Nodak Speedway
T-Mac shelves struggles with dazzling Nodak rally
Tim McCreadie in victory lane. (Emily Schwanke/woolms.com)
Before Sunday’s World of Outlaws Real American Beer Late Model Series event at Nodak Speedway, North Dakota sprint car legend Donny Schatz told Tim McCreadie the tour’s first race at the 3/8-mile since 1989 wouldn’t disappoint. | RaceWire
Schatz’s boast was backed up when McCreadie rallied from the 12th starting spot at the 3/8-mile oval to win one of WoO’s best Dirt Late Model features of the season. McCreadie, who hustled from seventh over the final 15 laps and led the final eight of 50 laps, made the bottom groove work when seemingly nobody else could.
McCreadie's winning moment came on lap 43 by virtue of an eyebrow-raising, three-wide move underneath race-long leader Ethan Dotson and eventual runner-up Bobby Pierce barreling into turn one.
In victory lane, he recalled visiting with the 10-time WoO sprint car champ who lives in West Fargo, N.D., and whose nieces Amelia and Laela Eisenschenk made their series debuts during the tour's weekend in the Upper Midwest.
“We were at Donny Schatz’s this week and he said this race was going to be a real gem of the whole tour,” an elated McCreadie said in victory lane June 29 following his third series win of 2025, all over the last seven races. “I watched a bunch of modified shows here, so it looked like it was going to be fun. I didn’t think so much at the beginning of 50, but as we ran, we kept having restarts and I could hook the middle of (turns) one and two.
“If I had to, I could go to the guardrail in three and four and run the inside. We were just really maneuverable.”
Indeed, pinning his race car around the bottom when the frontrunners ran around the top is how McCreadie joined Jonathan Davenport (Feb. 15 at Volusia Speedway Park in Barberville, Fla.) as the only other drive to win series races from the 12th-starting spot or deeper this season.
For most of the way Sunday, McCreadie was trying to find manageable setup at the North Dakota oval, claiming he “hot-lapped really good,” but “was really bad in qualifying” and “real bad in the heat” where he started fifth and finished fourth.
Looking for some encouragement before he started the feature on the outside of the sixth row, he made a few phone calls, first to wife Karen.
“I called home and talked to my wife and said, 'Man, we’re just struggling out there. We can’t find anything that works,’ ” McCreadie said. “She says, 'Is that the same car you’ve been running?' I said, 'I wish it wasn’t, but it is.' Lo and behold, (car owner) Boom (Briggs) said, Change something, change something.”
McCreadie’s next phone call was to Longhorn Chassis employee Matt Langston, a veteran in the business who knows his way around the race car.
“He just gave me some reassurance of trying something a little different,” said McCreadie, who finished 13th Friday at River Cities Speedway in Grand Forks, N.D., and 10th Saturday at Norman County Raceway in Ada, Minn. “I’ve been married to the same setup for about a month. Ever since we went to Eldora (Speedway earlier this month for the Dirt Late Model Dream), we just haven’t been really good.”
Keeping his speed secrets under wraps, McCreadie simply said he and his No. 9 Briggs Transport team “threw something at it tonight,” which worked marvelously in a feature with a simple gameplan: “I was just trying to go where they weren’t.”
Dotson, who commanded the first 43 laps before getting shuffled back to sixth late in the going, committed to the top of the track most of the way. Behind him, Drake Troutman and Pierce battled hard for second the first 35 laps, trading a flurry of sliders and even making contact that apparently caused Pierce to lose his brakes.
“I think his Raceceiver wasn't working, and (Troutman) hit me in the left-rear when they called caution,” Pierce said. “My brakeline was hanging, so I had no brakes, wow, for like 40 laps. It’s really a miracle I didn’t fly off the racetrack.”
Pierce’s testiest moment actually helped McCreadie in the end: the lap-25 restart where he lagged behind so much around the top that Brian Shirley checked up and spun off the banking. The ensuing restart enabled McCreadie to rise from seventh into fourth, ultimately setting up his race-winning rally.
“It’s a miracle I still ran second. The bad thing is, we had a really good car,” Pierce said. “I think I would’ve won by half a track, to be honest. It was my kinda racetrack. You can’t drive these things with no brakes.
“All in all, I’ll take it. We got lucky on the restarts when the cautions fell. Made lots of mistakes. The restarts were very sketchy with no brakes. Congrats to T-Mac on the win. He was really good on the bottom. I would’ve really loved to have a working car to race with him. It would’ve been a fun race.”
It was still a fun race for McCreadie, who thoroughly enjoyed his stay in North Dakota that gives him three WoO victories in a season for the first time since 2014 (he’s mostly focused on the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series in the intervening years). And digging deep into statistics, Sunday’s third WoO over a seven-race span is his hottest stretch of any kind since he won three times over a five-race span in 2010.
“Hats off to these guys for an awesome racetrack,” said McCreadie, who notched his 36th career WoO triumph. “Once the sun went down, they had a little bit of prep. Once it got shiny, it was hairy but a lot of fun out there, man. I hope you (fans) appreciated it because it was a lot of fun to be out there.”
