and then when it’s wrapped, what are we going to use that truck for? It becomes an ambassador of the Little 500, so how can we use it effectively? How can we use it to promote the Little 500, promote the charity seen on the truck, and bring awareness or money to that cause? I’ve been that person. As presenting sponsor [the UAW], what does our social media platform look like, especially if we have a charity we wish to highlight? The official pacetruck this month is going to look like the old, two-tone Chevy, blue and yellow, the C-10 back in the day. The pace truck has blue and yellow, traditional UAW colors, with an underlay of the UAW logo in blue, and the race logo with space for the race title sponsor. ‘Turn Away No Longer’ is a faith-based organization that improves the lives of foster care children here in Anderson, they’re on the side of the truck and are the featured charity for this year’s pace truck. For the UAW, the Four UAW Values shown on the truck will have a link over to a landing page to show what the UAW does and what their values are.

 

“I’ve done this for the UAW, outside of what I do for the Little 500, for almost 25 years. Working with the Little 500 on behalf of the UAW has been since 2014. We’ve always been involved in short-track racing in Indiana, like at the Indianapolis Speedrome. Probably for the last 25 years, I’ve been the point person for the UAW in Indiana to reach across into motorsports to drivers, tracks, and with businesses.”

 

Danny Ernstes mentioned some of the names of drivers and others that he has worked with and gotten to know during his time as the UAW’s point person with the Indiana auto racing community, including Bryan Clauson, John Andretti, Tony Hunt, Jarrett Andretti, and Ryan Newman. His contacts in Indianapolis area short track racing, and the local UAW racing sponsorships he managed, are too numerous to try to list here. The months of May and June this year are his last with these duties, as Danny is retiring from the UAW on June 30, 2025. It will likely be his last year fulfilling all these volunteer duties for the Little 500 on behalf of the UAW. It will be a very difficult task to find someone with Danny’s passion for motorsports and for completing all these tasks that he takes on for the Little 500 and Indiana short track racing.

 

“Motorsports has always been an innovator into the auto industry,” Danny said. “Motorsports with the UAW, especially in Indiana, is our heritage. We’re tied with pace vehicles, we’re tied with parts, engines, tires, and just about everywhere you turn, we’ve had a hand in sponsorships. You know, Tom Bigelow used to tell me, ‘Man, you guys used to sponsor me back in the day.’ ”

 

Remarkably, Danny made it to the 2024 Little 500 just a couple of months after getting a kidney transplant. I asked him how he was doing now after a year of adapting to his new life as a transplant recipient. “I am surviving and doing very well,” he answered. “The movie [Driven To Save Lives, about Racing to End the Wait for Lifesaving Organs] got picked up by the Indy Film Fest here in Indy. The original movie premiere was on March 15, 2024, which I couldn’t be at because the transplant was a week later. This showing at the Indy Film Fest drew a lot of donors, donor recipients, donor families, and also people from the transplant hospitals. It was more of the everyday people that are involved, and it was very emotional. It strengthened this community to continually push for organ donation even more. This was a more grassroots film showing, more people in the organ donation space. It’s helping with awareness and drawing in people from the community. I’ve been honored to represent the UAW members and families and the motorsports arena for many years. It doesn’t mean I’m going away. I’m just going to have a different role.I’m working on a few things.”

 

 

 

2024 Little 500 Saw the First Last-Lap Lead Change

Story and photo by Richard Golardi

Caleb Armstrong, winner of the 2024 Little 500, May 25, 2024

May 12, 2025

Was the finish of the 2024 Little 500 Presented by UAW the first time that a pass for the lead occurred on the last lap of the race, the 500th and final lap? From my research into the available newspaper archives (Newspapers.com), the evidence that I have found supports the statement that it was the first lead change on the last lap in the history of the race, going back to 1949. This conclusion was made after researching all the previous Little 500 finishes going back to the first race, and paying special attention to the finishes of two years: 1953 and 1969. In these two years, there was a lead change that was close to the end of the race (1953), and a wild finish in which the race leader nearly got passed on the last lap between the fourth turn and the finish line (1969). I found no other documented evidence of a last-lap lead change in the Little 500 occurring before last year that can be confirmed from multiple sources.

First, let’s examine the finish of the 1953 Little 500. Four local newspaper sources, all in the area near the track, Anderson and Muncie, Indiana, reported on the race’s close finish. The conclusions that they reached about the race’s finish follow:

Anderson Daily Bulletin, June 1, 1953, “King Thrills Fans With Closest ‘Little 500’ Win”

“[Race winner] Bob King, champion of the 1953 Little 500 … closest finish in the history of the country’s top roadster classic … Johhny Key, Salinas, Calif. was the loser of a tense battle … ending in King’s overhauling him on the 499th lap and finishing five car lengths in front.”

Anderson Herald, May 30, 1953, “Bob King of Muncie is 1953 ‘Little 500’ Race Champion”

“… Bob King of Muncie roared back strong late in the race to pass John Key of Salinas, Calif. on the 499th lap and won the 1953 Little 500-lap Roaring Roadster championship …”

Muncie Star, Muncie, IN, May 30, 1953, “Bob King Wins Little ‘500’ at Sun Valley”

“In a thrilling two-car duel, Bob King, Muncie, nosed out Johnny Key, Salinas, Calif., to capture the fifth annual Little 500 roadster race … edged past the Californian on the 499th lap to win by :01.20.”

Muncie Evening Press, Muncie, IN, May 30, 1953, “Muncie Man Wins Little 500”

“Bob King of Muncie won the fifth annual Little 500 Mile Race at Sun Valley Speedway … he edged past Johnny Key of Salinas, Cal. in the 499th lap to take the hard-fought race.”

All four reporters for the four newspapers, who commonly made their reports from the track, but can’t be confirmed as in attendance, all made the same conclusion: The pass for the lead, Bob King passing Johhny Key, was made on the 499th lap, the next-to-last lap (sometime after the flag man signaled two-to-go and before he gave the leader the white flag) and King therefore led the last two laps, lap 499 and lap 500. Therefore, it was not a last-lap pass according to this documented evidence. Reporters present at the track were likely given a printed report supplying this information. One last observation – reporters do not typically confer with other reporters to check if their description of a race finish is accurate. Rather, they report on what they saw or use a wire report from a reporter who was there. The Anderson reporters were likely at the track, used their own notes, and observed the race finish.

1969 Little 500:

Although the 1969 Little 500 can also be confirmed as not having a pass for the lead on the last lap, it was likely the wildest last lap of the Little 500 before 2024. And it did have a pass for second place that not only was a last lap pass, it happened between turn four and the finish line. In addition, the driver who made this pass for second, Ray Wright, came very close to also making a pass for the lead, coming up less than a car length short of passing Buzz Gregory for the win, who had run out of fuel halfway through the last lap. The first three finishers (Buzz Gregory, Ray Wright, and Bobby Black) were all within two car lengths at the finish line. This hard-to-believe scenario (confirmed by the Anderson Daily Bulletin) of a driver who came close to going from third to first place after the last turn of the last lap, is a story that could only be eclipsed by a driver winning while going backward, upside-down, and on fire only to jump out of the car, give the OK signal, and then ask for somebody to hand over a cold beer because it’s time to celebrate.

Anderson Daily Bulletin, May 26, 1969, “Buzz Gregory ‘Rocks’ His Way to Victory in 21st Annual ‘Little 500’ Sprint Race”

“… Buzz Gregory, of Speedway, Ind., out of brakes and out of fuel, almost blew a three-lap lead but managed to hang on to edge Ray Wright … by inches for victory in the 21st Annual Little 500 … pushing the car … the final two laps by the rocking motion of his body in the cockpit … Gregory got across the finish line less than a car length ahead of Wright [who got past the third-place car of Bobby Black] between No. 4 turn and the finish line on the final lap … in the wildest finish in the history of the race.”

The Little 500 was won on the last lap in 2024. Caleb Armstrong passed his cousin, Dakoda Armstrong, in the third turn of the last lap to take the lead and win the race, making it the first

time that happened in the race’s 76-year history. It came close to happening twice previously in the Little 500, in 1953 and 1969. It happened for the first time in 2024 (and that was a spectacular last-lap drive by Caleb Armstrong to win it), and now we all have the confirmation of what an achievement that was on May 25, 2024.

 

 

Bettis Joins the Big Time in Midwest Racing

Story and Photosby Richard Golardi

April 17, 2025

While at Auburndale Speedway on Saturday, I learned that the15-year-old Florida sprint car driver who won that night’s BG Products Southern Sprint Car Series feature race, Colton Bettis, had an update to his April racing schedule. Aaron Pierce, of Indiana-based AP Driver Development, was present at the track on Saturday to mentor Colton and told me about the upcoming schedule. I had earlier made a preemptive statement that Bettis was going to be entered in a Sam Pierce Chevrolet Racing Silver Crown car for the April 19 Toledo Speedway race, but Aaron let me know that wasn’t going to happen. He told me that the plan, at that time, was for Bettis to drive in four USAC Silver Crown paved track races, his first in the series, but not the race at Toledo. By Saturday night, that plan had changed. Toledo was on. I gloated, just a little, about being right the first time around.

Colton Bettis prepares to race at Auburndale Speedway, April 12, 2025

What the change of plans means is this: 1) Colton Bettis will now get his Silver Crown paved track debut on one of the half-mile short tracks, holding down top speeds and avoiding the need for advanced skills like drafting and slipstreaming demanded by tracks like Gateway at Madison, Illinois. 2) His current age, as of Saturday, will make him the youngest-ever USAC Silver Crown race starter, a mark set by Jeff Gordon decades ago. 3) Florida pavement racing can feel some pride and hold their heads a little higher – this is one of their own, a race driver thrown into the deep end of Florida short track racing at 11 years old and he has earned this chance. 4) Colton will get a multi-track, multi-car-type extended weekend (Thursday–Saturday) of racing this week (Thursday: Non-wing sprint cars, Anderson Speedway, Glen Niebel Classic; Friday: USAC Silver Crown, Toledo Speedway, practice; Saturday: Silver Crown, Toledo Speedway, 100-lap race). 5) The series of three races, all with the Sam Pierce Chevrolet team, will allow him and his team to get to know each other over a short period of intense racing. That’s helpful since they will do it again next month at the Little 500, an intense four days of practice, qualifying, and a 500-lap sprint car race at Anderson Speedway that can wear down and demoralize even the experienced sprint car drivers. The Sam Pierce team has looked strong in recent Little 500 races with Tanner Swanson driving and was in contention for the win until bad luck struck.

Is Colton Bettis ready? Looking at his most recent racing results (winning all but a couple of the 2025 Florida pavement sprint car races, earning both sprint car and late model championships last year), almost anyone would say, “Yes.” Those who will take a “wait and see” position only need to wait about anothersix weeks and they will know the results of all the racing listed in the last paragraph. Racing against a group of the best USAC drivers, also the best at handling the big, heavy champ cars is all new for Colton. Toledo Speedway is also new. His team, including both Sam and Aaron Pierce, have expressed their confidence in him and believe he is ready to make this move into Midwest and national series racing this year. He has already raced and won in Indiana in a USSA Kenyon Midget Series race at Anderson Speedway on July 8, 2023. Aaron witnessed Colton’s win at Auburndale on Saturday in which he started last, then methodically passed a dozen other cars until he was leading just before halfway.

Aaron Pierce at Auburndale Speedway, April 12, 2025

“I’ve watched him a lot and so have a lot of other people,” Aaron Pierce said on Saturday. “Starting at the back like that is tough, especially when the car wasn’t exactly right. The torque tube is bound up, something is up with it and we weren’t able to fix it earlier, and that’s a big deal. He drove the wheels off of it and he does it in everything he’s in and that’s why he’s doing what he’s doing with me. He’s going to run the Glen Niebel on Thursday and then go to Toledo on Friday to practice. It won’t be his first time on a half-mile, Sandusky [in July 2024] was his first time. And then on Saturday is the [USAC Silver Crown] race at Toledo. It’s the champ car race – he’s entered. He hasn’t even tested one yet. If you think about it, Toledo is the smallest place that we run and it’s the best place to get him started. I’d really like for him to go to Gateway and I’m sure he’d dig that. We’ve got a lot of stuff we’re going to do this summer, he can only run four races. We’ve got to pick the ones where he’s going to learn the most. He did a great job tonight.”

 

 

Ball of Confusion: 2025 Florida Pavement Sprint Car Racing

Story and Photo by Richard Golardi

March 23, 2025

Good News! The Florida pavement sprint car racing community has successfully resurrected their sport as a significant part of Florida’s annual February Speedweeks. During the heyday of Florida pavement sprint cars in the 1970s, they were a major part of February Speedweeks and reached peak popularity in 1977 and ’78 with the running of the Florida 500. With the downfall of Tampa’s Golden Gate Speedway in the mid-’80s, pavement sprint car racing in Florida went through a period of lessened popularity. Meanwhile, the Florida drivers went north and won the Little 500 five times in the’80s and early ’90s.

Colton Bettis, 2025 Southern Sprint Car Series and USAC Silver Crown driver.

More Good News!Move forward to 2025, and a “Hallelujah, What Took So Long” moment in time arrives to deliver a gift to Florida pavement sprint car fans, teams, and drivers. During February Speedweeks (OK, one race was actually on March 1, but let’s ignore that for now), there were five pavement sprint car races, both part of events on their way to being iconic Florida sprint car events. They were: 1) the Dave Steele World Sprint Car Championship, and 2) the Children’s Dream Fund 50 sprint car races. There was even a mix of winged and non-wing racing and some five-figure purses. Smart planning came into play, too. Knowing that the pavement teams don’t come to Florida for national sprint car series racing, which concludes on the evening before the Daytona 500 (Saturday, February 15), they chose to race on the two weekends after the 500,thereby leaving a more compact schedule for the Midwest teams, about ten days. Smart move – by planners and promoters both. Great, right? So, everything is all hunky-dory,let the good times roll for pavement sprint cars in the Sunshine State, right?
Wrong.

Semi-Good News! The good times seemed to roll/stumble for another week. Showtime Speedway, Pinellas Park, FL, March 8, 2025: Showtime Speedway Sprints and the Southern Sprint Car Series (SSCS) co-sanction a race at Showtime, allowing the preferred tire brands for each series, Hoosier and American Racer, to be used and getting the SSCS sprint car series off to a start for 2025. Hopes for an increased car count fell flat. Twelve cars started the feature. A Top Gun Sprint Series dirt race in South Florida on the same day drew nearly twice as many cars. The good news was tainted with disappointment and hope remained of adding Showtime Speedway races to the SSCS schedule, which had been bleeding tracks lately.

The Bad News Begins.As of March 8, the SSCS had begun their 2025 season and had settled into a schedule with limited participation from Florida pavement tracks, with only Auburndale Speedway and Citrus County Speedway on tap. This wasn’t a bad thing. After all, the series was about to celebrate one of their drivers (Colton Bettis) moving up to top-level national series racing this year (Bettis signed with the Sam Pierce Chevrolet team for the Little 500 and the USAC Silver Crown Series pavement races). Then one of their two tracks, Citrus County Speedway, was revealed (on March 18) to have decided to cancel all their remaining 2025 SSCS races (six in total) due to a request for the series “to subsidize the purse,” with no announced intention of rescheduling the dates. Citrus County Speedway may have been emboldened by the success they had with running the recent Children’s Dream Fund 50 races without outside sanctioning. That left the SSCS with only Auburndale Speedway on the ’25 schedule for just six races. But wait … could the addition of a single series race at Showtime Speedway in early March prove to be an omen for more races at Showtime on the ’25 SSCS schedule?

But, what About …? The other Florida paved tracks: Five Flags Speedway – Added Must See Racing sanctioned race (October 3); New Smyrna Speedway – Has signaled “not interested”; Desoto Speedway/ Freedom Factory – Has signaled “not interested”; Bronson Speedway, Orlando Speedworld, Punta Gorda Speedway – Closed. Oh, and now add one more to the list of “not interested.” On March 21, Showtime Speedway self-deported themselves from the list of potential additions to the ’25 Southern Sprint Car Series schedule. With no new wide-eyed immigrant paved tracks looking to migrate to the series, the good times rolled right by and outta sight. Uh-oh.

Showtime Speedway’s social media announcement (the days of Florida promoters keeping a list of credentialed media and sending press releases seems to be over) stated that they had decided on an unsanctioned, locally-sponsored, twice-a-month schedule of Showtime Speedway Sprints races to run from April through the rest of 2025, with no additional planned races with the SSCS (as of 3-23-2025).

That left the SSCS with only Auburndale Speedway, a one-groove track (which limits passing). This was bad for several reasons: 1) To run 10-12 races, teams will almost double their tire costs due to each series (Showtime and SSCS) requiring the use of a different brand tire; and 2) the SSCS was left in a vulnerable situation. If they lose the only remaining track, Auburndale Speedway, they are done without significantly reinventing themselves (A dirt and pavement series? Or, a Southeast pavement series, racing throughout the Southeast states? That was tried three times and failed three times; See: the USAC Southeast Sprint Car Series in 2011,the American Winged Outlaw Sprints in the mid-’90s, and the USCS Pavement Division).

A Viable Solution? So, what’s the solution to this dilemma? There are a number of solutions, none of which are viable at this time because all of them involve multiple parties doing a 180-degree turn and abandoning their current position. Is there hope? Yes, of course. Just ten years ago, with the implosion of the TBARA taking most of 2015 to slowly burn down to an ash pile, a new Florida pavement series emerged, ready for a 2016 schedule of Florida pavement racing (and it was damn good, with a mix of bullring, semi-fast, and fast, high-banked tracks). This was the Southern Sprint Car Series, circa 2016. It happened once before, so it can happen again. Other than 2015, Florida has had an active traveling pavement sprint car series every year since 1981. That's 44 years and still going strong.

 

 

A Legend Keeps Rolling: Jim Childers Still Racing in His 80s

 Storyand Photo by Richard Golardi

Jim and Charmaine Childers at Showtime Speedway, Feb. 21. 2025

 March4, 2025

 Jim Childers is in his early 80s, is a Florida sprint car owner/driver, and is looking to add to his racing legacy. Keep in mind that he is already a Florida late model and sprint car racing legend and a three-time Little 500 winner and Hall of Fame inductee, among many other racing honors. He added to his impressive Florida sprint car win total by winning a 2024 feature at Showtime Speedway on July 13, driving his No. 44 sprint car to his 91^st feature win in Florida.

 

If you ask “How come?” he’ll reply: “Because I think I retired too soon.” Before that July win, he was tied for fourth place on the All-Time Florida Sprint Car Win List. After the win, he has sole possession of fourth place. Jim Childers and Sam Rodriguez had been tied for fourth for the past 20 years, and the position change was the first that was near to the top of the list since October 2016.

 

“I didn’t think it was that significant, to be honest with you,” Jim said regarding that 2024 race win. He was at Showtime Speedway in February, racing in his first sprint car race of the year. “Sam [Rodriguez] has won a lot of races, and he was good. He used to kick my butt on the dirt a little bit,” he noted with a chuckle. Jim is only 11 wins away from achieving 102 wins, which would place him first on the All-Time Florida Sprint Car Win List. Could he consider it a possibility? “That’d be hard to get, I tell ya. At my age [81], that would be kind of hard to get.” Only 11 years at the rate of one win per year, and you would be 92 years old, he was told. “I don’t know if I’ll be driving at 92!” he said, knowing that his racing comeback will eventually reach a conclusion due to Father Time and aging holding the upper hand.

 

“We’re just having a little fun playing around with the set-ups,” Jim said with his wife Charmaine nearby, serving as an ever-present crew member and all-around team manager. “I’m about 20 years behind on the set-ups, so I’ve got a lot of catchingup to do. Mac Steele has been helping me a lot, and Todd [Schmidt]. My wife is the crew chief. And I’ve got a lot of Dave Steele’s parts on this car, which was refurbished when Dave was still alive. When Gary Wiggins [the car’s original owner] owned it, he bought a lot of stuff from Mac. Quite a few parts on the car he bought from Dave: the wing and the wing tree, so that helps me go faster. Then Lenny Puglio bought it from Gary, and I bought it from Lenny about two or three months after he bought it.” This car might become a secondary car in the near future, or “I may try to sell it once I get my new car[a Hurricane chassis] put together. I’ll get new steering and a new rear-end for the new car. That’s going to take some time, I never have put a new car together myself. Other people have offered to help me. No real completion date yet for the new car.” Charmaine stated that she favored the current color scheme, white and red, for the new car, rather than a throwback design that matched a car Jim had driven previously. Same for the car number – No. 44 seems to be favored. Jim knows the numbers from his past he could consider, “The 48, the 12 – there’s a lot of numbers that I liked.” Charmaine mentioned a number she remembers: “And I liked the car that my dad [Jimmy Riddle] had, the 111, but I don’t really like the three digits on the car. One-eleven – we had to mark it off the list.”

 

Will Jim continue running the Showtime Speedway series in this car for the remainder of the 2025 season? “Probably so,” Jim replied, “I need all the time I can get. I’m kind of rusty, I need to get back in the groove. I’m trying to run a lot of races, and I’ll be running with the Southern Sprint Car Series too, I’ll be running those shows. If I can, I’ll do pretty much all of them, in both series, since I’m trying to support sprint cars. It’s a shame that they had to split up here, but they run different tires, so that makes it a little bit harder. We’re both retired, so we’ve got time to work on it and get it ready, so as long as we can do that, we’ll keep racing.”

 

Have you got any predictions you wish to make for this year, for instance, the number of feature wins in 2025? “I’m not predicting any wins, I’d like to finish in the topfive, to be honest. If I can do that, I’ll be happy.” How are you keeping fit and trim and slim-looking in your 80s? “I work out a little bit – I run down to the gate, which is a quarter-mile away, one time, and I’m working on two times. It’s getting harder the older I get. No, I try to stay in pretty good shape, I do a lot of aerobics, stuff like that.” And staying away from junk food and fattening foods? “Oh, definitely. When I got off all medications, I started feeling a whole lot better. I try to eat healthy and my wife’s a good cook. She makes sure I eat healthy and that’s the most important thing, I think.”

 

 

 

Q & A With Florida Sprint Car Young Gun Dustin Burtron

Storyand Photos by Richard Golardi

5ifty-One Motorsports sprint car driven by Dustin Burtron, Ocala Speedway, 2-15-2025

February 20, 2025

Dustin Burtron has accomplished quite a bit for a young man who has been active in Florida short-track racing for only a short time. The racer from Seminole, Florida was the 2023 East Bay Raceway Park sprint car track champion (the track’s last-ever sprint car track champion), finished in second place in 2023 driver points with the Top Gun Sprint Series, won the last-ever non-wing sprint car race at East Bay Raceway Park in October 2023, and was second in 2023 sprint car points at Hendry County Motorsports Park, Clewiston. Dustin is currently driving in 360 dirt sprint car events with 5ifty-One Motorsports, which is owned by Tim and Diane Holston and isbased in Ocala, Florida. FloSports recently highlighted a video clip of Dustin qualifying the team’s Allegiance RV Inc. No. 51 sprint car last week during USAC National Sprint Car racing at Ocala Speedway. I spoke to him on Saturday night at Ocala Speedway.

“He’s got quite a few accomplishments for a young guy,” Dustin’s crew member and hauler driver, John Hess, remarked, after going through the list of his race-driving titles and wins. “I’ve only been racing for about three years,” Dustin added.

Q. Dustin, here you are at a USAC national sprint car race, so is this your first national series or first USAC national sprint car race?

A. It’s the first for everything for us. We’re about 15 minutes up the road here in Ocala, Florida. We’ve only got a 360 under here, we don’t have a 410 [a 200-horsepower difference]. We’ve been running the 360 stuff down here with USCS and the Top Gun Sprints, and they’re all under USCS rules. We just came down here [Ocala Speedway with USAC] to get some seat time tonight since we figured we were probably coming over here to watch USAC anyway, so why not bring out the car and get some extra seat time while we can. We’re looking to run as much as we can this season, so obviously we’re not looking to do anything crazy here tonight. We want to get some good laps and continue to get faster throughout the night. We have been doing that for the last two nights.

Florida dirt sprint car driver Dustin Burtron.

Q. So, you didn’t go to Volusia for the ASCS series 360 racing a couple of weeks ago, and this is your second night here with USAC at Ocala?

A. This is our second night in Ocala, we came here yesterday and we’re running here tonight. We didn’t go to Volusia, we ran the King of the 360s last weekend at Hendry County Motorsports Park, so tonight is our fourth night of racing this season. We did alright, I’m new to the full-up, full-blown ASCS 360 stuff. Top Gun was a limited 360 package that we ran in the past, but now they’re full, open 360 rules. I’m getting accustomed to that, we ran about ten races last year. We ran pretty good at the King of the 360s at Hendry, we made the feature both nights, there were over 30 cars there. Being able to make the A main against some of the best 360 drivers in the country was a good achievement for us. We made the show both of those nights. We want to be better, so that’s why we’re here getting extra seat time. I know it’s non-wing, but it’s seat time and just getting comfortable in the car.

Q. When did you get rid of your limited 360 engine and make the switch to a full ASCS 360 engine?

A. Last January, when our season began, is when they switched over the engine rules. But I didn’t begin racing last season in a 360 until about June. They might run some limited 360s on the West Coast, but I’m not sure anymore. As a driver, I want to progress, so let’s get some laps with an ASCS 360, that’s the next stepping stone, and then hopefully get some wins here soon. It’s a good, affordable option [limited 360] for people who want to race, but ultimately, if you want to go somewhere in racing, which is my dream and my goal, we gotta run some full-blown ASCS stuff, so that’s what we’re doing.

Q. What are you going to do and where are you going to race for the rest of 2025?

A. We plan on running with Top Gun, which has the same motor package as ASCS, we’ll run some with Top Gun, but we want to run a lot of USCS races, but we are not committing to any full season or points or anything like that. We’re just going to try to hit as many USCS races as we can, traveling down here in the Southeast, in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi. Just trying to get as much seat time as we can.

Q. So you are not planning to go up to the Carolinas or Tennessee for USCS series dirt races?

A. We might go up to the Carolinas, it just depends on how the season is going. Everything is up in the air for us this season. If it sounds good, we’ll go run it.

Q. What was the racing highlight of the year for you last year?

A. They started a new non-wing sprint car series down here and we ran a non-wing show over at North Florida Speedway in Lake City on July 19 that I ended up winning. They did a couple of shows out there last year and we made it out there, it was kind of a new series. So, that was probably the highlight of the year in addition to a couple of top tens with USCS last year. We ran at Hattiesburg in Mississippi, it was our first time traveling and we did pretty good over there. We’re newer to the whole traveling gig and running full-blown ASCS but eventually hope to be competing for a lot of wins here soon. That’s the goal.

 

 

 

USCS President Pete Walton on the Upcoming Year, Possible Retirement, and Selling the Series

Storyand Photo by Richard Golardi

February 17, 2025

USCS president Pete Walton at Hendry County Motorsports Park, 2-8-2025

United Sprint Car Series (USCS) founder and president Pete Walton spoke to me recently at his King of the 360s dirt sprint car event at Florida’s Hendry County Motorsports Park.This event was a coup for his series, taking over an iconic sprint car event that for decades had its home at East Bay Raceway Park. Now there is more participation from Florida drivers (with co-sanctioning from the Top Gun Sprint Series) and a greater possibility that a Florida driver may soon be crowned as the King of the 360s at Saturday’s finale (Floridian Tyler Clem won the Friday Prelude race, with Pennsylvanian Mark Smith winning on Saturday). Pete Walton was happy and upbeat when I met with him on Saturday afternoon and had a positive attitude about his continued success with USCS through the 2025 race season.

“In 2025, we’re going to a few tracks that we haven’t been to in a while,” Pete Walton remarked, “like North Georgia Speedway and Sugar Creek Raceway. I always look forward to the 14-race Winter Heat Series because we’ve been off for a couple of months and it’s just time to go back racing. It always turns out great – we’ve got Danny Smith and Terry Gray and Davie Franek, and maybe Mark Smith running all of it. There’s some other people that are picking up next week, like Jacob Allen’s coming to race the next two weekends. Bobby Allen called me several times and said, ‘We’re goin’ to come to Southern Raceway.’ They borrowed another 360 to come race with us, but gotta go to Tampa to get the motor. I said, ‘Bobby, you’re one of my all-time freakin’ favorite drivers! I wish you could drive.’ He was a great one, wasn’t he? I raced with him when he was at his peak. We had Sammy Swindell win one of our features last year, he raced with us quite a bit in one of Dale Howard’s other cars. Everybody knows who he is.

“Tonight’s race number two of our Winter Heat Series, for the next two weekends, we’re at Southern Raceway. We’ve tried that for a couple of years. Then we go to Hattiesburg Speedway and then Deep South Speedway and North Alabama Speedway. As far as Ocala Speedway, after the first or second time we went there, we didn’t really draw a whole lot of people. We used to have some great races there. We were always running against the Outlaws at Volusia when we went there [during February Speedweeks], that was just the kiss of death right there. Probably if we’d have been a week earlier or later, we’d have been OK. After this race [King of the 360s], we’re mostly running for $3,000 to win on Saturday or Sunday, no more $10,000. This race [Saturday finale] is the only one paying $10,000 to win.” I asked if that would qualify it as the biggest race of the year for the series? “It really is,” he said. About coming back to the same track next year: “I wouldn’t have any problem with it. Probably get a lot of kinks worked out with it for next year.At the end of the year, we’re going to Swainsboro Raceway for the first time in a long time, it will be two nights for our finale. I always look forward to going to Talladega Short Track. We’re there for two days, April 25 and 26 with the World of Outlaws late models during the NASCAR Cup Series weekend. We’re doing that for the fourth year in a row. Ricky Stenhouse has won several of those races. Oh, man – one time, we had 5,000 people there. That’s pretty big for down South! We had about $3,000 worth of lap money. That track is kind of a historic place for us since we had our first series race there.”

Have you had any thoughts of retiring, I asked? “Well, you always have to think about that, you know?” Pete replied. “I don’t know.” Pete then spoke about his desire to find someone to buy the USCS business from him, and that he has made a tentative search for a buyer, but a prospective buyer has not risen so far. “They never seem to come up with the money.” He does mention “just keep goin’ until you die, I guess,” as an alternative plan. Selling the series but continuing to run it for another owner is not a viable alternative he wishes to consider. How many more years would he want to own and run USCS? “Maybe another three or four years,” he said. “It’s a lot of work. I probably work harder than most of these people do, too.”

What NASCAR drivers or iconic sprint car drivers does he anticipate seeing race with the USCS series this year? “Ricky [Stenhouse] will probably race over there [Talladega Short Track] and he may run another race with us up in the Carolinas when he is close and would be able to race. He raced with us at Carolina and Cherokee last year on the first weekend in April. You ain’t gonna get Tony Stewart – he’s a drag racer now. Sammy [Swindell], you might see him. I saw Sammy when I was ridin’ by Talladega and it looked like he was getting thinner, and I said, ‘Sammy, you lost any weight?’ He said, ‘Yeah, I’m trying to get thinner so I can beat them kids at the Chili Bowl.’ He lost quite a bit of weight, I’m tellin’ ya. You know, he’s trying to stay young, he’s 69. You gotta admire a guy for doin’ that. Terry Gray is 66 and Danny Smith is 67. To me, those guys are my freakin’ heroes, man.”

Ever the promoter, Pete had a last story about a favorite USCS race – “One of my most exciting races of the year” – that he’d told me about before: “We’ve been putting on this race at Riverside Speedway called the USCS Flip-Flop 50. It was the 17th one last year in October. It’s always in October.” He described the format, one that seems convoluted but keeps the fans coming back year after year to the West Memphis track. The same could be said for USCS sprint car racing – you may not know the details of passing points, lineups, and all the rest, but you can be sure of this – horsepower and talented dirt track driving will be on display, and it will be loud, it will rattle your innards, and it will be fun and exciting to witness.

 

 

 

 

Tyler Clem Gets A Speedweeks Win at the King of the 360s

Story by and Photo by Richard Golardi

February 12, 2025

Florida sprint car and late model driver Tyler Clem, a second-generation sprint car driver and 2021 Top Gun Sprint Series champion, got his first2025 February Speedweeks sprint car win on dirt at Hendry County Motorsports Park last Friday. He won the Prelude to the King of the 360s sprint car feature race, a USCS/Top Gun Sprint Series co-sanctioned race. This was a major change for this iconic Florida sprint car event, traditionally held at East Bay Raceway Park in Gibsonton for decades. With that track’s demise, Hendry County continues the tradition. Another change also became more likely, that a Florida driver might win the Saturday feature and the coveted title: King of the 360s.

Tyler Clem, Feature Winner, Prelude to the King of the 360s

Asked about how he won the Friday “Prelude” feature race, Tyler responded, “We started outside pole and got the jump and I think we led the first ten laps or so and was kind of searching around from there, waiting for the track to change. Mark [Smith] got around me and the number 5 car [Colby Thornhill] got around me and I was just doing what I could to keep up with the race track. Eventually, in the last five or six laps, I changed my line and went to the bottom and it worked out. We kind of got lucky that the track started coming to us. I’m glad to get it done and it puts us in a good spot for tonight [Saturday]. My main competition on Friday was definitely Mark Smith and the number 5 car. We had a good battle between us for the top three and the number 5 car and I were almost side-by-side coming to the checkered.”

As for Tyler’s racing plans for the rest of 2025, he said, “I’m not sure yet. I think we’re going to try with the Outlaws in Volusia in a couple of weeks [March 2&3] and then go from there, we’ll see. Never raced with the Outlaws before, that will be my first.” Tyler was aware of the comments of his supporters who believe he has earned a chance to race in a national winged dirt sprint car series. “It’s really cool,” he said. “We’re going to try our luck and see if we kind of belong there. We’re not a high-budget team, we’re not an Outlaw team. We’re going to try our best with what we’ve got. If we don’t do good, we’re not going to hang our heads. Those guys are the best in the world. We’ll keep trying and do the best we can.”

Asked about the “speed wizard” on his team, and who gives him the horsepower needed to win five Top Gun Sprint features in 2024, and to be fast again in 2025, Tyler replied, “You can be a good driver, but if your car is not good, it’s going to be hard to win. Wesley and Robin give me a badass race car, all of our crew, all of them guys do a great job.” Tyler is also fortunate to have a champion sprint car driver as his car owner, two-time TBARA champion Robbie Smith. “He’s a great guy and a great owner to drive for, so I’m lucky to have him by my side. Been with these guys for a long time now, so we know what we want and we know what to do to be fast.”

His highlight of racing in 2024 was “some Top Gun stuff and a little bit of late model racing last year. We picked up a couple of wins at the end of the year with these guys [Top Gun series]. That was a good way to end the year and we got one last night so we’re off to a good start so far.” Did he believe he was the favorite for the Saturday King of the 360s title? “Maybe,” he said. “Having a lot of laps here definitely helps. That’s probably the big plus of racing here all the time compared to some of the guys that have never been here before and probably struggled on the first night. I think we’ve got a really good car and it showed last night that we have great speed. We’ve just got to put it all together again.”

Do you think you know “Florida dirt,” even a sandy track like here at Hendry County, and thereby have an advantage? “Yeah. It seems like Volusia and here, they have kind of a sandy clay and we’ve done well at both places and those are the two main tracks that we’ll be running around here. We’ve got good notes for these places and it showed last night.” With that sandy track surface at Hendry County, which everyone has to deal with and get sandblasted by, does that give you an advantage that you have more years of experience on this type of dirt? “Maybe,” Tyler said. “This stuff is unique. I don’t know of any other places in the country that are like this other than just a handful of places down here. I’m sure it throws some of those guys for a loop that have probably never seen stuff like this before, so that works to my advantage, I’d say.”

I had some fun giving Tyler a little memory test back to when he was a boy and was at the track to drive in his first sprint car race at Bubba Raceway Park when he was 11 years old. There was one reporter at the track that night who interviewed him for the first time, getting mostly one-word answers to his questions. Did he remember who that reporter was, and did heremember that interview? “That was you, wasn’t it?” Tyler inquired. “Yeah, I was like ten or eleven or something. That was really a long time ago. Yeah, I was a little kid. I didn’t know what I was doin’ [laughs]. I do remember that!”

 

 

 

Florida Speedweeks Weekend Preview, February 7 – 9

Story by Richard Golardi

February 6, 2025

This article will preview the Florida Speedweeks short track racing events that I intend to go to and report on this weekend, including the King of the 360s dirt sprint car racing event at Hendry County Motorsports Park in Clewiston (near Lake Okeechobee) on Friday and Saturday, and several nights of the World Series of Asphalt Stock Car Racing at New Smyrna Speedway including Sunday (yes, I’m going to the track on Super Bowl Sunday) and also the 200-lap ASA STARS National Tour late model stock car race on Tuesday. No, I won’t be reporting on the World of Outlaws sprint car races. I will instead report on those tracks and series that are of most interest to, and have the greatest participation from Florida teams and drivers. The World of Outlaws has limited participation from Florida drivers.

After decades of East Bay Raceway Park in Gibsonton providing a home for the King of the 360s dirt sprint car races for cars with 360 c.i. engines each February, the King of the 360s event needed a new home. That’s because East Bay Raceway was sold and is gone. Two sanctioning bodies stepped in to find a new home for the event, along with a South Florida dirt track, Hendry County Motorsports Park. That track seemed to be the obvious choice to hold the event, as other Florida dirt tracks were either too far from the action (which is in Central and North Florida), or they already had the next two weeks solidly booked with dirt late model and sprint car racing. The United Sprint Car Series (USCS) and the Florida-based Top Gun Sprint Series were the new sanctioning bodies. They are experienced in managing 360 dirt sprint car racing in Florida and their reputations and expertise are solid. I’m anticipating an exciting two days of racing, and the entry list reveals that the talent level comes close to equaling what East Bay Raceway had.

I spoke to USCS founder and president Pete Walton earlier this week to ask about some of the old traditions that East Bay Raceway used for their version of the King of the 360s, and if he intended to adopt some or all of those traditions. His answer revealed that he and USCS will adopt some of those traditions, but not all of them. The results of Friday’s preliminary race will determine Saturday’s feature starters, but only in a limited way. There will not be points tallying for every car and driver that is carried over to Saturday for the feature. Instead, there will be guaranteed Saturday feature spots for the first and second-place cars from Friday’s feature. Also, there will be a “Fast Six” car group consisting of the top two cars from Friday and the winners of the four Saturday heat races. Again, the tallying of points, as was done at East Bay, will not determine the “Fast Six” cars. Those six will line up on the front stretch for introductions and interviews, as was done at East Bay, prior to a dash race whose finishing order will determine the first six positions of the feature race’s starting order. The rest of the Saturday feature race will be lined up using the regular USCS rules. East Bay had a practice day and three days of racing, now condensed to a practice day (Thursday) and two days of racing.

So far, I am in favor of these changes, and I like the condensed schedule. I believe that February Speedweeks in Florida has gotten into the ill-advised habit of planning overly-long events of four, five, or more days of racing in a “We have more days of racing because we’re more important” frame of thinking. Shorter is better. That’s my mantra.

There is one division that open-wheel racing fans will want to keep a close eye on in New Smyrna Speedway’s nine days of stock car racing beginning this Friday through February 15, and that division is the Pro Late Model class. Why not the Super Late Model class, the top-of-the-line stock car class? Well, they don’t have the open-wheel racing talent that the Pro Late Model class has attracted and the two young women who have already proven their talent in midgets and stock cars. Those two young women are Jade Avedisian and Taylor Reimer and they both are making a concerted effort to transition into stock car racing. That’s a smart move. Everyone who follows NASCAR racing knows that they have a glaring omission in their top class, the NASCAR Cup Series. There are no female drivers. Win races in lower-level stock car racing, get noticed, attract sponsors with dollars, move up, win more, and then – hello NASCAR. That’s a difficult to accomplish strategy, but talent and charisma can help, and both young women have it.

Jade Avedisian: When 18-year-old Jade won the 2023 Xtreme Outlaw midget series point championship, she became the first female driver to win a national midget championship. Last year, her Toyota Racing Development contract placed her in a full-time ride in the Toyota GR Cup Series for a year of sports car racing, later interrupted by an injury (she has since recovered and plans a full 2025 schedule). She will be with the Wilson Motorsports late model team this year. Last year, in her second pavement late model start on November 9 at Hickory Motor Speedway, she won the 100-lap Fall Brawl Pro Late Model race. In her first pavement late model race, she was second.

Taylor Reimer: Also a Toyota Racing Development driver, 25-year-old Taylor became the first female driver to win a national midget series race in 2022 with the Xtreme Outlaw Midget Series.In 2023 she began racing pavement late models and made 2024 her year to transition to late model racing with a goal of getting into NASCAR. She won pavement late model races last year on May 11, August 10, and September 7. She drives the No. 55 BuzzBallz Toyota Camry for Venturini Motorsports in ARCA, and also theNo. 25 Toyota Camry for Lee Faulk Racing in Pro Late Model racing.

Oh, and the third open-wheel racer in Pro Late Models is Glenn Styres, who has the advantage of coming into the New Smyrna Speedway races with a February Speedweeks win already, on Tuesday at Volusia Speedway Park in a dirt modified. In dirt sprint car racing, he is an accomplished race winner along with being the owner of Ohsweken Speedway in Canada. Of the three open-wheelers, he’s the most experienced racer and the only one with gray hair. He likes lots of variety in his racing, both dirt and pavement, and has raced stock cars on pavement.

None of the three open-wheelers have shown up on the entry list for the week’s biggest short-track stock car race on Tuesday, which is a 200-lap season-opening race for the ASA STARS National Tour late model series, but that may change between now and Tuesday. That race will give them their biggest challenge, as it will include nationally-known late model stock car stars such as Bubba Pollard (winner of this race last year), William Sawalich, Ty Majeski, Johnny Sauter, and Floridian Stephen Nasse.

 

 

 

2024 Florida Sprint Car Champions and Notable Sprint Car Achievements

Story by Richard Golardi

January 26, 2025

Florida's Sprint Car Champions - 2024 (as of 1-26-2025)

Series Champions:
BG Products Southern Sprint Car Series –Colton Bettis
Top Gun Sprint Series –Nick Snyder
Dave Steele Sprint Car Championship Overall Point Champion,February 2024 – Colton Bettis

Track Champions:
Showtime Speedway, Pinellas Park –Robert Yoho
Southern Raceway, Milton–Steve Diamond Jr.
Hendry County Motorsports Park, Clewiston–Nick Snyder
Congratulations to all of Florida's 2024 Sprint Car Race Champions.

Notable Achievements:

Tyler Clem was the leading feature race winner with the Top Gun Sprint Series in 2024, winning five features. This directly led to car owner Robbie Smith winning the 2024 Top Gun owner point championship, along with the points earned by driver Bryce Comer.

Jim Childers, a Florida late model and sprint car racing legend and Little 500 Hall of Fame inductee, made an improbable race-driving comeback at age 80, and then went on to add to his impressive Florida sprint car win total by winning the feature race at Showtime Speedway on July 13, driving his No. 44 sprint car to his 91stfeature win in Florida. Why did he make a racing comeback? “Because I think I retired too soon,” he stated. He was retired for 20 years before his 2024 comeback and said he later regretted retiring at 60 years old. Before that July win, he was tied with Sam Rodriguez for fourth place on the All-Time Florida Sprint Car Win List. After the win, he has sole position of fourth place. Childers and Rodriguez had been tied for fourth for the past 20 years, and the position change was the first in the top five spots since Dave Steele tore past everyone on the list to ascend to the top position on the chart in October 2016. Steele has 101 Florida sprint car wins.

Car owner Mac Steele, still going strong at age 84, was one of those competing against Childers at Showtime Speedway, and had five car owner feature wins during 2024, four of them with track owner Robert Yoho (who leases the Showtime property) driving Mac’s black No. 33 sprint car at that same track.

Transplanted Floridian Joe Liguori, Florida racing legend Ralph Liguori’s grandson, whose hometown is Tampa and currently resides in Indiana, had his best year yet in pavement racing, mostly in sprint cars. He got his second sprint car national championship by taking theMust See Racing Sprint Series point title after driving with the Midwest-based series for five years, adding Driver of the Year honors.Another team member, Brad Ringer, received the Crew Chief of the Year Award. On December 28, he drove to the Midget Feature race win at the Rumble inFort Wayne indoor races in Indiana. Earlier in the year, he won the Children’s Dream Fund 50 sprint car race (co-sanctioned by Must See Racing & Southern Sprint Car Series) at Florida’s Citrus County Speedway on March 2, a special event that paid $10,000 to win.

Teenage driver Colton Bettis was the leading feature winner in the Southern Sprint Car Series (four wins) and alsotook the series driver point championship. He also earned another pavement sprint car title at Showtime Speedway in February. During the Dave Steele Sprint Car Championship races, he won a feature race and earned the Overall Series Point Champion title.

The Florida-based Southern Sprint Car Series should be noted for planning its 10th racing season in 2025 and its overall success since taking over for the defunct Tampa Bay Area Racing Association (TBARA) in February 2016. They lost one of their biggest supporters and their first driver champion, sprint car legend Dave Steele, due to his tragic death in early 2017, but pressed on to create several iconic events and continue the decades-long legacy of Florida pavement sprint car racing, which has been going strong since 1969. Since that year, Florida has had a pavement sprint car champion every year, thanks in part to the Southern Sprint Car Series.

Legendary Florida sprint car track East Bay Raceway Park is gone for good, off to that race track heaven in the sky. After first hosting sprint car races in February 1977, the Gibsonton dirt bullring helped make many American racing legends like Steve Kinser, Doug Wolfgang, and abasketful of Florida dirt racers.The track’s first sprint car feature winner was Pennsylvanian Paul Pitzer, who won the Florida Sprint Nationals feature race on Saturday, February 5, 1977. The track was called the “Baby Clayway” back in ’77 and got praise from lots of dirt racers. East Bay Raceway had its last sprint car race winner, Danny Martin Jr., when he wonthe Don Rehm Classic feature race on Saturday, September 21, 2024. Goodbye to the little dirt track that for 48 racing seasons entertained a couple of generationsof Florida sprint car racing fans (and me too). It was fun.

Other Notable People: Steven Hollinger continued his winning ways in ’24, and for the second consecutive year he won two Southern Sprint Car Series feature races; 15-year-old PJ Reutimann of Zephyrhills, grandson of Florida sprint car legend Wayne Reutimann, earned the United Sprint Car Series (USCS) Southern Thunder Tour Rookie of the Year honor on Southern dirt with two top-five and six top-ten finishes; Mark Ruel Jr. showed impressive dirt racing skills during the spring with the Top Gun Sprint Series, winning three 360 features at three different dirt tracks; Florida car owner Richard Fieler guided his driver, Bobby Santos III, to another top-ten Little 500 finish (they won the 2020 race) along with one 500 Sprint Car Tour and three Must See Racing Sprint Series feature wins; and 22-year-old dirt sprint car driver Danny Sams III, from North Port, Florida, had fivewins along with a top-five finish in the East Bay 360 Winternationals finale, and also won three of the last five races during the 2024Ohio Sprint Speedweek, and in 2025 will compete full-time on the High Limit Racing sprint car tour, seeking the Rookie of the Year honor. Good luck to all in their 2025 racing endeavors.

 

 

Mac Steele Interview – Flood Waters Bring Trouble, But Not Retirement

Story and Photos by Richard Golardi

January 18, 2025

Mac Steele, one of the last of the old-school, been-around-forever Florida car owners and still very much the patriarch of his domain at Mac Steele Auto Craft in Tampa, FL, once said he applied this commandment to himself: “No retirement! That’s when you die. You’ll find me here at the shop or at the race track.”

That’s a “come hell or high water” commandment for the 84-year-old Florida sprint car team owner. The latter happened to him recently, in the form of flood waters pushed inland from Tampa Bay by category four Hurricane Helene in late September. “I had 31 inches of water inside my house from the first hurricane [Helene],” Mac told me recently. “We live right on the Hillsborough River.” Mac was there alone while his wife, Carol, was at their daughter’s house. This was because you could see the waters coming, pushed into Tampa Bay by the storm surge, then up the river and onto Mac and Carol’s riverside property.

Mac Steele at his Tampa race shop

“I always stay at the house when we get a hurricane,” Mac continued. “But because they kept saying how high the water was going to get, I had a little mattress here already on the floor [at his Tampa race shop]. I brought a mop and bucket home and put tape across the bottom of the doors. So, I’m in there, and I’m watching the river, and it keeps coming. I said, ‘Well, I better check the door.’ The duct tape ain’t doin’ so good. It’s coming in. So, I get the mop, and I don’t know if it had oil in it from being used here, it ain’t soaking up the water. I said, ‘Hell, I can’t do this all night.’ I quit mopping and went upstairs – luckily, we’ve got a two-story, so it never hurt nothing up there. I laid down a little while and then looked down the stairs and the water was over the first stair step. Came back a little later, now it’s covering the second stair. Then the third stair. Our front windows are pretty low to the ground and there is water leaking in around the window frames. I said, ‘I gotta get out of here because I don’t know how high it’s going to get in here.’ It was up to about my knees then and I didn’t open the door. So, I said, ‘I’ll go out that window there.’ It was pretty high off the floor, not like the front windows. There’s a hedge right outside the window, and I didn’t want to get caught upside down between the hedge and the house and drown or something. I knew I had to go out the window on my back. That was the challenge. We had this antique wooden trunk which was floating and bobbing around inside. I held it down to fill it with water, got it next to the window, got my feet up on it, that’s hard for an old man, and got my feet through the window to slide out. I got out. I made it.”

Mac waded through chest-high flood water to get to the street and get to his parked truck. There was nothing more he could do to impede the surging water from getting into his house, so he headed back to his race shop, his clothes soaked up to his neck. He went back to his house the next morning to find that the water had already completely drained out of it. It went from 31 inches high to nothing in less than 12 hours. The storm surge had receded as quickly as it had been pushed into the bay and then into the Hillsborough River the prior day. When a second major hurricane, Milton, hit south of Tampa on October 9 and ripped the roof off Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Mac decided that he would not stay home this time. There was no flooding in his house from Milton, as the wind was blowing from the opposite direction, pushing water out of Tampa Bay. Sitting in his race shop, he listened to flying debris hitting the sides of his building for several hours but suffered no broken glass. He is now in the process of home repair, with drywall being replaced and first-floor walls getting painted.

Mac Steele at his race shop with his two pavement sprint cars

“End of the hurricane story,” Mac said upon reaching the conclusion of the scary experience. Not only is he a survivor, but he tells the “hurricane story’ without admitting to any fear or trepidation. No, he faced the flood waters and bulled his way through them to live another day and hopefully many more.

After winning two feature races as a car owner in 2023, Mac had five more wins in 2024. In keeping with his “no retirement’ pledge, he will be back as a car owner again in 2025 with a two-car pavement sprint car team. After winning a TBARA series race at New Smyrna Speedway in 2014 with Larry Brazil Jr. driving, he did not have another win as a car owner until Steven Hollinger’s Southern Sprint Car Series win at Auburndale Speedway on June 10, 2023.

This year, the octogenarian racer will attempt to have a third consecutive year of feature wins in his return as a winning car owner. He will enter all of the Showtime Speedway winged sprint car races and also the Southern Sprint Car Series races at Auburndale Speedway, which has seven races this year, for a total of 17 Florida races for 2025. His two cars are the pavement cars he calls “the black car,” No. 33, a Hurricane copy (built by Tra Pissot) which Robert Yoho has been driving; and “the silver car,” No. 1, a Diablo chassis which Brian Gingras has been driving. Both drivers won in 2024, Yoho with four wins at Showtime Speedway and Gingras with one Southern Sprint Car Series win. Mac no longer has the No. 1 Beast chassis, which he sold. That’s his plans for a busy year, including the race that honors the memory of his son, the Dave Steele Sprint Car Championship at Showtime Speedway in Pinellas Park on February 21 & 22.

 

 

 

Drama on the First Lap and the Last at the 2024 Little 500

Story and Photosby Richard Golardi

May 26, 2024

The First Lap:

Scotty Adema is a 44-year-old pavement sprint car racer from Southwest Florida who comes to Anderson, Indiana, to win the biggest pavement sprint car race in the world, the Little 500 Presented by UAW. He left with his wrecked car shoehorned into his race trailer and his left arm undergoing surgery in the hospital in Anderson to realign the bones that had been broken and displaced. The updates on the driver of the No. 44 car, Scotty Adema, came through on a steady pace through the evening from the Anderson hospital as he was being examined and treated.

Scotty Adema Racing team photo at the 2024 Little 500

UPDATE #1:
Scotty Adema's family has confirmed that he has a broken left wrist from the 3rd turn crash on the 1st lap of the 2024 Little 500. He is at the hospital and had a CAT scan of his head, neck, and torso. They are reviewing the CAT scan now and we are waiting to hear the results of all tests. Scotty expressed that he was glad about putting an emphasis on safety in his newly designed sprint car chassis. He was conscious and awake in the hospital. Results for broken wrist: Scotty has a closed reduction in the break, and has been told that he will not need surgery. His arm is broken and displaced.

UPDATE #2:
Cause of crash was a hung (stuck) throttle going down the back stretch, which caused an impact with the outside back stretch wall and broke the steering, and the car went into the 3rd turn and had a hard head-on impact into the tires stacked at the outside 3rd turn wall.

UPDATE #3:
2:45a.m. Update on Scotty Adema from his wife, Lauren: “He is currently in surgery to have a bone, maybe two, put back into place. It’s a simple surgery. He is up, awake, and talking. We thank you all for your prayers and please hope for Scotty to have a speedy recovery.”

Scotty let me know about his Sunday evening condition, the latest update, and told me that he was “Sore as hell. My hand looks like a football (lol). Could’ve been a lot worse for sure.” The car looked worse, punched in on the front end with the right front suspension and wheel bent back at a crazy angle. As he climbed from his car on Saturday night, an aerial photographer’s drone caught him clutching his broken arm close to his body as the rescue crew helped him climb from the car. He made a claim about not losing consciousness, but that statement has since been disputed. “I’ll be back,” Scotty told me, adding,“just got to heal up a bit.” The sprint car that absorbed the big impact into the third turn tire barrier was one that he designed, the SASSE chassis. It keeps its sassy demeanor, taking the punishment that kept Scotty from more serious injury.

The Last Lap:

There had never been a last-lap pass for the lead in the previous 75 editions of the Little 500. There had been a pass for the lead on the next-to-last lap, which occurred in the 5thannual Little 500 in 1953 when Bob King passed John Key on the 499th lap and won the race. There had also been a last-lap pass for second place, which took place in 1969, a race that very likely ranks as the wildest, most exciting Little 500 finish in the history of the race. Someday it would happen, and there would be a last-lap pass to win the Little 500 now that the cars are so close and the winning margins smaller. That someday happened on Saturday at Anderson Speedway.

Dakoda Armstrong led when the white flag was shown to start the last lap at the Little 500 on Saturday night. His cousin, Caleb Armstrong, trailed closely in second and made a dive to the inside of the third turn, made the pass, and won the race. Both men are talented pavement sprint car drivers who had been striving for their first Little 500 win for years and had come close to winning in the past. They shared the same pit crew for both cars in this race.

Caleb Armstrong, winner of the 2024 Little 500, May 25, 2024.

“Man, the car was so good,” Dakoda Armstrong told me after the checkered flag fell on Saturday. “I thought I was better than them, but the problem was that with about a hundred to go, they came on the radio and they were doing their math and they were like, ‘I don’t know if you are gonna make it on fuel.’ So, I was in conservation mode for the last hundred laps, just trying to hang on. When I saw them wrecked up there the last time, I was pretty sure we were going to run out. On the second pit stop, we didn’t get enough fuel in it. So, for the last hundred laps, I was just trying to save. I stopped using brakes and I was just lifting at the flag stand, just letting it roll fast and I kind of burned up my right rear that way. The only way you can really save with these cars is just be off the throttle and when you pick it up, be as easy as you can. When I went to push it there at the end, the car just wasn’t under me. I got run tight in one and two trying to run low and it just slid up on me off of two and I didn’t have the grip I needed to stick it.

“Man, the car was good for the 499 other laps! Just missed it on that one. If it had stayed green [instead of having a late-race caution], I was pretty sure that was our race but I guess that’s just how it goes. I wasn’t going to wreck him; I did not want two cars wrecked. Once he got there, I went to give him a lane and after 170 laps on that right rear tire, she was pretty shot. I just couldn’t stick on the top there, I couldn’t do a crossover. It’s so cool that team cars go one-two, just a little bittersweet that I thought we should have had it. I know he [Caleb] is about to retire and I don’t know if he wants to do it much more so it’s pretty cool that he got one. Hopefully, we can come back and get it, but it’s hard to bring a car that good every time.”

Caleb Armstrong described his pass for the win as “a diamond move … I was close enough to him and beat him into the corner and was able to diamond him off the corner. It stuck. I knew it was going to be kind of sketchy, I was hard on the gas there and I knew I was going to pass him. The way I had him set up, I said: ‘I’m gonna make this pass.’ I didn’t know if he was going to give me the room, but he did.I felt like he could see me. I still can’t believe it, honestly. I kept pulling up beside him [Dakoda], kept bugging him, trying to rattle his cage, trying to make him mess up, slip up. I don’t know if it worked or not, I still can’t believe it. I was kind of worried because I never felt that good the whole race, I don’t know if it’s this new tire or what but I never felt that sporty. The guys did an awesome job on pit road and everything worked out perfectly this year. I felt like we should have had a few of these by now. It feels good to finally have it.

“I kept talking to myself,” Caleb admitted. “Man, come on!” he told himself. “You’ve been wanting this forever.” That’s when he decided to push himself to the utmost limit of his skill and get every last bit from his worn tires and use every last bit of stamina he had left. His radio to communicate with his team was dead at this point in the race, and what minimal amount he heard was just garbled. But he still had the voice inside his head, urging him on, telling him that even the last turn of the last lap was not too late to make the pass and win. The voice was right.

 

 

 

Scotty Adema Makes the Little 500 With a Sprint Car He Designed

Story and Photosby Richard Golardi

May 24, 2024

Floridian Scotty Adema is a 44-year-old pavement sprint car racer who is also a battalion chief at Pine Island Fire Department, and he’s been employed by them for 23 years. “I started with them at 21, and just worked through the ranks,” Scotty remarked. “There’s no mandatory retirement age. I’ll probably put in my paperwork in another two years, and after that, I have another five to eight years that I can go.”

Scotty Adema at the 2024 Little 500.

Scotty decided to return to the Little 500 in 2024, the 20th anniversary of his first and only start in the iconic pavement sprint car in 2004, to attempt to make the field for his second Little 500. Scotty recalled that the 2004 Little 500 was originally planned to be broadcast on the Speedvision cable TV channel, but never got aired on that channel. “It brought out quite a few cars – I believe there were 68 or 69 entries that year. We made the field, we qualified 29th. I think we were only one of two 360s to make the field, Dude Teate was the other one.”

Scotty did attempt to qualify for last year’s race, but was not quick enough to be among the 33 fastest qualifiers. The new chassis that he brought this year was described by Scotty as “a chassis that we’ve been working on, me and a guy named Steve Darvalicsfrom Northport, Florida. We just call him Steve D. or Sassy Steve. He worked for Doug Shaw for quite a while and was kind of doing his own thing in the stock car world now. We met and I had some ideas of what I wanted. His fab work was just second to none and he was definitely the right guy for the project. He kept a very high level of safety in the car with tubing sizes and everything. I couldn’t be happier with him as a partner. He could take the ideas in my head and put them into practical use. He was a partner in the actual idea of SASSE [the name of the new chassis] which stands for Scotty and Steve Sprintcar Engineering. It includes some things out of cars that I really enjoyed driving or had a lot of luck with. Our goal is to eventually make the car available to anybody. We do have a Facebook page: SASSE Chassis. We’ve got a good car, good service, and safety.”

Scotty explained that the Little 500 will be the second race for this new chassis after qualifying for the Dave Steele Classic race in February. “We’re getting closer and every time we’ve been out, we’ve been faster,” Scotty explained. “I’m still a little gun-shy from last year, it was a really miserable experience last year because we had a mish-mosh of parts on the car and had some engine problems that were not going to be rectified at the track. A lot of it’s our fault – but, live and learn. Next, we’re going to finish some of the design work on the car. A lot of the chassis builders are aging, and have been around a long time. We want to be a manufacturer where we can get a chassis made for a customer in weeks to a month. There seems to be plenty of people that want them [pavement sprint car chassis]. We want to make our chassis available to people. The same chassis will be just as competitive in whatever genre, or version of pavement sprint car racing that you want to do.”

After a workman-like smooth four laps in his Thursday afternoon qualifying effort, Scotty felt comfortable with his time, partly due to a 44-car Little 500 entrant list that seemed to have suddenly deflated and had been reduced to possibly only 33 or 34 cars. Then, everything changed. A lightning bolt of excitement shot through the pits at the Little 500. Maybe one or two more cars could qualify, by bumping another car with a moderately fast time. Could a backup driver make his way from Tampa, make an overnight flight to Indianapolis (or close to it), and then step into the backup car that Scotty had brought with him and which sat in his trailer? Could that driver, obviously woreout after traveling all night, then put Scotty’s backup car in the field when Friday qualifying started at 1:30 p.m.? There was only one way to find out – give championship-winning Florida sprint car driver John Inman a call and tell him to get from Tampa to Anderson by Friday morning. The chase (for a spot in the field at the Little 500) WAS ON!

Scotty Adema confers with John Inman, in his backup car, at the 2024 Little 500

The choice of flights for a last-minute traveler out of Tampa was not great. The best option that John Inman found (after accepting his “Mission Impossible” assignment) was one that put him on the ground in Cleveland at 2:30 a.m. Friday morning. He had to wait until 6 a.m. for the car rental counter to openand was in a rental car at 6:30a.m. to make the Cleveland-to-Anderson early-morning run, an interstate highway dash to destiny.

The car was readied for his arrival, and it was no slouch. It won on the Southern Sprint Car Series circuit last year. Black tape made a hasty number 59 on the blue car, and John Inman, now changed into a firesuit and gloves and helmet, was ready, even though he confessed that he got no sleep during the night. His goal – four fast, smooth laps. He didn’t need to be blazing fast, as it looked like 44 cars were now down to 34 cars, and only one car would be bumped. A brave young driver, a local, was called in for a last-minute attempt in the Welpott Racing backup carand climbed in to turn his first laps in a sprint car. He made it. Rookie Jerry Kobza withdrew his Thursday time, requalified, and was still in the field. John Inman made his two runs of four laps, and fell just short. He had the 34th-fastest time. That’s the first alternate, but not in the starting field for Saturday (unless bad fortune befalls another qualified car). The sun seemed to bear down a little more brutally on John Inman’s face as he smiled, but with a touch of a grimace. He wasn’t cursing his luck. He had put everything into the 24-hour effort and was oh-so-close to that magic point of ecstasy – when a driver can exclaim: “Yeah! We did it. Always knew we could!” John was still smiling, even as the bystanders were lamenting, “Well … there’s always next year.” Could another lightning bolt of destiny strike and put John Inman in the field on Saturday? Who knows? Scotty Adema is in the field and had made a valiant effort to put a friend in the field too. He could be proud of that effort.

Video of Scotty Adema’s 2024 Little 500 Qualifying Attempt:

https://youtu.be/_n3Z-U7v0Ao?si=CeJPHfhI6EdIEMlB

 

 

 

 

 

2024 Little 500 Pole Position Goes to Emerson Axsom

Story and photo by Richard Golardi

May 24, 2024


Emerson Axsom at Anderson Speedway, 5-23-2024

Emerson Axsom grabbed the 2024 Little 500 Presented by UAW pole position on the first day of qualifying on Thursday at Anderson Speedway in Indiana. As the young, tousle-haired racer sped by the main stand in the yellow and purple No. 4 sprint car with his last name splashed across the roll cage front, the V6 engine in his car gave a loud, reverberating buzzing note, distinctively different from the roar of the V8 engines. The smaller engine is known for not having a disadvantage at the small track compared to the V8 and is often described as “having all the horsepower you need at this small place, you can't use all you have in a V8 anyway.” In recent years, cars with both V6 and V8 engines have made their way to the Little 500 winner’s circle.

Emerson remarked confidently after qualifying was completed, “Tyler Roahrig went right before me, so we had a time to chase. I wish Gene [Nolen] was here, because he was one of my biggest supporters and he was the main reason I'm able to drive this car because he was a big fan of mine. I know he's watching. It would be really cool if he was here and could take some pictures with us on the front row. Starting on the front row means that we’ll get the jump and will be the first in lapped traffic. You get to there in five laps, and you don’t really have clean air. It is better to set your own pace and not have to fight to the front and then pit and try to fight to the front again. You can just get out front and try to stay out front. It is definitely easier to start up front.”From 5/23/2024, at Anderson, Indiana.

 

 

Tommy Nichols Plans 2024 Racing in Both Midwest and Florida

Story and Photos by Richard Golardi

May 21, 2024

Tommy Nichols, May 2024.

Veteran Florida sprint car owner and driver Tommy Nichols plans to race his No. 55 sprint car in both Florida and the Midwest during the 2024 season, and I caught up with him at the recent Must See Racing Sprint Car Series race at Berlin Raceway in Michigan. Nichols has already had his first sprint car feature win of the season, which occurred at Showtime Speedway in Pinellas Park on Saturday, March 9, and added a win in the Dash for Cash at Citrus County Speedway on May 11. He also will be making a major change this season, adding a second team driver for her first races later this season.

“We’re going to run all the Must See races,” Tommy Nichols said, “and we’re planning on running some of the 500 Sprint Car Series. I’ve got two cars up here so I can kind of mix it up and still run what I can down in Tampa with the group. I’ve hired a young lady, Macy Williams, who is going to be driving periodically for me. She’s out of Denver, Colorado, and is 19 years old, and will be driving the winged sprint. My hourglass is getting kind of towards the end, so I figured that I’d find a young driver that I could start coaching and adding to the sport, hopefully.”

Tommy Nichols at Berlin Raceway, Michigan, May 18, 2024

Macy Williams, who has been racing since she was six years old, did have a recent Midwest open-wheel race, driving in the 2023 Kenyon Midget Series season finale at Anderson Speedway on October 7. It was her debut in oval track racing, which occurred with support from Aaron Pierce and his AP Driver Development Program. Williams has had many wins and series championships in go-kart racing, often in the shifter class races. She decided that she was ready to try something new in an attempt to advance in her racing career and match the success she has had in go-karts.

How did Tommy find out about Macy Williams and come to offer her a sprint car ride? “Actually, she drove for Aaron Pierce last year in the midget, and did pretty good, and just through friends, and just came to an agreement. No, she’s never raced in Florida, but we are going to bring her down and let her run a couple of races down there this year.” Tommy’s plans for Macy so far include winged sprint car races with the Must See Racing Sprint Series and also with the Southern Sprint Car Series in Florida. “I don’t know if we’re going to do any non-wing races with her,” Tommy added. “I plan on running some 500 Series races, but I don’t know if she will. I will run the full series with Must See Racing, and with her, she will run a couple of races just to get her feet wet [in a second car].” Tommy told me that he has the Beast chassis that he was racing at Berlin Raceway and also a Hurricane chassis, the car he raced last year.

More on Macy Williams: “Her main thing is the shifter karts,” Tommy Nichols continued, “and she runs around the world. I mean, she’s been to Germany, France, she’s been all over and won multiple races.” How many laps has she had in a sprint car? “Probably none. I think on June 7 [a Friday night open practice], we’re taking her to Anderson and let her run with the wing at Anderson and practice all day long.”Do you have a date for her first winged pavement sprint car race? “Not yet,” Tommy replied. “But I think we’re planning on the race at Plymouth with Must See Racing [race date: Saturday, June 15]. She is also a driving instructor at an Arizona-based driving school and she instructs people that go out there and run the road course. To me, that’s pretty neat [with her instructing wealthy clients who can afford to drive exotic sports cars]. She’s a 19-year-old girl, and she’s out there teaching these guys [on the road course]. She knows corner speed and that’s the big thing, especially for one of the sprint cars. Corner speed … speed period … is where it’s at, so I think she’s going to acclimate to it very well.” Tommy believes that Macy will have no problem getting up to speed in her next racing adventure – sprint cars.

 

 

 

Little 500 Hall of Fame Announces Release of New Documentary

 



Story and photo by Richard Golardi

 

May 15, 2024

 

The Little 500 Hall of Fame has announcedthe release of a new documentary film titled At Speed with Rob Hoffman. This documentary chronicles the career of open-wheel racing car owner and builder Rob Hoffman of Ohio, who is being inducted into the Little 500 Hall of Fame on Saturday, May 25, 2024. Rob also was the recipient of the Jack Nowling Award from the Little 500 Hall of Fame in 2023. With his No. 69 Hoffman Auto Racing sprint car, he won the pole position at the Little 500 with driver Bryan Clauson (2014), he also won the race with Kody Swanson (2016), and had American racing legend Tony Stewart drive his car to third in the race in 2017, along with earning the Rookie of the Year Award. This documentary is being co-presented by the Florida Open Wheel Channel and the Little 500 Hall of Fame and is produced by award-winning journalist and author Richard Golardi.

 

After going to Rob Hoffman’s race shop in Ohio on May 30, 2023, Richard Golardi got to take a tour of the Hoffman Auto Racing team’s race shop and various work areas, in addition to examining the classic car collection and memorabilia of the team’s decades of open-wheel racing and many USAC sprint car championships. Rob Hoffman had many fascinating stories to tell of going racing with his father, Richard, and other Hoffman family members with their Indy cars, champ cars, and also sprint cars and midgets. The nearly 100-year history of the Hoffman family’s American racing endeavors provides an engrossing and exciting story that is sure to please fans of American open-wheel racing, the Indianapolis 500, USAC racing, and the Little 500 sprint car race.

 

The Little 500 Hall of Fame has thankedRichard Golardi, columnist with Hoseheads.com, for producing this video and making it available for free for all race fans worldwide. There will be more documentary films relating to the Little 500 in the future.

 

The Little 500 Hall of Fame has invited the Little 500 community of participants and fans to this year’s induction ceremony, which will take place at Anderson Speedway, Indiana (at the pavilion), on Saturday, May 25 beginning at 1:30p.m.This year’s ceremony will be open to the public at no charge. For more information, please contact Anderson Speedway (765) 642-0206, or David Sink (765) 278-8231 or Email:  MRLITTLE500@aol.com

 

To view the documentary, At Speed with Rob Hoffman, use this link:

 

https://youtu.be/78W9IdSTGCw?si=-UL2n1VmySw1uanq

 

 

Little 500 Hall of Fame Announces the 2024 Recipient of the Jack Nowling Award

Story and photo by Richard Golardi

Danny Ernstes of UAW and the Sam Pierce Chevrolet 2022 Little 500 Pace Truck.

April 12, 2024

The Little 500 Hall of Fame is proud to announce the 2024 recipient of theannual legacy award that honors the memory of Jack Nowling, a legendary Little 500 competitorfrom Florida.The Jack Nowling Award is named for the 1996 Little 500-winning car owner who loved competing in the Little 500 and dreamed of the day when his car would win it.Those eligible for the award are sprint car owners (individuals or teams), engine/car builders, chief mechanics, and those individuals, corporations, or race teams that have designed a system or device that has contributed to sprint car racing competition or safety.

The 2024 recipient of the Jack Nowling Award is Sam Pierce, dealer/owner of Sam Pierce Chevrolet in Daleville, Indiana, and team owner of Sam Pierce Racing. Sam Pierce Chevrolet has provided the Little 500 Presented by UAW with push trucks for many years in addition to the pace truck that paces the field during the race. Sam Pierce has fielded sprint cars in the Little 500 since 2004 with drivers Aaron Pierce, Tanner Swanson, Joey Schmidt, Austin Nemire, and Mickey Kempgens, and adds Kaylee Bryson in 2024. Floridian Colton Bettis is his newest team driver and likely future Little 500 starter. His drivers have earned two poles (both by Aaron Pierce), three top five finishes, and five top tens.

Sam Pierce was in the Central Highlands in South Vietnam during the Vietnam War from 1969 to 1970 as a U.S. Army combat infantryman. “Every day, we were in the bushes,” according to Sam. Upon returning home to Muncie, Indiana, he went back to his job at the GM transmission plant. He also worked on and sold cars from his home. “That was to support my racing habit, my drag racing habit.” The asphalt ¼ mile fueled his desire for speed. He paired that with building a base of customers for car repairs and sales from the GM plant employees. Those Muncie and Anderson GM plant employees would remain a loyal customer base for decades for used car sales, and later for sales of new Chevrolets when Sam Pierce Chevrolet was formed in 1983.

“Our business for years has predominately been supported by the GM employees. We went to a little town called Middletown, it was mostly farmers and GM employees. They worked at Delco-Remy, Guide Lamp or Chevrolet.By 2003 (the last year in Middletown before moving the dealership to Daleville), we sold a thousand new cars that year, and 500 used. We’re in the top five in our area as far as sales go. We’re between two corn fields, but our numbers are really strong. We still sell a thousand new cars a year.”

Sam Pierce’s tenacity, determination, and friendly, selfless demeanoralong with his mentoring of young open wheel race drivers is reminiscent of the qualities that earned Jack Nowling a place in the hearts of competitors and fans in Indiana and nationwide.

TheHall of Fame wishes to thank Wayne and Shirlene Hammond for their continuing sponsorship of the Jack Nowling Award again in 2024.They have chosen to honor the memory of Dave Steele with their sponsor donation. Wayne recently retired as the general manager of Brandon Ford in Tampa, Florida, and previously drove a sprint car for Jack Nowling in the Little 500 and in Florida competition.The Award Plaque features aphoto of Jack Nowling in the winner’s circle at Anderson Speedway in 1996.

The Little 500 Hall of Fame also expresses its thanks toRichard Golardi, columnist with Hoseheads.com, for originating the idea for the award; Wayne and Shirlene Hammond for their sponsor donation; and Dorothy Nowling for her assistance with the logo design. The Little 500 Hall of Fame has invited the Little 500 community of participants and fans to this year’s induction ceremony (which includes the Jack Nowling Award presentation), which will take place at Anderson Speedway, Indiana, on Saturday, May 25(time to be announced).For further information, contact David Sink (765) 278-8231.
By Richard Golardi, Hoseheads.com, for the Little 500 Hall of Fame.

 

 

Little 500 Entry List Shows Few Floridians and a Plethora of Rookies

 

Story and photos by Richard Golardi

 

March 28, 2024

 

The most recently released entry list for the 2024 Little 500 Presented by UAW, set for Saturday, May 25, shows a total of 40 sprint cars entered, with a total of 38 assigned drivers. The No. 12 car entered by Jerry Powell and the Sam Pierce Chevrolet Racing Team entry with the now-retired Tanner Swanson are the two cars without assigned drivers. There are a total of nine rookie drivers entered, a number which might have been pumped up by the surprising win last year by a rookie driver, Jake Trainor. There are also four race winners entered, which includes two multi-time winners, Kody Swanson and Tyler Roahrig. Although the Sam Pierce Chevrolet team does have two drivers for their pavement sprint cars, Kaylee Bryson and 14-year-old Colton Bettis from Florida, the team is entering Bettis in Must See Racing sprint car races only due to his age. Sam Pierce told me that he hasn’t yet decided if he will withdraw the Little 500 entry for the second car or keep it and assign a new driver.

Two-time race winner Tyler Roahrig and friends at the 2023 Little 500

 

There are only three Floridians with cars entered as of the most recent entry list update on March 19. They are Shane Butler from Bushnell, Scotty Adema from Ft. Myers, and Tommy Nichols from Tampa. With 12 race starts, Shane Butler is the most experienced Little 500 driver in the group and also has the best race finish, 8th place in 2016.

 

One of the major factors that has likely increased the number of rookie and veteran entrants in this year’s race is the lack of another pavement sprint car series racing in the Midwest on the same day. In recent years, the Must See Racing Series has held a race on the same day as the Little 500, the American Speed U.S. Nationals, which was held at Birch Run Speedway, Michigan in 2023. Jimmy McCune and Tommy Nichols both raced in Michigan on that weekend instead of entering the 2023 Little 500. In 2024, Must See Racing will not race on Memorial Day weekend. McCune and Nichols will both be back in the Little 500 in 2024. Jeff Bloom, also a regular in the Must See Racing Series, is back to qualify for another Little 500 in 2024 in the No. 32 car of Terry Broadus. By qualifying, he will make his 43rd Little 500 start, which is 13 starts more than the driver with the second most starts, Brian Tyler.

 

Race winner Jake Trainor at the 2023 Little 500.

 

I have learned that five-time Must See Racing Series sprint car champion Jimmy McCune will have a new car for the Little 500, and that it will race for the first time on race day, May 25. In other news for the McCune family, Jimmy and his father, “Big Jim” McCune, will both be present at the Little 500 Hall of Fame induction ceremony for the first time since Big Jim

became the sponsor of the “Irish” Jim McCune Memorial Little 500 Hall of Fame Plaque (named for Big Jim’s father) in 2023. Another McCune family member, Jimmy Jr., aka Jim McCune IV, aka Lil Jimmy, aka Jimbo (those last two from his father, with Jimmy Jr. being preferred by his grandfather), the 15-year-old son of Jimmy McCune, has made his first step toward becoming a pavement sprint car race driver. He has completed his first practice laps at Lorain County Speedway in a pavement sprint car and will be getting his first competition laps later this year in a dirt sprint car. His previous racing experience has been in go-karts on both dirt and pavement. His father and grandfather both plan for him to get more practice laps on pavement in preparation for his first sprint car competition laps.

 

A major change to the format of the Little 500 Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony will mean that the ceremony will be open to the public for free with the elimination of the need to purchase a luncheon ticket. There will be no meal at the ceremony and a later start time, with the hope of attracting more fans arriving in the afternoon for pre-race events. The naming of two local inductees, Gary Schlafer of Anderson and Sandy Jones of Muncie, and a current car owner, Rob Hoffman, who will all be inducted into the Hall of Fame on May 25, will likely also boost attendance. Another upcoming event for the Hall of Fame is the naming of the 2024 recipient of the Jack Nowling Award, an annual award that debuted at the 2023 Induction Ceremony.

 

It's time for another annual tradition, my Little 500 Race Week Open Wheel Racing Schedule. The 2024 edition lists the preferred and recommended open wheel (sprint car and champ car) races in Indiana for Sunday to Saturday of race week and the Memorial Day weekend:

 

Tuesday, 5/21: USAC National Sprint Car Series, Terre Haute Action Track, Terre Haute, IN

Wednesday, 5/22: USAC National Sprint Car Series, Circle City Raceway, Indianapolis, IN

Thursday, 5/23: USAC National Sprint Car Series, Circle City Raceway, Indianapolis, IN

Friday, 5/24: USAC Silver Crown Series, Hoosier Hundred; plus National Pavement Midget Championship race, Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park, Brownsburg, IN (Alternate - Bloomington Speedway in Bloomington, IN, for non-wing dirt sprint cars)

Saturday, 5/25: Little 500 Presented by UAW, Anderson Speedway, Anderson, IN (The Granddaddy of American Sprint Car Races)

Sunday, 5/26: BC's Indiana Double, Non-wing 410 dirt sprint cars, Kokomo Speedway, Kokomo, IN

 

 

 

Florida’s February Sprint Car Speedweeks Champions and Award Winners

 

Story and Photos by Richard Golardi

 

February 28, 2024

 

2024 Florida Speedweeks Sprint Car Champion Drivers and Special Event Winners (limited to races held in Florida from January 1 to February 28, 2024):

 

(1) United Sprint Car Series (USCS) 2^nd Annual Southern Sprint Car Shootout, Volusia Speedway Park, Date Awarded 1/27/2024: Champion – Ryan Timms

 

(2) 5^th Annual Dave Steele Sprint Car Championship, Showtime Speedway

A)    Winged Sprint Car Champion, 2/3/2024: Davey Hamilton Jr.

B)    Dave Steele 125 Non-Wing Sprint Car Champion, 2/10/2024: Kyle O’Gara

C)    Dave Steele Sprint Car Championship Overall Point Champion (all three races), 2/10/2024: Colton Bettis

 

Top Three Finishers, Dave Steele Non-Wing Championship Race won by Kyle O'Gara, 2-10-2024.

 

(3) DIRTcar Nationals, World of Outlaws Sprint Car Big Gator Trophy Winner for most points in World of Outlaws sprint cars, Volusia Speedway Park (four races 2/7 to 2/10), 2/10/2024: David Gravel

 

(4) DIRTcar Nationals, United States Auto Club (USAC) Sprint Car Big Gator Trophy Winner for most points in USAC sprint cars, Volusia Speedway Park (two races, 2/13), 2/13/2024: Logan Seavey

 

(5) High Limit Racing Florida Sprint Car Speedweeks Point Champion, East Bay Raceway Park, (two races, 2/13), 2/13/2024: Brad Sweet

 

(6) Daytona Antique Auto Racing Association (DAARA) Spring Nationals Sprint Car Champion, Marion County Speedway, Ocala, 2/14/2024: Chad Freeman

 

(7) East Bay 360 Sprint Car Winternationals, King of the 360s Sprint Car Champion, East Bay Raceway Park, 2/16/2024: Ryan Timms

 

Ryan Timms, King of the 360s at East Bay Raceway.

 

(8) USAC Florida Speedweeks Sprint Car Point Champion, Most Points in February 2024 Competition in Florida, Ocala Speedway (2/9 & 10 and 2/15 & 16) and Volusia Speedway Park (two races, 2/13), Awarded 2/16/2024: Logan Seavey

 

(9) United Sprint Car Series (USCS) Winter Heat Series Florida Point Champion, held at Volusia Speedway Park, Hendry County Motorsports Park, and Southern Raceway (seven races 1/25 to 2/24), 2/24/2024: Lance Moss

 

2024 Florida Open Wheel Column Florida Speedweeks Special Sprint Car Awards

 

2024 Florida Open Wheel Column Florida Speedweeks 360 Sprint Car Driver of the Year Award: Ryan Timms

A 17-year-old midget and sprint car driver from Oklahoma City named Ryan Timms won three 360 winged sprint car races on dirt during February (two with USCS on 1/27 & 2/3 and the East Bay Raceway King of the 360s race on 2/16). What made him the most impressive 360 driver during the month was that two of the three wins were in big-money races paying $10,000 each to win, the USCS Southern Sprint Car Series finale on 1/27 and the East Bay 360 Winternationals finale on 2/16, which he won from 14^th starting place. Timms is a Toyota Development driver who will drive a midget in his second season with Keith Kunz Motorsports in 2024. His high point last year was likely his three wins in USAC national midget racing. Timms has been called one of the brightest young guns currently driving in American open-wheel racing.

 

2024 Florida Open Wheel Column Florida Speedweeks 410 Sprint Car Driver of the Year Award: Logan Seavey

Although Logan Seavey only won two of the six USAC national sprint car races in February, he won two features in one day at Volusia after a Monday rainout, and he left Florida with the USAC sprint car point lead and the Big Gator Trophy for most USAC sprint car points at Volusia Speedway Park with that impressive feat of two feature wins in one day on February 13. Those achievements were the best among 410 sprint car drivers during the month in Florida. Hopefully he’ll remember not to put that Big Gator on the floor in any room where dogs or cats roam to avoid a serious pet freakout.

 

2024 Florida Open Wheel Column Florida Speedweeks Track of the Year Award: East Bay Raceway Park

I’ll admit that this award was based on purely sentimental reasons since the track held its last-ever East Bay Winternationals this month, will close permanently in mid-October, and that the decision was based on decades of incredible, history-making dirt sprint car racing for the entire life of the track, 1977 to 2024. Farewell to the East Bay Winternationals.

 

2024 Florida Open Wheel Column Florida Speedweeks Sprint Car Promoter of the Year Award: Pete Walton, United Sprint Car Series

Pete Walton had the most ambitious schedule of Speedweeks sprint car racing, which stretched from the far-flung western Florida panhandle down to the edge of the Everglades in South Florida and lasted from late January through late February. You could have seen U. S. military fighter jets scream overhead as they departed the Pensacola area military bases as well as some equally intimidating crocodiles and alligators in the swamps near the Hendry County track while visiting those USCS Speedweeks locations. In addition, Pete Walton has firmly established the USCS Southern Sprint Car Shootout at Volusia Speedway Park (held three weeks before Daytona 500 weekend this year and moving to two weeks before Daytona in 2025) as the probable successor to the East Bay 360 Winternationalsfor next year and beyond. There is no other three-race series for 360 c.i. winged dirt sprint cars that has a realistic chance to be the “next 360 Sprint Car Winternationals.” With Volusia as the special event’s home and the support of the DIRTcar management that owns the track, Pete Walton’s workaholic commitment got him a title sponsor (Germfree), air time on DIRTVision’s streaming network for the three-raceseriespaying $75,000 in prize money, participation by a NASCAR regular and a handful ofsprint car legends, and the virtual certainty that his three days of 360 motor madness will be the new “360 Winternationals” for 2025 and beyond. Heck, I’ve even encouraged him to use the “360 Winternationals” title starting next year.

 

2024 Florida Open Wheel Column Florida Speedweeks Most Exciting Sprint Car Race Award:

High Limit Racing Series, Battle at the Bay, Feature Race #2 (on Tuesday), East Bay Raceway Park, Tuesday, February 13,2024

Video – race highlights, High Limit Racing Series,Feature #2, East Bay Raceway Park, Feb. 13, 2024:

https://youtu.be/ycJ0UhiBzmM?si=ZpvHu1bDAu9P3w8K

 

 

 

Will Cagle is Inducted Into His Seventh Hall of Fame

Story and photo by Richard Golardi

February 22, 2024

On Tuesday, February 20, Florida auto racing legend Will Cagle was inducted into his seventh auto racing Hall of Fame, The Villages Motor Racing Fan Club Hall of Fame, in a ceremony that took place in The Villages, Florida.

Will and Barbara Cagle

Upon accepting the induction, Will commented, “I’d like to thank my family and my wife, Barbara, who I picked up hitchhiking sixty-six years ago and she’s still here! She’s towed the cars and has done everything to help me. She’s always been right there. We’ve got three lovely children and the oldest one is sixty, he turned sixty a couple of years ago. Then we’ve got two girls, and they’re not as old as he is. But I’ve had a wonderful career and the main thing I’ve done is what I wanted to do, and not what someone told me to do. I’d also like to thank The Villages Motor Racing Fan Club for inducting me into their Hall of Fame. I consider it quite an honor.”

Will has frequently been described as the most dominating big-block modified race driver of all time. Will has won countless modified and super-modified championships in Florida and in the Northeast, including multiple track championships in each of these states: New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.

During his career, Will Cagle has been inducted into seven prominent racing Halls of Fame. They are: (1) Harmony Speedway Hall of Fame; (2) Living Legends of Auto Racing; (3) Jacksonville Stock Car Racing Hall of Fame; (4) Eastern Motorsport Press Association Hall of Fame; (5) Northeast Dirt Modified Hall of Fame; (6) New York State Stock Car Association Hall of Fame, and (7) The Villages Motor Racing Fan Club Hall of Fame.

In addition to modifieds and super-modifieds, Will has driven Indy cars, NASCAR Modified-Sportsman stock cars at Daytona, late model stock cars, midgets, sprint cars, USAC Silver Crown champ cars, Legend cars, a Trans Am sports car ('68 Chevy Camaro), and even a five-ton Mack truck during a racing career that began in the early '50s. Will has raced against and beaten some of the best drivers in America and has been a dirt racing instructor to Hollywood royalty. Will is credited with 472 wins in big-block modified racing, and over 900 total wins and if you ask him, he'll tell you that he intends to get some more.

I hope you will join me in congratulating Will Cagle on his amazing racing career.

Video – “Will Cagle's Induction Into The Villages Motor Racing Fan Club Hall of Fame”
https://youtu.be/YwX3_sQrXVo?si=0Is9U8BAZ53h4YU5

 

 

 

Florida Legend Jim Childers Plans Return to Racing at Age 80

Story and Photo by Richard Golardi

February 13, 2024

Florida late model and sprint car racing legend Jim Childers told me on Saturday that he plans to return to driving a sprint car at age 80. He retired from race car driving 20 years ago when he was 60 years old, a move that he now regrets. When I asked Childers why he was making a racing comeback in his 80s, he remarked, “Because I think I retired too soon.” He also mentioned fellow Florida racing legend Buzzie Reutimann, who is still racing dirt modifieds into his 80s and apparently has no plans to retire soon.

Jim and Charmaine Childers at the 2018 Little 500 at Anderson Speedway.

Childers plans to make his racing comeback in pavement sprint car racing and (as of Saturday) plans for his first race to be at the next BG Products Southern Sprint Car Series race at Citrus County Speedway in Inverness on Saturday, March 2.With a $10,000 first-place prize for the 50-lap race, this special event, The Children’s Dream Fund 50, is being co-sanctioned by the Midwest-based Must See Racing Sprint Series. This race already has 31 cars that are anticipated to enter, with seven out-of-state drivers on the preliminary entry list, and appears to be a successful attempt to establish an iconic Florida pavement sprint car event with multiple sanctioning bodies involved. Childers has entered the No. 44 car that he purchased from Gary Wiggins. Childers, now a Seffner-based car owner/driver, did show up on an earlier Southern Sprint Car Series entry list for a race on January 27, but did not feel the car was ready and now plans to make his return to racing on March 2.

Jim Childers, a Little 500 Hall of Fame inductee, did have most of hisauto racing success in sprint cars, winning the Little 500 three times (most for any Florida driver) and earning the TBARA sprint car driverchampionship, Tampa Tribune Driver of the Year honor, and Open Wheel magazine 360 Winged Sprint Car Driver of the Year titlein 2000. He was 56 years old when he earned those last three honors and retired four years later. Now he’s embarking on his next racing adventure in his 80s, and like Buzzie Reutimann, is making no mention of any plans to retire.

 

 

 

 

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E-mail  Richard Golardi floridaopenwheel@gmail.com