The Dirt Track at Charlotte
Clock-tripping key for success at World Finals
By Kyle McFadden
DirtonDirt staff reporter
The pit area Wednesday at Charlotte. (Zach Yost)
CONCORD, N.C. (Nov. 5) — In today’s technologically advanced world of Dirt Late Model racing, drivers know qualifying can make or break a race night.
At the World Finals, a pair of time trial sessions virtually dictates a driver’s week in the season-ending World of Outlaws Real American Late Model Series event at The Dirt Track at Charlotte. | RaceWire
Two rounds of qualifying set the heat race lineups for Thursday and Friday, putting some drivers either in ideal position or in limbo until Saturday’s finale.
Jonathan Davenport, Nick Hoffman, Chris Madden, Hudson O’Neal, Brandon Sheppard and Drake Troutman are feeling ultra good about their chances the next three days. They’re the only six drivers to land front-row starting positions in Thursday and Friday heats.
Jimmy Owens, Ethan Dotson, Mike Marlar, Dale McDowell, Brandon Overton, Austin Smith, Kyle Strickler, Ricky Thornton Jr. and Daulton Wilson are also in favorable standing the rest of the week, securing starting spots inside the first two rows of both rounds of heats.
For everyone else, plenty of work remains to crack a top-three transfer spot in the heat race.
“Hell, even starting second row on back, you really have to have a miracle,” Troutman said. “It’s just tough. This deal … you’re racing 70 couple cars here, so just to be able to qualify good for both nights, it’s huge. Last year, we qualified good one night and shitty another night … and it made a huge difference.”
Southeastern stalwarts Zack Mitchell of Enoree, S.C., and Cory Hedgecock of Loudon, Tenn., are two drivers that’ll be clawing their forward from the midpack of their heats Thursday and Friday following lackluster qualifying efforts Wednesday. Missing the mark ever so slightly — from setups to miscalculations behind the wheel — can drastically hinder a driver.
“I just couldn’t get it turned in the first one. Too tight,” said Hedgecock, whose 17th and 21st qualifying results sets him up to start sixth and seventh in his heats Thursday and Friday. “Then I tuned myself out of the second one, just trying make too much happen.
“Now we’e just going to have to fire away through B-mains all night, Saturday included. Just try to make the best of it, start all three shows and make something out of it now.
“You rely so much on air anymore … it’s just one of those deals you have yourself buried and it’s going to be hard to pass. If you can pass one or two cars in the heat, you probably have a good race car. Hopefully the sprints widen it out Thursday and Friday so we can race on it some.”
Mitchell, meanwhile, qualified 23rd and 20th in his groups — giving him the eighth- and seventh-starting spots in his heat races Thursday and Friday. He botched his first qualifying session because he entered turn three too high, ultimately trying to miss a choppy part of the track, only to blow his Coltman Farms Racing No. 57 Longhorn Chassis over the cushion.
“I mean, you’re running wide open and you can’t rely on the brakes to turn your car,” Mitchell said. “You run in wide open hoping it turns. If it don’t, you’re screwed.”
A perfect qualifying session is the blend of a favorable pill draw, employing a setup that stays on top of the racetrack’s ever-changing conditions, being aggressive yet smooth as a driver, and hoping it all adds up to a lap time toward the top of the speed charts. Oftentimes, razor-thin margins are the difference.
“You look at the lap times and it’s crazy to see how close everybody is,” McDowell said. “A tenth (of a second) will get you six or seven positions. That just shows you how much emphasis everybody puts toward qualifying and how important it is.”
Even for World Finals all-time wins leader Jimmy Owens, there’s an argument that qualifying nights demands more focus than a regular nightly race program.
“I feel like you can put a little more focus into it,” Owens said. “You can watch the other classes and see where the groove is moving around. It’s really beneficial, too, like tonight, we were in the second round, we were in B groups. We got the cameras down here and got to watch most of the A group go out to see where you have to go.”
Some drivers would even say there’s a special, laser-focused mindset behind every successful qualifying run.
“Man, you just really gotta lock in, you know?” Troutman said. “Which sometimes is hard to do when you’re down on crew help because you’re working on your race car rather than watching the track.”
Thornton knows the technicality of time-trialing while running in both Late Models and sprint cars at Charlotte.
“You’re not really thinking stuff, you’re watching to make sure you put yourself in the right position,” he said. “The first lap in the sprint car, I was too low, and I knew I needed to move up on the racetrack and run across the curb. … Went out in the Late Model, the first lap, same deal, I needed to be a tire width higher, as crazy as that sounds. Did that and was able to be fast.
“When it comes to the mental aspect of qualifying, you just have to get all you can. And if you hurt one lap, but if it helps your next lap, that’s just what you have to do.”
Aggressiveness that Thornton exhibits is what strikes veterans Owens and McDowell, who both have had to push themselves outside their comfort zones to keep pace with some of the harder-driving younger drivers.
“Definitely, definitely have to be more aggressive than what you were used to in the past,” the 53-year-old Owens said. “It used to be slower was faster. Now, slower is slower these days, at least it is for me anyhow. You just have to be up on the wheel and just make every lap count. And you have to get all you can get. There used to be a big gap between first and last, and there’s not that anymore.”
Naturally, the younger drivers have an upper hand in qualifying, according to the 59-year-old McDowell.
“The sport has evolved toward more younger guys — aggression. That’s the biggest thing, is just aggression,” McDowell said. “So that doesn’t really fit the older guys, but we’ve had to change and adapt to that. I have to go up to watch the guys, see where they’re at, where they’re aggressive and try to go out and do the same thing. In my case, it was easier to do when I was in my 30s rather than late 50s.”
For the select drivers that passed the first and most important test at Charlotte’s World Finals, only one thing remains.
“You definitely wanna win,” Owens said as he searches for his first World Finals victory since 2019. “We definitely wanna get us a win. But you still gotta get a heat win.”
And for the drivers like Mitchell having to play catchup, they’re just trying to salvage something from the event and talk themselves out of being discouraged.
“It definitely makes it a lot tougher … but we’re optimistic we can get it done,” Mitchell said. “We can do it. We have a good race car. … The biggest thing is to not lose that confidence. It’s so easy to lose confidence, especially when you don’t qualify good or if you have an off night. But we still have all the confidence in the world.”
