DirtonDirt Dispatches
Dispatches: T-Mac shows longtime love for Volusia
Tim McCreadie gives a thumbs-up after his Volusia win. (Josh James)
Among the latest notes and quotes from the World of Outlaws Late Model Series’s season-opening Sunshine Nationals, a three-day event topped by a $20,000-to-win finale at Volusia Speedway Park in Barberville, Fla.:
Feels like home
Tim McCreadie stood in one of his favorite places on Saturday night: victory lane at Volusia Speedway Park in Barberville, Fla.
The 51-year-old star from Watertown, N.Y., made that clear as he beamed with pride over his $20,000 triumph in the 50-lap feature that capped the season-opening World of Outlaws Late Model Series-sanctioned Sunshine Nationals.
“I said this before, I love winning at Volusia whether it’s now, whether it’s here during (NASCAR) Cup week (February’s DIRTcar Nationals),” McCreadie said. “I love racing at Volusia.”
Exactly how enamored is McCreadie with the blazing-fast half-mile oval outside Daytona Beach? Well, he’d like it to be in his backyard rather well over 1,000 miles away.
“I wish it was up where New York was,” McCreadie said after emerging from his Briggs Transport Longhorn Chassis. “I’d probably still be racing weekly.”
Volusia is, of course, a track that McCreadie has been visiting early every season for four decades. He began attending Speedweeks events there as a teenager to watch his late father, the legendary big-block modified driver Barefoot Bob McCreadie, compete in the division’s annual Florida Tour. In the late ‘90s he started racing in the big-block modified shows himself, and since 2004 he’s entered the track’s Dirt Late Model action every year except 2009 when he was sidelined by a back injury suffered in a January Chili Bowl midget crash.
McCreadie has enjoyed plenty of success at Volusia as well. He owns three career big-block victories at the track — the most recent triumphs coming in 2018 when he won twice and claimed the DIRTcar Nationals points title while pulling double-duty — and Saturday marked his 11th overall in the Dirt Late Model class.
Volusia has played a big part in McCreadie’s Dirt Late Model career. He won his first-ever feature in the division in 2004 (a DIRTcar-sanctioned feature that helped push him toward making a WoO rookie run), and in ’05 he broke out with three DIRTcar Nationals victories topped by his first career WoO checkered flag. He also clinched his lone WoO title, in 2006, at Volusia when the track hosted the circuit's season-ending Gator 100.
In all, McCreadie has won eight DIRTcar-sanctioned Late Model A-mains at Volusia (most recently in 2023) and three WoO features (his last came during 2018’s DIRTcar Nationals). That performance record ranks him third on Volusia’s all-time Speedweeks Dirt Late Model win list, trailing only a pair of certifiable division legends: Billy Moyer (19 wins) and the late Scott Bloomquist (12 wins). — Staff and series reports
Roller coaster start
Cody Overton’s first season as an owner-operator on the World of Outlaws Late Model Series seemed over before it even started.
And then it wasn’t.
The 28-year-old driver from Evans, Ga., was resigned to abandoning his WoO bid for 2026 after Wednesday’s open practice session for the Sunshine Nationals at Volusia Speedway Park in Barberville, Fla., ended with both of his self-owned team’s engines blown up. He even acknowledged the situation in a post on Facebook.
“Racing can be cruel sometimes,” the Thursday afternoon post read. “Unfortunately, our Speedweeks are over before they truly began after failures in both of our motors last night. We’ll take a few weeks to regroup, reset and get ready for the next chapter.”
A few hours later, however, Overton was up with another social media post, this one showing a picture of work being done on his car under the words “blessed” and “see y’all tomorrow night.”
While Overton sat out Thursday’s weekend opener, he was back in the field on Friday with a borrowed powerplant in his Longhorn Chassis. He drove it to a B-main victory and then gained five spots in the 35-lap feature to register a 12th-place finish.
It was a rapid emotional turnaround for the young talent, who this year has taken ownership of the equipment he campaigned on the WoO tour over the last two seasons for Tri-Star Motorsports owner Dave Steine of Baldwin, Wis. He said Friday in an interview with DIRTVision that on practice night his first car’s motor broke as soon as he put it in high gear and rolled onto the backstretch and he lost his second machine’s engine after he “made it down the front straightaway.”
“Just a crazy, freak deal,” Overton told DIRTVision. “One was brand new, the other was the one I ran from last year. Just wasn’t meant to be.
“I didn’t think I was gonna be completely done, I just thought it was gonna take a little more time (to regroup) than I thought. And I knew getting into this, buying it, owning it and everything, I knew a motor was gonna blow. I just didn’t know when. I didn’t think it was gonna be the first night, so that made it a lot worse.”
Overton figured he would have to switch to a pick-and-choose schedule once he had his engine program back together, and perhaps running some events in the interim for Maryland car owner Bruce Kane, who supports Overton’s racing efforts. But he received a shock on Thursday evening when a benefactor in the pit area offered him an engine to run the weekend’s final two nights.
“I was just coming through the pits, and the guy that helped me — he doesn’t want to be talked about, he’s anonymous — he told me, ‘Hey, I got a motor for you. Do you wanna race?’ ” Overton told DIRTVision. “I said, ‘I’d love to.’ He said, ‘Well, you gotta run them points,’ and he made it happen. He got me a motor here.”
Overton still has to reset his team’s engine situation after this weekend’s action to prep for the Feb. 9-14 DIRTcar Nationals that include the next three WoO events, but his touring hopes are now certainly still alive. After receiving show-up points for entering Thursday’s program and finishing 12th on Friday, he’s 18th in the WoO points standings, 61 points behind leader Nick Hoffman of Mooresville, N.C. He's also buoyed by the knowledge that WoO regulars will use their five best finishes from the circuit’s seven scheduled Speedweeks events, including a Feb. 20-21 doubleheader at Hendry County Speedway in Clewiston, Fla.
And actually, Overton’s Thursday spent on the sidelines at Volusia wasn’t all bad. He watched his Factory 97 Crate Late Model entry driven by Ty Giles land in victory lane in a CRUSA-sanctioned semifeature. — Staff and series reports
O'Neal hangs on
The K&L Rumley Enterprises No. 6 team wasn’t even planning on coming to the Sunshine Nationals until days before the event. They’re glad they changed their minds.
After Hudson O’Neal finished up a two-victory trip to Arizona for the Rio Grande Waste Services Wild West Shootout, team owner Kevin Rumley elected to take a detour on his way home to Lexington, N.C., and swing by Volusia Speedway Park in Barberville, Fla., to try to keep the hot streak going. They did exactly that Friday as O’Neal pulled off the flag-to-flag victory on the second night of the 2026 season for the World of Outlaws Late Model Series.
The victory didn’t come without a tense moment late in the race for Martinsville, Ind.’s O’Neal. Runner-up Tyler Erb of New Waverly, Texas, emerged as his biggest challenger, and by the final lap, Terbo was right on O’Neal’s back bumper and dove low through turns one and two to briefly pull even at the top of the backstretch. But O’Neal had enough speed on the top to clear Erb into turn three, shutting the door at the checkers to seal his fourth Volusia career Volusia.
“I about gave it away going down into (turn) one,” O’Neal said. “I got a little bit too high, got my left-rear in the rough and it kind of jumped my right-front up. Whenever I seen (Erb) leaving two, I was like, ‘Oh no.’ I knew I got a better run than him, and I was just trying my best not to miss the bottom. I wasn’t sure where he was at.”
Erb, who matched his career-best Volusia finish, wondered about his groove choice earlier in the race.
“In hindsight I should have moved down when I slid (Brandon Sheppard) and all them,” Erb said, “I should have kept trying to run the bottom of one and two.”
Erb's second-place finish continued a rebound after destroying a car in a Thursday heat race wreck. In his backup car, Erb made a 26th-to-eighth run in Thursday’s main event, then added Friday's second-place finish for Ohio-based Best Performance Motorsports.
After the race, Erb thanked fellow driver Ashton Winger for making a haul to Ohio to pick up another car so he’d have two at his disposal.
Tim McCreadie of Watertown, N.Y., was third in Friday’s 35-lapper followed by Sheppard and Nick Hoffman, WoO’s early points leader. — Spence Smithback
What a start
Chris Madden turned the fastest lap in Wednesday’s practice at Volusia Speedway Park in Barberville, Fla. But that was just … practice, right? Would he still be the cream of the crop when the World of Outlaws Late Model Series-sanctioned Sunshine Nationals began Thursday?
The 50-year-old standout from Gray Court, S.C., sure did maintain his speed when it counted. Making a spectacular debut behind the wheel of the Infinity Chassis house car, Madden was absolutely perfect in setting fast time, winning his heat and scoring a flag-to-flag victory in the 35-lap feature that opened the 2026 WoO campaign.
“It’s awesome,” Madden said after claiming the $12,000 top prize in the first of three race nights at Volusia. “You couldn’t ask for a better day today. Everything went really smooth.
“David and Eric (Wells) and his family and everybody at Infinity Chassis — what an awesome race car they sent me down here with. I couldn’t ask for anything any better.”
Madden made a loud statement on the ’26 intentions of Infinity Chassis, the fledgling manufacturer based in Hazard, Ky. Owned by David Wells and overseen by his son Eric, Infinity didn’t field a true house car program last season — WoO regular Ryan Gustin of Marshalltown, Iowa, was essentially the company’s flagship driver with Todd Cooney Racing — but hired Madden a couple months ago to carry the torch on a high-profile level this year.
There was no stopping Madden in his first Infinity start — a fact that Nick Hoffman of Mooresvile, N.C., acknowledged after settling for a runner-up finish. The polesitting Hoffman, who shared the front row with Madden, managed to slide ahead of Madden through turns one and two with three laps remaining but couldn’t clinch a pass as Madden pulled a crossover move down the backstretch to stay ahead and then controlled a green-white-checkered restart to secure the victory.
“I was able to slide him, but as soon as I showed him a nose and slid him, it was like he got back up on the horse and rode and he was able to get away from me,” Hoffman said after climbing out of his Tye Twarog-owned Longhorn Chassis. “And you know, when you get a restart (with two laps remaining) it gives you maybe a chance to hustle the top of one and two and spook him, but his car … the old man here was a little bit better than we were tonight.
“So, yeah, his stuff was good. We just got to go back and work on it. He could square up and leave the corner a little better than I could.”
Madden conceded that his car wasn’t quite as strong in the closing laps, but he made sure the race didn’t slip from his grasp.
“He got by me there … I got extremely way too tight,” Madden said. “I couldn’t enter where I needed to be entering, and Nick caught me there and got by me. Then I just got up on the wheel, let ‘er rip, and I was able to get back by him and just to try to do my thing out there.”
Madden recorded his fifth career victory at Volusia, a blazing-fast half-mile oval that has long been one of his favorites. He was especially enthused about the place because its surface — new since last year’s Speedweeks action — was very much to his liking.
“Hats off to (World Racing Group’s) Brian Carter and his crew here,” said Madden, whose list of Volusia triumphs includes four during Speedweeks plus the 2006 Gator 100 contested in October. “They give us a phenomenal racetrack today, and it showed tonight. We was able to move around and race on it, and we appreciate them for putting in the hard work.” — Staff reports
Points tweak
Winning heat races is a bit more important for drivers chasing the World of Outlaws Late Model Series in 2026.
The national tour made a slight change to its points computation for the ’26 campaign, offering one bonus point for a heat victory at all events. All feature points remained status-quo with wins worth 150 points, second place 146 and each position through 26th place going down by two points.
While the heat-win bonus is modest, the extra points could certainly add up. For instance, Bobby Pierce piled up 26 heat wins last year en route to capturing the championship. — Staff reports
