Kevin Kovac's Take Five
Take Five: Koehler team shines in mod action
In a new feature appearing regularly on DirtonDirt, senior writer Kevin Kovac will offer readers five things worth mentioning from around the Dirt Late Model landscape (index to previous Take Fives):
No. 1: All three members of the Koehler Motorsports team based out of Mount Airy, N.C. — Ricky Thornton Jr. and brothers Jordan and Evan Koehler, the sons of team owner Bobby Koehler — decided to go all out with a modified effort for this year’s DIRTcar Nationals at Volusia Speedway Park in Barberville, Fla. Think they’re having fun? The trio enjoyed a perfect night Wednesday with each driver winning a 20-lap feature. (The format for the nearly 100-car field dispensed with heat races in favor of six features.) This success came on top of Thornton, who had never before won at Volusia in a modified, capturing two features earlier in the week and Jordan, the older of the Koehler siblings, earning a checkered flag Tuesday.
No. 2: You can now call Tim McCreadie of Watertown, N.Y., a Hall of Famer — as a big-block modified driver at least (for now). The 51-year-old star was announced Tuesday as a 2026 inductee of the Northeast Dirt Modified Hall of Fame. McCreadie, who earned most of his 94 career big-block and 358-modified victories from 1996-2004 before shifting his focus to Dirt Late Model racing, will be enshrined during an Aug. 13 ceremony on the grounds of Weedsport (N.Y.) Speedway, where the Hall of Fame museum is located.
No. 3: My Inside Dirt Late Model column subject this week is Brandon Overton, the 34-year-old star from Evans, Ga., who of course is excited that his schedule is allowing him to compete in this weekend’s Southern All Star-sanctioned Winter Freeze at Screven Motor Speedway in Sylvania, Ga. “Screven was the first place that I ever drove a Super Model,” said Overton, who since 2018 has won eight Super Late Model specials at Screven, including victories during the Winter Freeze in ’19 (WoO-sanctioned). ’20 (two) and ’24. “I was 12 years old. That was the first place I clicked one in high gear, right there. It’s special for me, and I got pretty good there. I love Screven. I love (owner) Redd (Griffin). He’s a good dude. It’s a cool little racetrack. Like, it’s not a shaped perfect and it’s not banked the perfect way. There’s all kinds of little things about it, but it makes it hard to drive so your car doesn’t have to be good to win there. Your car can be off and if you know how to drive the racetrack you can do better.”
No. 4: Overton is a big fan of Screven’s famed concession stand food offerings as well. “Hell, I eat everything up there,” he said. “I mean, that’s right up my alley. It’s just like Southern cooking, so that’s probably the only place you going to go get some mashed potatoes and gravy and collard greens, you know?”
No. 5: After winning last Friday’s Hunt the Front Super Dirt Series feature at Needmore Speedway in Norman Park, Ga., Overton returned home following the weather-caused cancellation of Saturday’s finale and enjoyed a rare Peach State snow day. He happily reported that it was his nearly year-old daughter Stevie’s first snow, but the toddler didn’t spend too much time in the wintry conditions. “We walked outside, took a pic and walked back in,” he said with a laugh.
Correction: Fixes that Jordan Koehler, not brother Evan, won Tuesday at Volusia.
