Inside Dirt Late Model Racing
Column: RTJ's title run gets boost from Birky
Ricky Thornton Jr.’s Koehler Motorsports team was in need of another crew member for the stretch run of his Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series title defense. The person who came on board to fill the role couldn’t have more impeccable credentials.
Last weekend’s Lucas Oil Knoxville Late Model Nationals at Knoxville (Iowa) Raceway marked the debut of RTJ’s new high-profile, albeit only temporary, hired hand: Brian Birkhofer, the retired Dirt Late Model great from Muscatine, Iowa.
A two-time Knoxville Nationals and World 100 winner among other achievements, Birkhofer, 53, donned a Thornton No. 20rt T-shirt at Knoxville and dived right into assisting the 34-year-old star from Chandler, Ariz. Amid his work, he offered a simple explanation when asked what prompted him to join Thornton’s crew.
“I was asked politely,” the always playful Birkhofer said with a smile.
In fact, it was Thornton’s chief mechanic, Zach Frields, who made the connection to lure Birkhofer into the fold. Frields, 44, has a history with Birkhofer having served as Birky’s crew chief from 2011-14, a stretch that included Birkhofer’s 2012 World 100 victory and famous 2014 Knoxville Nationals triumph after which he announced his retirement from full-time competition. The pair also raced together from 2017-20 when Frields worked for Jason Rauen of Farley, Iowa, and Birkhofer returned to make a limited number of starts with the team each year.
With mechanic Nick Hardie departing Thornton’s crew following Labor Day weekend’s Hillbilly 100 at Lernerville Speedway in Sarver, Pa., Frields dialed up Birkhofer to inquire if he might be interested in filling the third team member slot alongside him and tire guy Skyler Cooper for the final four Lucas Oil Series weekends of the 2025 season.
“I talk to him once a week usually,” Frields said of Birkhofer. “I called him and asked him if he’d come help us and he didn’t bat an eye. The only thing he said was, ‘Just give me a day so I can see exactly what I got going on my plate as far as work and let me run it by my wife (Alissa).’ He called me back the next day and said, ‘Yeah, let’s do it.’ ”
Birkhofer had mentioned to Frields earlier this year that he wouldn’t mind hitting some races to hang out with the team. But signing up as a full-fledged crew member for an entire month? That didn’t seem to be an option.
Yet here’s Birkhofer, ready to hit the road with Thornton and Co. for the Big River Steel Chase for the Championship events that include this weekend’s Jackson 100 at Brownstown (Ind.) Speedway, Oct. 3-4’s Pittsburgher at Pittsburgh’s Pennsylvania Motor Speedway in Imperial and Oct. 17-18’s Dirt Track World Championship at Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio. It represents sort of an exciting throwback to Birkhofer’s old traveling days as a professional driver.
“I get to see everybody I haven’t seen for a while,” said Birkhofer, whose last competitive action came on July 13, 2020, when he finished 18th in a Lucas Oil Series show at 34 Raceway in Farley, Iowa. “It’s going to be fun. It’s already been fun this weekend.”
Birkhofer noted that he had never formally met or talked to Thornton until he arrived in Knoxville’s pit area last Thursday “and I went up and shook his hand.” His only previous conversation with Thornton came when he was on the phone with Frields and Thornton “was in the background.”
Thornton is well aware of Birkhofer’s background and mechanical know-how, however, so he was all for adding him to the Koehler Motorsports roster.
“We knew he’d be a great asset,” Thornton said. “He wants to help and go to some races and have some fun. And he works hard — we were kind of laughing, he’s kind of like me. He gets a little anal on some stuff, and I'm the same way. So I think on that side of it we’ll get along pretty good.
“It’s cool that he’s here, and we all got the same goal — we’re here to win.”
Birkhofer sought to begin blending in with the team during the Knoxville weekend. His good humor was in evidence as he called himself “just a crony” willing to do whatever was asked of him. He even quipped that Frields “gets to yell at me rather than me yelling at him like before,” prompting Frields to shake his head in dismay.
“He says, ‘Now you're my boss,’ ” Frields said. “I said, ’No, I’m not your boss.’ ”
On a more serious note, Birkhofer just wants to do all he can to get Thornton, who enters the five-race Chase with a 70-point advantage thanks to the bonus points from his series-leading 13 points-race victories, to the finish line for a second straight Lucas Oil Series championship.
“They lost a guy and they think they needed one more guy to finish out the tour, so I’m going to help him through the end of it,” Birkhofer said. “And, I mean, I know how to work on (Late Models), so I’ll just come in here, do what I’m told. Ricky’s a good dude, Zack and I have worked together for a long time, so it’s a good deal. It should work out.”
Frields has no concerns about what Birkhofer can bring to the team’s drive for the title.
“It’s one of those things, if he does something, you don’t have to go back over it. You know what I mean?” Frields said. “You know it’s done and it’s done right. Skyler’s the tire guy, that’s what he does, and as far as anything else on the car, we just kind of both do whatever we got to do. But if there’s body work that needs to be done, there’s not a better guy in the pit area to do it. He’s definitely the body guy.”
The first weekend with Birkhofer in the pits didn’t produce a win, but Thornton tallied preliminary feature finishes of fourth and sixth before a runner-up finish in Saturday’s 75-lap finale. Birkhofer’s well-known effervescent personality kept the team loose as well.
“We’ve had a helluva good time this weekend,” Frields said before the start of Saturday’s program. “If you can’t have fun with him, you can’t have fun with anybody. I mean, you ask anybody in the pit area here, when it’s business time, it’s business, but when it’s time to relax and have a good time, there’s nobody more fun to do it with.
“It’ll be neat to have him with us the rest of these races. We’ve always gotten along and I’m sure we’ll have a lot of fun. It’s kind of feels like we got the band back together.”
Birkhofer had the team come to his shop a couple hours from Knoxville after the Nationals to spend the week prepping for this weekend’s doubleheader at Brownstown. He’ll then stay with the team after Brownstown to reload at their shop in Mount Airy, N.C., before the Pittsburgher, then put in more time in Carolina prior to Eldora’s season-ending DTWC. Frields said the team plans to head back to the Koehler shop after Eldora to unload and wash and then Frields will take Birkhofer along with him to drop him off at home when he drives to Iowa to visit family in Davenport for a few days.
This month-long adventure will lead Birkhofer to temporarily put his own business pursuits on hiatus. He operates his own race shop where he takes a variety of fabrication and welding jobs as well as street rod work.
“I got a whiteboard that’s got stuff to do and it’s never empty,” Birkhofer said. “I don’t advertise. I actually turn some (work) down, so hopefully I can be a Steady Eddie and keep doing it until my wife says, ‘Hey, you don’t have to work too much anymore.’ But we’re not there.”
In between his shop jobs, Birkhofer has been spending more time at area racetracks over the past year with his eldest son, Cruz, 23, now racing a Crate Late Model. Driving a machine he assembled with his father, Cruz made 21 starts this season — most at Davenport Speedway but also some at 34 Raceway in West Burlington, Iowa, and Maquoketa (Iowa) Speedway — and scored one victory (June 21 at Davenport) among six top-five and 15 top-10 finishes.
“He drove a nostalgia Late Model for a couple of years but didn’t really get to race much at all,” said Birkhofer, whose younger son, Creed, 20, is in his second year attending Muscatine Community College with plans to transfer to the University of Iowa to pursue studies in media/communications. “And then I said, ‘Heck, let’s just build a Late Model,’ so last winter we got an old Late Model, like a 12-year-old MasterSbilt, brought it home, cut it all apart, did our own thing. He welded on it. I got to teach him what it takes to actually build a car and not just go buy it.”
Birkhofer has kept abreast of the national Dirt Late Model scene during his five years out of the cockpit. Thornton, of course, has impressed him, and he’s noticed how the division has changed since he was racing full time.
“Oh, I think he’s one of the best out here,” Birkhofer said of Thornton. “I don’t care where you take him in the nation. The guy’s just got talent.
“And I don’t really know their setup, but (over the Knoxville weekend) I know what we’ve changed, or what we work on. They don’t do a whole lot, man. He tunes a little bit on what he wants and drives his ass off. He’s a helluva driver.
“I think he’s kind of just unique because he can drive hard when he doesn’t appear like he’s driving hard. But if he needs to drive harder, he will. I mean, I’ve watched him all throughout the year on Flo (Racing) or whatever, and there are times you’re like, ‘Dude, settle down, you’re leading by a lot.’ But once he gets that feel, he might look like he’s going to knock the cushion down or knock the wall down, but he’ll do it every lap. So that’s how precise he is, you know, staying at it.
“And then I listen to some of his interviews about, you know, how he studies the game, watches a lot of film on racing,” he continued. “I’ve (talked) a little with him about that too … like, this is his business and he takes it seriously.”
Birkhofer pointed out how the plethora of race video, and the easy access to it on phones, iPads and laptops while at the track and traveling between races, is what’s different from his heyday.
“The biggest thing what these guys do now that we never did is like, we couldn’t watch qualifying before you ride on the track (for time trials),” Birkhofer said. “All these guys, they’re always watching, they’re always getting that info, right when they’re sitting in their cars waiting to go out.
“And I mean, the way these guys race now, they’re racing like they’re qualifying the whole way through the night. We used to run that hard in qualifying, maybe a heat race, but in features, you’re going to start out fast and it’s going to slow down.
“(Rocket Chassis co-owner Mark) Richards always used to say, you know, ‘Elbows up,’ when it was time to go,” he added. “These guys now, naturally, their elbows are up. They should just walk around the pits like this” — here Birkhofer actually raises his elbows — “because they’re ready to go at any point.”
Birkhofer finds himself spending the next month with a driver who perfectly fits the modern, on-the-gas driver description. That fact figures to make his return to the Dirt Late Model scene as a crew member quite exciting.
Ten things worth mentioning
1. The number Birkhofer’s son Cruz is using on his Crate Late Model — No. 16c — has some history. “The cool thing is about it is, he was probably 4, 5, I don't know, and he drew a car,” Birkhofer said. “It was blue and had 16c on it, so when he got to go racing, that was kind of cool for him to see what he drew him 15 years ago.” Birkhofer believes Cruz has always had an ulterior motive behind his 16c number. “One better than me I guess,” Birkhofer said with a laugh.
2. Birkhofer offered a reasoning for the “B” that he eventually added to his own familiar No. 15. “I remember when I first started traveling, I’d be racing against (Steve) Francis (also a No. 15) and that one year I was like, ‘I’m just going to put a B behind it,’” Birkhofer said, noting that it made it easier to differentiate himself from Francis on the lineup boards and also gave his number some extra flair “like Wendell (Wallace) had with his 6M.”
3. While talking about his two sons, Birkhofer noted how he and his wife came up with their C-starting names. “I met (NHRA drag racer) Cruz Pedregon years ago, and my wife and I always liked that name,” he said. “And then Creed was like more Alissa, but I was a Creed fan as a band, so I was like, ‘Oh, OK, that’s cool.’ ”
4. Thornton’s two young boys, Asher and Blayne, have had to miss some of their dad’s recent races because they’re both now in school (first grade and kindergarten), but Knoxville provided the opportunity for both of them to return to the track. With Thornton and his wife, Shae, moving their family back to Iowa this year — they’re in a home in Indianola, just south of Des Moines — the half-hour drive to Knoxville allowed the kids to ride over after school.
5. Speaking of drivers’ kids, Brandon Overton of Evans, Ga., couldn’t be prouder of his 6-month-old daughter Stevie Ray. When I asked him in Knoxville’s pit area about bringing her along to Eldora for the recent World 100 and carrying across the stage in his arms during the pre-race driver introductions, he smiled and immediately went to his phone to show me a video of him back home riding a golf cart with his little girl. He pointed out that she grabbed the steering wheel as he held her up on his lap and started making a “vroom, vroom” noise, which of course made her race-car driving dad smile.
6. Justin Duty of Mollala, Ore., was a spectator at Knoxville for Saturday’s Nationals finale after his planned MARS tour action at Peoria (Ill.) Speedway was rained out. He stopped in to visit with friends and help out veteran racer Nick Marolf of Moscow, Iowa, who competed in the Malvern Bank Series invitational on Saturday’s undercard. Duty noted that the Midwest outpost for his Dirt Late Model effort is Marolf’s shop; he’s spent the bulk of the last five racing seasons working out of Marolf’s garage and living in the finished basement of Marolf’s home. “They’ve taken such good care of me,” Duty said of Marolf and his wife, Amber.
7. Before Marolf finished 19th in Knoxville’s 22-lap Malvern Bank Series feature, I crossed paths with the Hawkeye State driver after Thursday’s preliminary program. Marolf and his wife attended as spectators and, after evening’s rain-shortened feature, were crossing the slick track surface in turn four at the same time I was. Amber made it to the exit gate fine, but once there she had to wait for Nick, who struggled on the wet clay and kept sliding back down the track. Marolf reached the other side without falling, but barely. “I got no tread on my shoes. Hoosier sold me a bad batch,” he joked while slipping around the middle of the track. I initially didn’t realize it was Marolf, so when his wife clued me in he looked up and cracked, “A hundred years ago I made the World 100 and they were like, ‘Who’s that guy?’ ” (Marolf did indeed surprise with a single World 100 feature start in 2006, finishing 18th.)
8. When I interviewed Jonathan Davenport following his early exit from Saturday’s Knoxville Nationals finale, one of the people at J.D.’s pit stall talking with him was Jack Cornett, the veteran engine builder who constructed the powerplant that Davenport used in the race. Cornett remarked to me about the sometimes conflicting emotions a motor builder will have after a race. “That was my engine in his car,” Cornett said of Davenport’s motor that failed, “and that was mine in the winner’s car.” Indeed, Hudson O’Neal won the $75,000 event with a Cornett engine.
9. Tyler Bruening of Decorah, Iowa, withdrew from further Knoxville Nationals competition after an apparent cut right-front tire sent him hurtling into the turn-three wall while running third early in Thursday’s preliminary feature. His crew chief, Zeb Holkesvik, reported that the car was “tweaked in several different places” from the hard impact and Bruening took a few days to shake off the back pain he experienced after the wreck — the 39-year-old has pre-existing back trouble from his younger days playing sports that's often aggravated by especially heavy hits — but he was back behind the wheel earlier this week testing a new car his team assembled. The team has opted to bypass plans to run this weekend’s Jackson 100 at Brownstown Speedway and instead will return to competition with Oct. 3-4’s World of Outlaws Real American Beer Late Model Series doubleheader at Humboldt (Kan.) Speedway and 81 Speedway in Park City, Kan.
10. Oct. 4’s WoO show at 81 Speedway will see series regular Ryan Gustin of Marshalltown, Iowa, pull double-duty with a twist: he’s planning to run a tribute wrap to his former car owner Ed Gressel, who died in May 2022, on both his Todd Cooney Motorsports Late Model and a Chris Kratzer-owned Hughes Chassis modified. The 81 Speedway event has been dubbed the Ed Gressel Tribute Race, prompting Gustin to remember the man he credits with launching his professional racing career and making all his future racing opportunities possible.
