Performance Racing Industry Trade Show
Friday's updates from Indy's PRI Trade Show
Registration at the PRI show. (DirtonDirt.com)
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. (Dec. 13) — The Indiana Convention Center doors reopen at 9 a.m. Friday for the second of three days at 2024’s Performance Racing Industry Trade Show, where more than 40,000 attendees are expected to check out more than 1,000 companies over 750,000 square feet floor space making up more than 3,600 booths, many with a Dirt Late Model focus. Friday's blog-style notebook (complete PRI coverage):
5:45 p.m. | Wrapping up Friday
We're wrapping up our second-day coverage but rejoin us first thing Saturday for more notes from the show floor, including some holdover notes from today's interviews. Kyle McFadden is still planning a story on how Ariel Bloomquist, daughter of the late Scott Bloomquist, is trying to bring back the production of Bloomquist Race Cars and another story on where Dirt Late Model racing technical inspection stands going into 2025.
5:40 p.m. | Overton's plans
Brandon Overton’s plans are coming more into focus for the 2025 season as the Longhorn Factory Team intends to follow the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series next year, crew chief Anthony Burroughs told DirtonDirt.com at Friday’s PRI Trade Show.
"Yep, our main goal is to get ready to win a Lucas Oil Series championship,” Burroughs said, the veteran crew chief who finished his 2024 Lucas Oil campaign with Hudson O’Neal and SSI Motorsports before officially starting his duties at the Longhorn Factory Team.
The revamped Longhorn Factory Team with Overton at the wheel and Burroughs overseeing race-day operations from the Longhorn Chassis headquarters in China Grove, N.C., made their debut together last weekend during the Gateway Dirt Nationals inside The Dome at America’s Center in St. Louis, Mo.
Overton finished 14th in the 40-lap feature around the temporary fifth-mile oval after needing a provisional to start the main event when a flat tire while leading his heat race on prelim night derailed his chances at a pristine starting spot for Saturday’s action.
“The Dome was good. Obviously, we didn’t have the results we wanted. But at that time, we hadn’t tested yet, so that was our first time at the track,” said Burroughs, whose plans to initially test at Senoia (Ga.) Raceway before The Dome had been nixed by weather. “The weather was kinda iffy and I didn’t think we were quite ready yet. So that was our first time at the track. All that went excellent.
“We had some speed, but getting to work together with the guys at the track, being with Brandon, and all that went perfect. The communication was great. Our team’s solid, we knew that before we got there. But it’s still nice to get to the track.”
Overton, who finished sixth on the 2023 Lucas Oil tour before winning the Hunt the Front Super Dirt Series championship this season, will likely begin his 2025 campaign during Jan. 15-18’s Super Bowl of Racing that opens the Lucas Oil season at Georgia’s Golden Isles Speedway.
Burroughs said “there’s always a possibility” the team could make the cross-country trek to Vado (N.M.) Speedway Park’s Wild West Shootout that runs Jan. 4-12, but it’s unlikely.
The Longhorn Factory Team does have tests next week at Golden Isles Speedweek, Ocala (Fla.) Speedway and All-Tech Raceway in Ellisville, Fla., before returning to the racetrack in 2025.
“I would love to go to Vado, but being a new team, only having a couple days to get to Brunswick, our main goal right now is to be prepared for Lucas Oil and to be prepared for Speedweeks,” Burroughs said. “We’re going to run all the races at Speedweek. That’s the main focus for me. If everything works out and we have time, I’d say this year probably won’t be at Vado. Hopefully after this year we’ll be able to support it for years to come.”
3:25 p.m. | Staying active
Kyle Strickler ran only a handful of Dirt Late Model events in 2024. He’s not sure how many he’ll enter next year.
But make no mistake — the 41-year-old driver from Mooresville, N.C., will stay very busy.
“We didn’t get to do as much late Model racing as I want, but hopefully next year I’ll be able to do a lot more,” Strickler said while standing near the booth for Monit Motorsport booth, the company that manufactures his brake bias dials. “Definitely hit all the big Eldora races, and then the Charlotte (World Finals) stuff is obviously really important to me, but also try to do some more regional stuff and then go to the (national) tour races that are at the places I like going to.”
Strickler said his limited Dirt Late Model action in ’24 “was almost like a full reset where I got my Longhorns back on Billstein shocks and was working with Vinny Guliani again.” He also recently hired a 19-year-old from Pennsylvania, Trenton Dermitt, as a full-time crewman and expects to have him at his side for future competition.
Much of Strickler’s ’25 schedule will feature open-wheel modified racing, the discipline he focused on for the majority of the past season.
“I think (in ’24) I drove eight different chassis on the modified side,” said Strickler, who expects to run 80-100 races next year divided between divisions. “It depends on scheduling-wise how much modified racing I’m doing next year because G-man, G-Style Transport, with all his support, he wants me to run some more of the USMTS stuff.”
Strickler noted that he’s very interested in expanding his horizons to experience new places and things. He said he had to turn down an offer to drive a winged asphalt sprint car in South Africa this month, but he did make a trip to Washington this season to race a modified at Skagit Speedway and hopes to take advantage of other unique opportunities that come his way.
“Now that I’m getting older, I like doing some of the different stuff that I haven’t done and travel,” he said.
2:31 p.m. | Winning twins
Understandably, 17-year-old twins Amelia and Laela Eisenschenk of Fargo, N.D., lean toward open-wheeled racing. After all, their uncle Donny Schatz is one of the all-time best sprint car racers, a 10-time World of Outlaws champion in the open-wheel division. But Schatz has dabbled in some Late Model action, too, so the twins — they're the daughters of Donny’s sister, Deanne — have also added Late Models to their racing repertoire. The youngsters were touring the PRI show when they stopped for a brief interview.
The sisters both won a pair of 305 sprint car races in 2024, while their best finishes in Late Models came with Amelia’s fourth-place run at River Cities Speedway in Grand Forks, N.D., and Laela’s eighth-place finish in other River Cities event. They both made the starting lineup for a June 7 Northern LateModel Racing Association event at River Cities.
Competing in 305 and 410 sprints along with the Late Models keep things hopping.
“We had three different types of cars going for the both of us. We just tried to split our time between the three as well as we could,” Laela said. “Getting in the 410 (sprint) for the first time was a dream come true for both of us. So it's been fun. It was my first year in the Late Model, so I love that, too. Getting in the 410 in the Late Model both this year was fun for me and I hope to get in both next year as much as I can. Just race as much as we can next year and continue to excel.”
Amelia enjoyed her third Late Model season and plans to get back in the full-fendered car in January’s Early Thaw action at Central Arizona Raceway in Casa Grande. If they can expand their equipment, the sisters may do some open-competition engine Late Model racing when the World of Outlaws Late Model Series make a June 26-29 swing through Minnesota and North Dakota.
“We’ll just try our best to keep to pushing and hit all the races we can,” Amelia said. “We’re kind of trying to expand. The WISSOTA sanction is huge around us. They’ll three or four times a week. So it's hard to kind of get away from an hour down the road in racing, but it would be pretty cool to be able to race these bigger events when the World of Outlaw Late Models come to town, and even the sprint cars with the 410s.
“We're trying to find a few more motors right now. Right now we’ve got some Fords in the Late Models and obviously the sprint cars are Chevys. It would be pretty cool to get some more Super Late Models and jump around in those a little bit. The Late Model world is pretty cool.”
Amelia made her Super Late Model debut a week before PRI at the Castrol Gateway Dirt Nationals.
"The Dome was a blast. It's definitely different. A small racetrack. It's pretty cool to race in stadium of people to look up and see that many people,” she said. “And I thought we did pretty well. I mean, we made it to a qualifier (race) and obviously you'd like to push yourself towards the A-main, but it is what it is (in the) first time there racing.”
2:20 p.m.| Loudy's grade
How would 19-year-old Kaede Loudy of Rogersville, Tenn., grade his 2024 season, his second as a Dirt Late Model driver? When asked that question on Friday he broke up his answer into essentially two semesters.
“The year started off rough, I guess, just doing it all mainly alone and by myself,” Loudy said. “It ain’t easy trying to compete with these guys that do it every day of the week. But like the last eight races we had seven top-10s and one DNF, and none of the races were slouch races by no means.
“So, the start of the year, I’d give it probably a C. The end of the year on, probably a B-plus.”
Loudy, who turns 20 in two weeks, counted his third- and fourth-place finishes in Nov. 1-2’s Hunt the Front Super Dirt Series finale at I-75 Raceway in Sweetwater, Tenn., as “probably the highlight of the year.” But his modest self-funded effort — consisting of one MasterSbilt Chassis — included some other promising outings.
“We led (three) races and just rookie mistakes and playing with lapped cars cost us,” he said. “But it was a great year and I think it’s gonna be a good year next year with the plans.”
Loudy is gearing up to chase the entire Hunt the Front tour while adding in some Lucas Oil, World of Outlaws and other specials in his home region.
“This year was, I guess you’d call it the second year (for him racing a Late Model), but in reality I’d call it the first year because it was finally the first year I had all my crap together,” he said. “I was ready to do it, and we ran exceptionally well for what I can afford to do because I own everything and, you know, it’s not easy being 19 and trying to compete with guys that have done it for years and decades and decades. Just the funding is there for them and it’s not always there for me, so you gotta perform to be able to afford to get to the next one.”
Contending for the Hunt the Front title is atop Loudy’s to-do list for ’25, but he also is focused on reaching victory lane.
“I led three races this year and all three races on lap 21 something happened,” he said. “So just getting past lap 21 and, finally, just putting races together, winning races, and hopefully we can be competitive and consistent to be able to put ourselves in a chance to win a championship.”
1:57 p.m. | Overheard
Random things overheard from PRI show attendees. … “It’s happy hour from 3-6 p.m.,” said a woman who spied a sign on a bar, notifying three other folks with her as they walked away from the Indiana Convention Center. … From an older gentleman who, with a friend, paused to let three folks roll past on the rental scooters: “That’s going to be us here soon.” … From one show attendee to another just outside the doors: “They don’t check on ‘em no more, you’re good,” a man said, holding up the PRI badge around his neck.
1:43 p.m. | K-Rob's plans
Kent Robinson of Bloomington, Ind., no longer fields a family race team, but he hasn’t faded away from the Dirt Late Model ranks. In fact, he plans to continue running a limited schedule in 2025 with fellow Hoosier Chad Stapleton.
“I guess I call him my car owner now, Chad Stapleton,” Robinson said with a smile while touring the PRI show on Friday. “We got fortunate that he let me drive his car a little bit there at the end of the year and we’re gonna meet up here later today and kind of discuss what next year looks like.”
The 37-year-old driver who sold most of his family’s racing equipment before the start of the 2024 season said he has “no concrete plans” for ’25 with Stapleton, but he hopes to “maybe run 10 or 15 times.” He will supply a motor and offer other support to Stapleton’s effort so they can go out and “have a little fun.”
“It was a good group we put together last year with (crewman) Kyle Ault and Chad and his guys and we did have fun,” Robinson said. “At this stage of my career, with kids and my businesses, it’s nice to be able to still try to be competitive and have fun doing it. That’s all we can ask for.
“I’m still a motorsports fan at heart and love driving and everything that goes along with it, but I just don’t have time (to field a team) at this stage of my career.”
Robinson said he “sent Chad the Eldora schedule” with hopes that they’ll base their ’25 racing on the famed half-mile oval in Rossburg, Ohio.
“I just love that place so much,” Robinson said. “I’d love to run all those races there. I doubt that’s something we’ll do, but definitely the big ones. And then, you know, support our local tracks around home, Brownstown and Circle City up here, and whatever else makes most sense and whenever we get time.”
1:24 p.m. | Welcome back
Longtime Rocket Chassis house car crew member Austin Hargrove is ready to get “the band back together” with Brandon Sheppard’s return to the seat of the iconic blue No. 1 in 2025.
“Timmy (McCreadie) did us a good job (in 2024) and Shepp’s always did us a good job and Hudson (O’Neal) did us a good job (in 2023 and early in ’24),” Hargrove said. “It’s just normal business, you know what I mean? We just continue to do the same work we did for all three of them. Nothing different. Just plugging away.
“But Brandon's really, he’s like a brother to all of us because we were together for so long (2017-22), you know what I mean? So, no, nothing against anything else or whatever, it’s just kind of like old times (reuniting with Sheppard).”
With Hargrove, car chief Danny White and crewman Joel Rogers all still with the Mark Richards-owned team, the 31-year-old Sheppard will almost feel like he never left Rocket1 to drive Longhorn cars for the last two years.
“Everything’s the same,” Hargrove said. “I think that’s a part of the formula to keep it going. If you can find some guys that can get along and put up with each other and, I guess, learn each other and know when somebody’s having a bad day or when somebody’s having a good day and when you can mess with them and when you can’t mess with them, I think that’s just what makes the chemistry work.
“And I think that’s part of a lot of our success, is just, you know, we all have our own job. No one tries to step on the next guy’s toes, and if one guy is down, the other guy jumps in to help us, you know what I mean? So we just all work together to make it happen. Whatever it takes to get it done is what we do.”
Hargrove was at the show with Richards and Rogers but not Sheppard, who was back home in New Berlin, Ill., where he is set to serve as the Grand Marshal of the town’s annual holiday parade on Friday night. Sheppard was with the team a few weeks ago, though, for a test session at Golden Isles Speedway near Brunswick, Ga., where Sheppard will kick off his 2025 Lucas Oil Series chase on Jan. 15.
“We went to Brunswick just to make sure he was comfortable with everything and stuff and then we just went back to the shop (in Shinnston, W.Va.) and got to work,” Hargrove said. “That was in the car that Timmy had drove basically all year, but we only had one of those new (Rocket XR1.2) cars at the time so we built two more this winter and we got a new truck and trailer.
“So it’s been very busy, just trying to get everything put back the way it’s supposed to be (in the new truck), getting cars together and everything. It’s been busy but it’ll all be worth it.”
1:11 p.m. | English’s plans
After running an independent schedule in 2024 in joining forces early in the season with Coltman Farms Racing, Tanner English of Benton, Ky., is planning a national touring run in 2025. He plans to announce soon whether it’ll be the World of Outlaws Late Model Series or the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series.
“We still gonna do some talking and talk to everybody. We'll know probably by the end of the week or something like that,” English said Friday while touring the PRI show floor with team owner Brett Coltman and others. “It just depends on how things go. We’re just gonna see what happens and go from there.”
English, who in 2024 had three five-figure paydays with two on the DIRTcar Summer Nationals and a $20,000 Hunt the Front Super Dirt Series triumph at Duck River Raceway Park in Wheel, Tenn., looks forward to a 2025 season when a national touring schedule will give him a blueprint for team plans.
“Just knowing where you're gonna be is big, you know, and having something to plan for is big,” said the 31-year-old who in 2022 finished second in WoO points. “You don't have to guess where you're gonna be and you can kind of gear up for certain tracks and stuff like that. It's nice to have a plan.”
It’s also nice to have a stability for the driver whose racing future was uncertain early in 2024 before he landed with Coltman’s operation.
“It’s big. Just having more than half a year under our belt is big,” he said. “Everybody’s gotten used to each other and we know we know what everybody wants and the way we do go about things, so next year it’s easier.”
12:49 p.m. | Honoring T-Mac
With a new grandchild expected to be born soon, coming to the PRI show wasn’t the highest on Steve Baker’s list. But the Rocket Chassis co-founder knew he wanted to come to the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series banquet scheduled for Friday night to pay tribute to departing Rocket Chassis house car driver Tim McCreadie, who finished fourth on the national tour.
With Brandon Sheppard returning to the seat of the Rocket1, Baker and the Mark Richards-owned team plan to send McCreadie off in style
“He’s a good guy. He's well-liked among the fans and everybody in the pit area also. So we want to support that and that's why we're here, to celebrate with Tim McCreadie,” Baker said along an Indiana Convention Center concourse after stopping for a brief interview.
The 50-year-old McCreadie, who captured the $50,000 Topless 100 at Batesville Speedway in Locust Grove, Ark., and had 16 top-five finishes in 45 series starts, stepped into the Rocket1 ride in March as a surprise replacement when Hudson O’Neal left the team. McCreadie ended up being stopgap, but the Rocket team was grateful for the Watertown, N.Y. veteran, a two-time Lucas Oil champ.
"Timmy just brought a little different aspect to the program of what we've had in the past. And he brought a lot of experience and a lot of new ideas. It gave us a different way to look at things and he helped a lot in the development of the new car that we got out now,” said Baker, who was inducted into the National Dirt Late Model Hall of Fame in August. “A lot of his experience, we appreciate everything he's done. We didn't win the races we wanted to win, but he did a lot for the program and that's why we want to keep him around, through driving for Boom” Briggs and the Briggs Transport Team.
“We're going to work really closely with him. I just built him two new race cars so he's going to have all top of the line stuff and he definitely has our support as much as we can give him to make that program work,” Baker added. “It just opens up avenues or different ways of thinking of things. Sometimes we get tunnel vision and you're looking straight down the road and sometimes you need to veer off that road a little bit. And Timmy brought that to the program, a different way to do the same thing. Our ultimate goal is to win checkered flags. And again, with what he has brought to the program has helped us tremendously.”
12:40 p.m. | Starting at home
Garrett Alberson of Las Cruces, N.M., doesn’t have much time left to relish his breakthrough season on the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series. He’ll be back racing — just down the road from his native home, in fact — in just a few weeks when he tackles Jan. 4-12’s Wild West Shootout at Vado (N.M.) Speedway Park.
The 35-year-old driver for Robert Motorsports is ready to kick off 2025 at the highly competitive six-race meet in his home state. Nearly 55 drivers have made commitments to compete at Vado, though Alberson’s experience as a national touring series regular for the last three years has him viewing the challenge facing him as “just another race day.”
“It’s just anywhere you go nowadays — everybody knows where the good races are at and you're going to be racing good guys if you’re going to win,” Alberson said while walking the PRI show with his car owner Ken Roberts. “I used to really worry about (big fields) a lot more than I should. I used to stress myself out like, ‘Who was going to come?’ I used to look at the race like, ‘Oh, no, this guy is going.’
“But we’re one of those guys too, you know?”
The Wild West Shootout provides Alberson the rare opportunity to race in front of his parents and other family members and see familiar territory.
“I just love going out there seeing the mountains, seeing the tracks, seeing all family and stuff,” said Alberson, who now lives in Dubuque, Iowa.
Alberson, who won his first-ever Lucas Oil Series feature in 2024 and finished a career-best sixth in the points standings, will head into the new season without R.C. Whitwell returning as his crew chief. The Arizonian has decided to leave the team so Alberson will have “a couple of new crew” members helping him.
“I think he's gonna try to go racing again,” Alberson said of Whitwell, a veteran modified and Late Model driver. “He was an excellent worker and excellent crew chief, and I just really got along with him too. He’s one of my friends. I feel like that’s a bummer (to lose him), but at the same time he’s in the exact same position I was when I worked for Earl (Pearson Jr.). His passion is driving and he’s a really good race car driver.
“So, you know, you can't deny a guy that. You should celebrate your friends getting to do what they want to do. It’s a bummer in away, but hopefully he can find his way like he wants.”
12:32 p.m. | Lloyd’s back
Two-time Southern All Star champion Ivedent Lloyd Jr., of Ocala, Fla., has mostly been out of Super Late Model racing the last several seasons, instead getting his kicks in occasional Crate Late Model events or driving a street stock for his buddy Jeff Stalker.
Getting the itch to run some Super Late Models again, the 58-year-old Lloyd on Thursday at the PRI show ran into 67-year-old Hall of Famer Billy Moyer, who is still active behind the wheel.
“If he's gonna race,” Lloyd said Thursday on the show floor, “I might as well race, too.”
While he hasn’t run a Super Late Model Florida Speedweeks event since 2020, Lloyd bought the latest version of the Rocket Chassis and is going to drop in a Cornett engine with plans to run the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series action at his hometown track along with the Winternationals at Volusia Speedway Park in Barberville, Fla., the half-mile track where he’s done most of the racing in his career. Volusia is also the site of one of his career highlights with a victory in 2014’s Winternationals opener against the kind of stacked field Speedweeks brings.
The street stock racing is a good time — “I have just have a blast with it,” he said — in a division with heavy cars, hard tires and slower speeds. Will he be ready to return to the high-speed Super Late Model action?
"I might go get an eye exam before we get ready to go or something, get a good physical, get some Geritol,” Lloyd said with a smile. “It kind of sucks when you're the oldest guy there.”
He’s looking forward to it and much prefers it to the Crate Late Model racing.
“I just don’t like it. The racing is just is so hard. Like Volusia is a good example. They run Crates over there now and you go over and if the track's wide open and draw a bad pill, you can't pass nobody. Those Crates just can't pass. Everybody's doing the same thing. Everybody's wide open,” Lloyd said. With Super Late Models, “you've got some room to work with and run the cushion, run the bottom, do stuff like that. In a Crate car, there’s just nothing you can do. It's just boring.”
Lloyd, touring the show with his three sons who have started doing some racing, ran into Ohio driver Devin Moran and the Roger Sellers-owned Double Down Motorsports team at the show Thursday and ended up joining them for dinner. That started a little friendly ribbing about facing off in Florida in a few months.
“Devin is my biggest fan, he is,” Lloyd said. “We’ve got a little running deal here. We're gonna see who outruns who. I think I got Roger on my side, actually I think Roger is actually on my side, not on Devin’s. It'll be fun.”
12:09 p.m. | Steering Buddy
Grant Pearl couldn’t be more pleased with how the Steering Buddy product he designed with his father, Mike, has developed over the past five years.
“I would say it exceeded our expectations,” Pearl said Friday morning of the device that allows teams to easily maneuver race cars around the race shop, in and out of the transporter and through tech inspection. “It’s reliable. We don’t hardly ever get any back. They don’t tear up — people love them.”
Pearl, 35, of Anniston, Ala., and his father have fine-tuned the contraption into an item that’s become very popular, especially in the Dirt Late Model world where the Pearls have many close ties.
“Me and him worked on this deal for three years before we sold the first one,” said Pearl, who has a PRI booth for the third year in a row. “We used it for a whole year before I sold one to anybody, before really anybody even knew about it. It was, like, top secret. We wanted to make sure it wasn’t gonna tear up, it wasn’t gonna break.
“And during that year process we did make some adjustments, but that’s why we tested it. You know, these guys that are knocking me off, they’re building these things and they’re coming up with this idea or, you know, trying to make it work, and then a week later they put it on Facebook for sale and then it gets out there in the real world and it gets used and abused and now they got problems … so it comes back, and after a customer sends it back once or twice, they call me.”
Pearl said he’s working with his father to expand the Steering Buddy market to the asphalt Late Model division and into drag racing circles, but there’s no doubt it’s all over the Dirt Late Model pit area.
“I would say, if you looked at the starting line up for the World 100, we had 95 of the percent of the field (using a Steering Buddy),” Pearl said. “And you can go through the top 15 of the World of Outlaws and top 15 in Lucas Oil (Series) points, and I’dd say we have 12 of the top 15. That kind of sells it when those guys use it — Jonathan Davenport, Ricky Thornton, Hudson O’Neal, Jimmy (Owens). Guys are like, ‘I gotta get one.’
“It advertises itself the more I get out there and the more people see them on them guys’ cars. We’ve had some competitors or some knockoffs, you know, but people just use the same principle and try to the same principle and they generic-ize it.”
11:25 a.m. | Friedman's philosophy
Daren Friedman of Forrest, Ill., left the driver’s seat of a Dirt Late Model in 2015 and hasn’t returned to competition since.
But does the 45-year-old operator of Dyer’s Top Rods ever regret his decision to end his driving career while still in his mid-30s? In a Friday morning conversation, he admitted quitting was hard but he’s at peace with his decision.
“Like, I got to the point where this is a really expensive sport,” Friedman said. “I mean, no matter who it is, whatever your budget is, it’s still expensive. So then you go, you sit in a race car and you’re like, ‘Well, do I really want to sit in this race car when it’s 100 degrees out and still spend all this money?’ And so you kind of weigh out whether it’s fun.
“I quit because partly because my kids were growing up, I was missing so much. And our business was growing a little bit (and taking up) a lot of time to, you know, go race and come back and try to do the work stuff.”
Friedman noted that around the time he stopped racing in 2015, “it was like, in the Fairbury area, local guys, we had like Joe Harlan and some other guys, Lance Dehm, who works for us now, they quit all within a couple of years after that too.
“And, you know, Lance still goes to the races,” he continued. “But like Joe Harlan, for the longest time, you wouldn’t see him anywhere, never went to a race anywhere. And I think some of it is like — how do I want to say it? — like maybe they didn’t really want to quit was maybe a reason for that. This (racing) is like a drug, you know, and if you're not there, then you don’t want to come back and do it.”
Friedman, who started racing at 19 and ran UMP modifieds before progressing to Dirt Late Models, said he’s not surprised that some drivers — especially legends like Billy Moyer and the late Scott Bloomquist — find it so hard to hang up their helmets.
“I think like a guy like Billy Moyer, and Scott Blomquist was probably the same way, you know, they are so invested,” Friedman said. “This is their life. That's what they did. I mean, that was their job, their everything, and he’s probably wanting to quit because, you know, maybe it’s a lot of work, you don’t want to work that much, and then he gets out of it and then somebody offers him some help or a ride and heck, he’s like, ‘Yeah, we’ll go back at it.’”
With his business and two teenage sons now racing UMP modifieds, Friedman maintains his close connection to the sport without having to drive himself.
“I’m there all the time and I’m a race fan and that’s no problem,” he said. “I drove the two-seater (Late Model) at Fairbury for a long time and that kind of gave me that fulfillment of getting to run something, but I’ve never actually raced a car, a real car on the speedway, since I quit.
“And my two boys race now, so we have two cars at the shop and we go racing. I think Austin ran almost 40 times last year and Carson ran probably 35.
“It’s great. I love it. I actually enjoy what we’re doing now with the two boys almost more than me racing. I don't work on them quite like I used to — I don’t wash cars, I don’t wash tires. I’ll do all the technical kind of things that they need help with, but as far as the labor stuff, they take care of all that.
“But, you know,” he continued, “I think it really just comes down to the point of — and I hate to say it, we all know it’ s expensive — but it just gets to the point where either you have to move on and go on with your life and realize that you’re getting older and you have to try to plan for the future, or somebody else owns your stuff … and there’s less and less car owners today than there used to be.”
10:32 a.m. | Show thoughts
You gotta think the figure-8 racers attending the show are the best at navigating the intersections of the show where mere mortals are often bumping into one another. … Tip for people carrying swag bags: keep them close to your body and don’t swing them around. … The backpack-style swag bags may be practical, but the folks wearing them around the show look goofy. … It’s a two-sock day for at least one DirtonDirt.com reporter. … Count of Santa Claus hats: four (three red, one black). … Interesting that the U.S. Postal Service has a booth, not only for shipping but to try to draw business from racing companies who might otherwise be shipping with UPS, FedEx and other companies. ... In the press room, donuts go much more quickly than bagels.
10:25 a.m. | Interested student
James Ownbey stood eyeballing Ethan Dotson’s ASD Motorsports car in the Penske Shocks booth on Friday morning, analyzing its mechanics and running through his mind the possibility of someday driving or working on a Dirt Late Model like it.
The 20-year-old from Wichita, Kan., can dream those dreams because he’s a student at the University of Northwestern Ohio in Lima, where he’s part of the school’s well-known motorsports program.
Pursuing a career in the sport is what led Ownbey to UNOH despite the fact that he didn’t grow up in a racing family.
“When I found the school and they have a motorsports team, I was, like, dead set (on attending),” Ownbey said. “I was like, ‘I have to go here,’ because I've always wanted to race, I’ve always had a knack for welding and motors and everything like that.
“And so I (enrolled) and (UNOH’s motorsports team has) been racing for the last two seasons with stock cars and the UMP modifieds and it’s been an absolutely phenomenal experience for sure. I’ve learned more than I could ever imagine.”
Ownbey serves as the UNOH race team’s head of fabrication. He handles all fabricating and welding; this past school year, in fact, he employed those skills in helping convert an old leaf-spring stock car into a three-link vehicle that won a feature in nearby Limaland Motorsports Park’s Thunder Stocks division.
While Ownbey isn’t committed to finding an opportunity in the Dirt Late Model world after graduating from UNOH, he said the class has always interested him and he lives about 30 minutes from Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio, so he’s been able to see Late Models circle the famous track. He also noted that Limaland will run Late Model events in 2025, exposing him more to the division.
“I’m not sure if I want to go and travel for a big name team like in NASCAR or something like that, but definitely (want to work) more on the chassis side so I’ve been thinking about applying to Technique Chassis (a main supplier for NASCAR),” he said. “Wherever that takes me, whether I start building my own chassis or having my own like fabrication shop … that’s really about where I’m at right now.”
Ownbey said his parents are fully behind his motorsports aspirations.
“My dad’s actually a pilot and he said that if he wasn’t a pilot he was going to be a race car driver,” Ownbey said. “So I mean, ever since I started doing this, he’s been getting more and more into racing and everything like that, and so, I mean, he's all for it.
“And my mom’s all for it. Obviously she doesn’t like the fact that I want to become a race car driver and that I will be some day because, you know, she doesn’t want me to get hurt, but she understands that it’s something that I love and that I want to follow so they support me full out so they are all for it. I couldn’t do it without them.”
8:21 a.m. | Chamberlain’s plans
Heading into his rookie World of Outlaws Late Model Series season in 2024, Tristan Chamberlain thought he was ready to tackle a national tour with his Wayne and Holly Gibson-owned team and his father alongside as crew chief. But the 17-year-old, in a brief interview Thursday at PRI, sees now they’ll need even more preparation heading into his second national touring season.
Chamberlain has late-season testing planned and is focused on 2025, when he’ll either stick with the World of Outlaws circuit or make a switch to the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series. It depends on how everything goes at Georgia-Florida Speedweeks after a busy stretch of perhaps 20 races.
"I think the goal right now is to run everything (at Speedweeks) and then see what we're better off in, points-wise, and then probably make our decision from there,” said Chamberlain, who was fourth in a solid WoO rookie class but would be eligible for rookie status on the Lucas Oil circuit in 2025. “That also might play a factor in it, too. So that’s still up in the air, but I think we'll make our decision after Florida.”
After primarily local and regional racing, the challenges of the WoO circuit were daunting in 2024. Chamberlain, who began the season in a Longhorn Chassis but switched to an Infinity Chassis midseason, ended up with a single top-five finish and six top-10 runs on the circuit in 30 feature starts (11 fewer than the maximum). His best run came with a third-place finish in the tour’s debut at Rocket Raceway Park in Petty, Texas.
“We definitely picked up a pace a lot the last half of the year, getting a podium with World of Outlaws and everything,” Chamberlain said while standing near the PRI display of Ryan Gustin’s Infinity Chassis in the Swift Springs display. "We were definitely finding speed there at the end of the year. Looking back, like I feel like I almost started a little bit behind — which, being a rookie you're going to be a little bit behind (while) national touring — but going into next year, I think I'm way more prepared than (2024). We thought we were prepared last year going into it, but we're way more prepared now, knowing what it takes to do everything.
"And I think that doing just being prepared and knowing what it's going to take for next year, I think (we’ll have) better runs we'll be way more consistent.”
Chamberlain, who also made his first Dirt Track World Championship start at Eldora, calls his third-place run at Rocket the highlight of the season. The lowlight? He thinks about it and then lets out a laugh. There were plenty of occasions that made the team think "are we still going to do this?” he said, particularly a 10-day stretch when a crew member had to head home and it was Tristan and his father Duane handling everything.
“Those good runs make everything worth it,” he said, “and it definitely makes you wanna do it more and get more better runs and everything.”
8:05 a.m. | New day
Forecasts promise for a little warmer weather, but PRI attendees seeking dinner last night had to bundle up as temps again dropped into the teens. Fortunately, the climate-controlled Indiana Convention Center provides a comfortable venue for the offseason trade show.
We hope to find more Dirt Late Model racers touring the show floors today ahead of the evening’s Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series. We talked to several Dirt Late Model folks Thursday, and check out updates that included 20-year-old Missouri driver Dillon McCowan switching to Infinity Chassis and eyeing a run at the World of Outlaws Late Model Series, details about the second season of the POWRi Revival Late Model Series, more Fall Clash races and an honor for the late Scott Bloomquist.
Schedules for most of the prominent Super Late Model tours have dropped, but we expect three more this morning from Ray Cook: the Schaeffer's Spring Nationals, Schaeffer's Southern Nationals and his newly purchased Coltman Farms Southern All Star Series. Follow our coverage all day.
Editor's note: Reporting by DirtonDirt.com staffers Kyle McFadden and Todd Turner along with other DirtonDirt.com contributors and staffers (some credited specifically); remote assistance from staffers Kevin Kovac and Aaron Clay.
