Ocala Speedway
At 55, Carpenter all-in on Lucas tour odyssey
By Kyle McFadden
DirtonDirt.com staff reporter
West Virginia veteran Freddie Carpenter at Ocala. (Heath Lawson)
ELLISVILLE, Fla. (Feb. 25) — Hardly anything has gone Freddie Carpenter’s way this Georgia-Florida Speedweeks.
Among the challenges: the Florida dirt has changed quicker than he’s been able to adjust; when he finally felt competitive Saturday at All-Tech Raceway, he crashed out of his heat race. And so five races into his rookie season on the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series, the 55-year-old veteran has five DNQs to show for it.
It’s been a grueling opening stretch to say the least. But the one thing that has gone right — finally living out a lifelong dream — hasn’t been lost on the longtime Parkersburg, W.Va., regional stalwart.
“I’m getting old and running out of time,” Carpenter said through a smile when asked what made him pull the trigger on a Lucas Oil rookie run this year. “I figured the time is now to go live it. Never been able to afford to do it, and I can’t really afford it now, but I’m doing it anyway.
“I finally made up my mind that I’m going to do it. I kept going back and forth with myself, that I’m not going to do it, then I’m going to do it. I finally said, ‘You know what? If I commit saying I’m gonna do it, I’ve gotta do it.”
Fortunately for Carpenter, he’ll have seven more chances this Speedweeks — three at the 3/8-mile Ocala Speedway from Thursday through Saturday and four next Wednesday through Saturday at Golden Isles Speedway near Brunswick, Ga. — to salvage something from this early-season stretch and bottle a bit of momentum heading into March.
The calendar soon flips to a pair of tracks more up his alley: Ohio’s 3/8-mile Atomic Speedway on March 27 and the quarter-mile Brownstown (Ind.) Speedway on March 28, two stops that’ll offer a more familiar footing on the Lucas Oil tour.
But before Carpenter can turn his attention to tracks closer to his West Virginia home, he’s doing everything he can to solve the ultra-tricky, and often perplexing, Florida dirt that seems to change by the lap.
“I feel like I’m chasing the track in one direction one night and then it goes the other way,” Carpenter said. "I’m like, ‘OK, I need to go this way,’ when the track goes the opposite. We finally got freed up to get around All-Tech, which made us too free.”
Carpenter’s best shot at making a Speedweeks feature came Saturday at All-Tech, where he worked his way inside a top-four transfer spot before disaster struck in turns one and two.
He survived the opening corner on the initial start and even climbed into the top three of the heat race. But a caution on that opening lap prompted another attempt at the start, where things unraveled. On the second green, Carpenter couldn’t make it out of the opening corner unscathed, slapping the wall and therefore needing a tow off the track. The damage triggered a chain reaction of mechanical hiccups later in the night.
“What it done is, it broke the fan blade and we didn’t catch it,” Carpenter said. “One of the fan blades came off. It was vibrating and shook the water pump loose. That’s what took me out of the B-main. I felt comfortable and the car was good. I felt great. I really felt like I was going to run second or third in that heat race.”
Carpenter understood from the outset that campaigning the 58-race Lucas Oil tour across 14 states would be a daunting undertaking, especially against 18 full-time competitors — at least those who’ve declared their intentions heading into Speedweeks.
His primary objective is simply staying the course as long as he can — and hopefully long enough to make it through the entire season. To reach year’s end, he knows he must avoid on-track trouble and qualify for as many features as possible.
“My goal is just to finish the season and not have to drop off, and make some races,” Carpenter said. “I don’t have high expectations that I’m going to go out and win races. It would be huge if I won rookie of the year, but if I finish the season, that’s a win for me.”
At the very least, Carpenter’s fully committed through May 21-23’s Show-Me 100 at Lucas Oil Speedway in Wheatland, Mo., on the tour. Then he’ll reevaluate if continuing forward on the series is feasible.
“What I thought about is at least trying to make it to the end of the long stretch of May because there’s a lot in May,” Carpenter said. “I’m determined to get through that. Then once I get through that, I’ll decide whether to go on or not. I’m not going to lose everything I own trying to do this. If I can do this and not lose the farm, I’m going to do it.”
Carpenter is taking an unorthodox approach to his race-day crew to start the season. Instead of hauling a full-time wrenching unit up and down the road, he’ll rotate crew members depending on the trip. The majority will be family and friends, and on some occasions, it may be only Carpenter and his wife, Jima.
“I have some different people who are going to go to different races,” Carpenter said. “Most races I show up to, it’ll be just me or me and my wife. I know people all over the country. A lot of times I’ve gone like that where people would show up and say, ‘Oh, you’re by yourself?’ And they’d jump in and give me a hand.
“I’ve had a lot of friends and family — and people that I don’t even know — help me with finances. Nothing huge, but every little bit helps. A lot of people have stepped up to give me a hand.”
At 55, Carpenter feels relatively good about his stamina and health for the road ahead, especially after recovering from multiple hard impacts over the past few seasons that triggered concussion-like symptoms.
The worst of them came in January 2021 at East Bay Raceway Park, when he barrel-rolled multiple times during a heat race, a violent crash that led to the most severe concussion of his career and what he described as a “long and slow” recovery.
“I was so screwed up I didn’t realize how screwed up I was,” he said. “Like, y’all shouldn’t even let me go to work by myself. It was pretty bad. … It was like trying to watch a movie through a screen door with two radios playing in the background, and then take a test on what the movie was about.”
A nasty wreck last year at Ocala triggered flashbacks to that brutal accident, bringing back brain fog and muddled cognition. But now, Carpenter insists he feels better than ever, clearer than ever, and more ready than ever for the grind of a national tour.
“That helped me determine to do this,” Carpenter said. “After that wreck at East Bay and the concussion, my thought processes weren’t real good. But I’m thinking clearer now than I’ve ever been. I have a better feel for the car and I make better decisions about what chances I need to take. I think I’m over that concussion now, and I’m thinking a lot clearer.”
