Beckley Motor Speedway
Bailes steers Nuttall entry to Beckley victory
By Kevin Kovac
DirtonDirt senior writer
The winning car of Ross Bailes. (selleckphoto.com)
BECKLEY, W.Va. (July 11) — How would Ross Bailes characterize the first half of his 2025 racing season?
“Very quiet,” the 35-year-old driver from Clover, S.C., said Friday night at Beckley Motor Speedway.
Bailes uttered those words, though, shortly after his campaign turned decidedly louder. Making just his second start of the season in a No. 16 machine fielded by Georgia’s Brian Nuttall Sr., he captured Beckley’s 53-lap Schaeffer’s Southern Nationals opener for a $10,053 payday that snapped a personal winless slump of just over one full calendar year. | RaceWire
It was a performance that reminded the Dirt Late Model world Bailes remains one of the Southeast’s top regional racers. It also reinforced to Bailes himself that he can still get it done.
“I mean, I really think I can, but there’s been times, you know, I’ve doubted it,” Bailes said while standing in street clothes inside the Nuttall team’s trailer. “But tonight, it makes me feel a lot better.”
Bailes hasn’t been completely absent from the Dirt Late Model scene this season, but he wouldn’t dispute the notion that he’s been flying well under the radar. After spending most of 2024 driving for fellow South Carolinian Joey Malone and serving as a mentor for Malone’s teenage son Beckham, Bailes took a ride piloting the AK Race Cars chassis built by Austin Kirkpatrick and made 18 starts through early June, including January’s Wild West Shootout at Vado (N.M.) Speedway Park and last month’s Dream XXXI activities at Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio.
While Bailes showed some flashes in Kirkpatrick’s custom-designed car — highlighted by third-place finishes in May 4’s Mike Duvall Memorial at Cherokee Speedway in Gaffney, S.C., and May 23’s Schaeffer’s Spring Nationals event at Sugar Creek Raceway in Blue Ridge, Ga. — he never quite found a rhythm. His last appearance with Kirkpatrick was at Eldora where he failed to qualify for the week-opening FloRacing Night in America show and Friday’s Dream preliminary and didn’t compete in Saturday’s finale (Kirkpatrick drove the car instead).
Looking for another opportunity, Bailes turned to Nuttall, a longtime team owner and former driver whose son, Brian Jr., occasionally races. Bailes is friendly with the Nuttalls and on Aug. 23, 2023, even drove the team’s car in an Ultimate Southeast Series event at Ultimate Motorsports Park in Elkin, N.C. The elder Nuttall, noting he had a new Benji Hicks-constructed Double Nickel Chassis waiting to be raced, suggested they hook up again.
“Brian, he was just like, ‘Hey, man, you know, this car is just sitting up at Benji’s (in Mount Airy, N.C.). Whenever you want to race it, go race it,’ ” Bailes said. “That’s what we did.”
Bailes debuted behind the wheel of the car with a CT525 engine under the hood in July 3’s Cagle Automotive Blue Ridge Outlaw Late Models Series-sanctioned Independence Shootout at Cherokee. He said “we weren’t no good” as they worked through some new-car bugs (he finished 16th), but it fueled Bailes to take another crack with it — this time with a 430 c.i. standard-bore Cornett engine bolted in — at Beckley, where he earned a $20,000 triumph in August 2023’s USA 100 driving a Norman Nichols-owned entry.
The decision paid handsomely. Starting third following a heat win, Bailes stalked early pacesetters Luke Morey of Denver, N.C., and Garrett Smith of Eatonton, Ga., before seizing command on lap 29. He survived heavy lapped traffic late in the distance to beat Chris Ferguson of Mount Holly, N.C., by .0521 of a second with Zack Dohm of Cross Lanes, W.Va., close behind in third.
“I think Luke was really good, and then something happened to his right-rear spoiler, and it’s like whenever he knocked that off, he wasn’t quite as good,” Bailes said of the 17-year-old Morey, who finished a Southern Nationals career-best fourth after leading laps 1-25. “But, I mean, Garrett was just as good as him, and after that caution (on lap 15), after Luke knocked off part of the spoiler, Garrett was definitely better than even before.
“They were racing really hard (for the lead), and just a couple laps in a row they left the bottom open for me, and that’s how I got by them.”
Bailes said Ferguson and Dohm “got to me and I could hear ‘em” in the closing circuits, but he “tried to make sure I got a good run on entry in lapped traffic, that way I had the lapped car beside me and and it was going to be hard for them to get by me.”
The most precarious moments for Bailes came earlier in the race. He experienced a string of them, starting on lap 15 when he was nearly swept up on a Layton Sullivan-Jensen Ford tangle on the inside of the homestretch just before turn one.
“On that caution on the front straightaway, Zack (Dohm) got into me just because he didn’t know there was cars spun out (inside entering turn one),” Bailes said. “Garrett and Luke backed out, and then I saw it and I backed out. And it was like, as soon as I backed out, Zack must have been right under me. I almost hit the cars on the inside, and I guess he was behind me and didn’t see him.”
Dohm, a 36-year-old known for his Beckley expertise, was indeed racing tight to the rear end of Bailes’s car when the caution flag was displayed for the Sullivan-Ford tangle. He ended up spinning to avoid hitting the pair, though he was allowed to restart in fourth because officials determined he was not involved in the initial accident.
“I was lifting for him, I was up his ass there, and coming out of four that one time, I was on the top, and he was coming off the bottom,” Dohm said of Bailes. “The frontstretch sneaks up on you so fast here you can’t see nothing, and the frontstretch is real narrow, and the back of his car is hiked up so much all I could see was his fuel cell and spoiler. Next thing I know, he lifted, and I trucked him. My right-front hit him straight in the left-rear and it yanked the wheel out of my hand — my (right) hand’s pretty sore, it kind of got stuck in the wheel a little bit.”
Dohm continued on to finish third, but “I think I got something bad messed up with the caster-camber (from the contact with Bailes),” he said. “I think I had the right tires on (three 3-compound tires with a 4 on the right-rear) and that’s what let me stay close to the front. At the end, I probably had a third-place car.”
Shortly after the ensuing restart, on lap 17, Bailes faced another threat when Ferguson made a bid for third rounding turns three and four. The move failed, however, and the 35-year-old figured it ultimately helped propel Bailes to victory.
“I think I zigged a little too early,” said Ferguson, who was the runner-up in Beckley’s Southern Nationals event for the second consecutive year. “I threw a slider on Ross. I slid him too far. That’s what he was telling me — he’s like, ‘Man, if you would have parked it in front of me, you’d have had it.’
“Part of me … when I was younger, I would probably have either really parked it on them or KO’d him, but I don’t like tearing up race cars, so I made sure I cleared them, and when I cleared them, I cleared him and slid all the way out of the ballpark (in turn four) so he just crossed me back. And then after that, he grabbed another gear. He was like, ‘It’s time to go now.’ That's what he told me. He said, ‘After you slid me, I knew right then I couldn’t wait no more.’
“I got close to him (in the final laps), but when the track gets slick like that, it’s really hard to do hero moves,” he added. “It’s more of a chess match. Like you want to pressure him and make him slide a little more and mess up, but he didn’t make no mistakes. He did what he had to do in traffic and we were just right there with him, just couldn’t find a way around.”
There was one more near-miss for Bailes. It came as he passing Smith for the lead on lap 29 — slight contact that apparently ripped the right-side door of Bailes’s car and broke the valve stem on Smith’s left-rear wheel, causing the 21-year-old to slow with a flat left-rear tire for a caution flag on lap 32.
“I think me and Garrett might have touched on the front straightaway, and it must have just ripped (the bodywork) like when he came back by me or something,” Bailes said. “That might have been what cut his tire down.”
All the scares were in Bailes’s rear-view mirror when he reached victory lane for the first time since July 3, 2024, in a $10,000 Mid-East Super Late Model Series feature at Cherokee. His racing world was back on track, though he’s not expecting to pick up his pace of competitive appearances for the remainder of the season. He has no firm plans with Nuttall beyond July 19’s Southern Nationals stop at Screven Motor Speedway in Sylvania, Ga.
“I told the boys if we ran top-five tonight we’d go to Wytheville (for Saturday’s Southern Nationals show at Wythe Raceway in Rural Retreat, Va.), but as good as it was here, it’s got me thinking it’s going to be good at Screven and I want to be there for that one,” said Bailes, whose third career Southern Nationals victory was his first since July 24, 2021, at Screven. “Going to Wythe would be a very big test for (the team’s engine), so after tonight, you know, we’re all feeling good, car is good, so I think we’ll just save it for Screven.”
Bailes, who works for his father’s construction firm, also noted that he has a life event quickly approaching that will likely curtail any thoughts of increasing his modest racing schedule.
“I want to race every single weekend, and I think I think you need to do it to be competitive with these guys and the national guys,” Bailes said. “I just can’t do it. I got a kid at home (5-year-old Jordan), and I got one on the way in August (with his wife, Constance, pregnant with the couple’s daughter) … so that might slow my racing down even more.”
