Circle City Raceway
Little Circle City makes its debut on Lucas circuit
By Bryan Ault
Special to DirtonDirt
A look at the Circle City oval on Friday. (heathlawsonphotos.com)
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. (May 2) — After competing at three half-mile racetracks in a row on last weekend's Mid-Atlantic swing, you couldn’t blame Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series drivers for experiencing a bit of culture shock when they arrived Friday at Circle City Raceway, a quarter-mile bullring on the east side of Indiana’s capital. | RaceWire
“I don’t know. It reminds me a lot of a place right by my house called Stuart (International) Speedway,” said 34-year-old Daniel Hilsabeck of Earlham, Iowa. “That with a little bit of Fairbury (Ill.). It definitely has the Indiana dirt, like Brownstown dirt.”
In stark contrast to the famed Indianapolis Motor Speedway on the city’s west side, look up bullring in the racing dictionary and you could find a photo of the 4-year-old Marion County Fairgrounds track. The vast straightaways and wide corners at Georgetown Speedway (Del.), Port Royal Speedway (Pa.) and Hagerstown (Md.) — where the national tour spent last weekend — gave way to punctuated straightaways and tighter turns at Circle City, which could potentially cause bent fenders and a few hurt feelings.
“It’s definitely going to be a different direction right there,” Garrett Alberson of Las Cruces, N.M. said Friday afternoon while surveying the track. “I think it’s got a lot of potential. It’s just maybe a touch bigger than Fairbury, maybe a little bit more banking. I think it’ll be really good.
“It’ll be close quarters,” Alberson added. “I think the big question is what the dirt’s gonna do, you know, like how it’s going to transition and stuff. I think there’s potential for it to be really dirty early, then move around and widen out as the night goes on.”
Devin Moran, 31, of Dresden, Ohio, second in series points, was open-minded and made no immediate judgments about the tiny oval.
“I’ve never even seen it before today,” Moran said. “It’s definitely little, but it looks like it’s wide and they’ve done a good job on it so far (in pre-race track preparation). It’s hard to tell, it’s really hard for me to judge a track until the night’s over. We’ll just get through the night and see what happens.”
Two of Lucas Oil’s Big Three drivers — Moran and Jonathan Davenport of Blairsville, Ga. — hadn’t competed at Circle City. Alberson and 34-year-old Brandon Overton of Evans, Ga., running fourth and fifth in Lucas Oil series points, had also never set foot on the property.
“I’ve seen it. It’s little. It’s about all I know,” Overton said. “It’ll give us a little prep for what we’re about to race on, on all the little Illinois tracks (during next week's Illinois Speedweeks). Probably doesn’t race much different than them. It looks plenty wide, though. It’s way more wide than the (the fifth-mile oval inside The Dome at America's Center in St. Louis, Mo.), so I think it’ll be fine. Maybe I’ll like it.”
“Everything’s obviously a little bit bigger around where I live,” Overton added. “I’ve never raced at Macon (Speedway in Illinois), they said Macon is a little like (Circle City). But I raced at the Dome, right? So I guess that’s as small as you can get.”
Only six races on the Lucas Oil schedule this season — the most in five seasons — and Circle City is the smallest with three others at Brownstown (Ind.) Speedway, Farmer City (Ill.) Raceway and Fairbury Speedway. Nineteen tracks on the Lucas tour are listed at a half-mile or longer, and most 2025 stops are within the quarter-mile and half-mile range.
Friday’s $15,000-to-win race might set up well for Moran and reigning series champ Ricky Thornton Jr. of Chandler, Ariz., who gave won three series races apiece on quarter-mile tracks since 2020. Thornton, the series points leader, has an extra edge in winning last season’s Northern Allstars Late Model Dirt Series-sanctioned C.J. Rayburn Tribute Race at Circle City. (Thornton was also impressive on half-miles the previous weekend with two victories and a runner-up finish.)
The Lucas Oil tour’s stop is the first national touring event at Circle City since the World of Outlaws Real American Beer Late Model Series 40-lapper won by Dennis Erb Jr. of Carpentersville, Ill. in 2021, the track’s inaugural season. The fresh, rough-and-tumble surface caused national tours to shy away, but the Northern Allstars returned to the track last season in an event won by Thornton, who also raced at the WoO opener.
Navigating the track’s tight confines could be a tricky task for the sport’s top drivers. Alberson, though, said he has been watching plenty of video across all different racing disciplines in preparation for the event.
Alberson watched as much video as he could find of Circle City action.
“In the video that I watched, last year’s Northern Allstars deal, it actually got out pretty wide by the wall and stuff, and they were moving around pretty good,” the Roberts Motorsports driver said. “They definitely don’t have a ton of Super Late Model stuff to draw from, which in a way is kind of good. It’s cool when we all get a challenge that not a lot of people have data to pull from. I think that makes the racing that much more interesting.”
