Golden Isles Speedway
In frenzied races, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em?
By Kevin Kovac
DirtonDirt senior writer
Brandon Overton (76) battles at Golden Isles. (heathlawsonphotos.com)
BRUNSWICK, Ga. (March 5) — Sometimes a race car driver just needs to vent a little. Thursday night was one of those moments for Brandon Overton.
After finishing third in the 40-lap Wieland Winternationals feature at Golden Isles Speedway, Overton stood in the Riggs Motorsports trailer going over shock numbers with technical consultant Vinny Guliani. He also talked about the race with a noticeable sense of discontent in his voice.
“Frustrating as hell,” Overton said of his podium run that looked good on paper but ugly in his mind.
Overton, 34, of Evans, Ga., is one of the best competitors in the Dirt Late Model ranks at breaking down a race. He says exactly what he was thinking while in the midst of battle on the track — what went right, what went wrong. He doesn’t gloss over anything. He provides candid, insightful takes.
This was a night when Overton had plenty to say. He was irked by circumstances of the race, all of which seemed to trigger the problems he has with the hyper-aggressive, take-no-prisoners style of racing that has enveloped the modern Dirt Late Model scene.
Overton says he hates to sound like “a whiner” by being critical of what he considers over-the-top tactics employed by so many of his rivals, but he can’t help speaking up. Especially not after a feature during which he felt he was on the defensive because he was under attack from a horde of slider-throwing chargers.
“I get it, it’s the nature of our racing, right?” said Overton, who has four Speedweeks victories this year but is still chasing his first victory of 2026 on the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series. “Like, it’s probably not even them. It’s me. This is how I think about racing — if I know my car’s not faster than the guy in front of me, like, I’m not going to slide three rows (of cars on a restart). You know what I mean? I’m not gonna do that. That’s embarrassing, because then that’s no respect, and then that’s holding the whole damn field up.
“I don’t like when people do that to me and I don’t do it to people, right? So it really pisses me off when everybody does it. Like, literally, I can't even drive my car because I’m worried about the assholes behind me landing on my nose, and I’m trying not to wreck, right?
“But that's the way our racing is,” he continued. “It is so aggravating, but it’s fine. Like I just told Vinny — we gotta do a better job. We gotta get our car faster, and when they slide in front of me, I need to powerdrive their ass to the wall. That’s all you can do.”
Overton started third in the first Lucas Oil Series points race of the four-night meet at Golden Isles. He immediately settled into second behind eventual flag-to-flag winner Jonathan Davenport of Blairsville, Ga., and following a lap-seven restart he actually thought he was primed to take the lead.
“The signal (crew) guys for everybody are so good,” Overton said. “J.D., as soon as I get into second, I would catch J.D. a little bit, then they move him down in front of me. But then I step out and I’m probably going to snooker his ass on the outside of (turns) three and four down there. I had a good run (after the restart) … like when he parked with Terbo (Tyler Erb), when they slammed on the brakes to get on the bottom (Erb ended up spinning in turn four as he avoided making heavy contact with Davenport), I was ripping around the top and I was going to drive by ‘em both.
“So a caution comes out, and then I get swarmed on the restart. They all slide me, and I got to (mess) around with four cars for 15 laps. You know what I mean? Like, that was the end of my race. Instead of me going and getting somebody, I’m protecting for 30 laps, trying not to get killed.”
Overton described one particularly wild, every-man-for-himself restart that led to him slipping back to fifth place.
“That one time I’m in between Ricky (Thornton Jr.) and Hudson (O’Neal), right?” Overton said. “I’m going to be three-wide getting into one. I let out of the gas because I can’t do it. I can’t make myself do it. But anybody else, they’d have held that bitch on the floorboard.
“This is what I’m saying — if I hold it wide-open on that restart, I’m gonna land on Hudson’s air cleaner and he is gonna be (over the fence) because he ain’t gonna have time to stop. That’s what they would have done to me. Bet your ass. You know what I mean? That’s the problem.”
Amid the heated action that included three restarts over the final 18 circuits, Overton began telling himself to “just get through this race.” He ultimately grabbed third place on the final lap from Clay Harris of Jupiter, Fla., but it came with some contact that he didn’t want.
“Then like poor Clay Harris,” Overton said. “He did not hit me the whole time we’re out there, right? But he’s going from the bottom to the top. He’s not sliding, but he’s just blocking all the lanes, taking up the whole racetrack, and I let off seven laps in a row to not take his quarterpanel off, right? Well, then on the last lap, I get a run off of two and here I come, here I come, I’m going 20 mph faster. I’m trying to let him see me … well he lets off and hangs a left going into three (resulting in marginal contact).
“I mean, dude, he’s the last person I want to hit. He didn’t hit me the whole time. I want to hit everybody else, but I hit him. I already feel bad about it, but I know nobody’s feeling bad about running over me 15 times out there.”
Overton mused that he cut his racing teeth “at the bottom of that age group” of drivers that are now into their 40s or even 50s. He learned a different style, one that wasn’t quite so no-holds-barred as it’s become today.
“I’m just saying, the racing is different, and I know it’s changed,” Overton said. “I just try to still be the right guy. Like, I don’t fly over Jonathan’s nose like that, and he don’t really fly over my nose. Some guys got a little bit of respect … like Jonathan (at 42 years old) has been around for a while, right?
“I’m stuck in that age group where I raced with the guys, like, if you did some dumb s--- … I was scared of Shane Clanton whipping my ass when I was little, you know what I mean?”
Guliani, a longtime crewman who now offers technical assistance to teams running Longhorn Chassis and Bilstein Shocks through his VG Performance business, heard Overton’s comments and offered his own take.
“It used to be at Eldora you’d never lift on the first lap,” Guliani said. “Now it’s everywhere. You don’t lift. You just land wherever you land.”
Overton agreed: “Anywhere we go, you do not lift for the first lap of a heat or feature, and you’re not going to let off the gas until your signal man shows you that you have a straightaway (lead). That’s how you do it.”
It’s an aggressiveness, a mindset, that Overton understands he’s going to have to employ more, especially after he’s gone through a night like Thursday. He said that running at Golden Isles in March rather than January this year has produced a racier track that’s brought on some wilder racing — and has many racers, himself included, “off kilter” a bit trying to adjust their setups — but the point remains that he has to put emotion and his racing upbringing aside and press the issue more regularly.
“Like, I get so mad,” Overton said. “I know Terbo does some s--- that’s questionable. You know why? Because people are assholes. You know what I mean? They all drive like that. And when he does it back, they don’t like that s---. But that’s the truth. He’s right. If y’all think about it, he’s right. Like, everybody drives like a bunch of assholes, and when he gives it back to him, everybody pisses and moans.
“It ain’t nobody's fault. But if they can do it, if they can dish it out, that’s fine. Whatever. I just gotta do what they do to me back and figure out a way not to crash my s---, because that’s the other thing. You got to be able to hit people like Bobby (Pierce) and everybody else does and not tear your s--- up. They do a good job. They could crash somebody and keep going. Their things are built like a damn army tank I guess. We watch him do it all the time. He can crash it in a wall and still win the damn race.
“It’s just different times,” he added. “When they give it to me, I got to do a better job of giving it back. That’s the reality. And everybody’s got to be cool with it. Let me do it, and I don’t want to hear nobody bitching about me running over ‘em. Like, ‘Let’s go.’ Right?”
