Kevin Kovac's Take Five
Take Five: Recollections of New York team owner
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: Back on March 1, Gary Dyer, a Dirt Late Model team owner from Marine, N.Y. — essentially the middle of big-block modified country — passed away at the age of 78. For a two-decade span beginning in the ‘80s, Dyer fielded one of the top steel-block Late Model teams at his local tracks, Penn-Can Speedway in Susquehanna, Pa., and Five Mile Point Speedway in Kirkwood, N.Y., winning races with area drivers Nate Holcomb, Rick Holgate, Curt Tunilo and Billy Marvin. In the late ‘90s he became one of the first owner from his low-key Late Model circuit (the full-fender cars were an undercard to the modifieds) to branch out to the open-motor central Pennsylvania tracks and in ’97 was victorious with Tunilo at Selinsgrove (Pa.) Speedway. Dyer’s best Super Late Model years came from 2002-06 with driver Alan Sagi of Hagerstown, Md., who recalled an enjoyable five-year stint with Dyer spent running races from New York to Florida. The 62-year-old Sagi told me his biggest victory with Dyer came in a 50-lap feature at Sagi’s hometown Hagerstown Speedway, where Dyer made four-and-a-half-hour trips to race with Sagi. “In all of the years I drove for Gary I don’t remember him ever getting mad at anyone — myself, the crew, track officials or opposing drivers,” Sagi said. “He set a good example for everyone in racing. Hagerstown Speedway even presented him with a special sportsmanship-loyalty award for his years of long tows at the banquet after he announced he was getting out of racing.”
No. 2: Another driver who knew Dyer well was Dan Stone of Thompson, Pa., the veteran racer who cut his teeth racing against Dyer’s cars at Penn-Can in the ‘90s. While Stone never drove for Dyer, he recalled that he made his first trip to Georgia-Florida Speedweeks in 2001 with a motor provided by the New Yorker. “I had never driven anything with an aluminum engine,” said Stone, who was accompanied on his Florida excursion by Dyer. Stone had high praise for Dyer. “Just easy to get along with, happy, like a ball-buster type of guy. Just a lot of fun to be around,” he said. “He had an incredible work ethic, just a salt of the earth guy that you’d look up to for sure.”
No. 3: Stone also noted that Dyer’s love of racing showed through with support of local racing. “I think three separate times him and my dad put clay on the racetrack at Penn-Can,” said Stone, whose father, Warren, owns an excavating company like Dyer did. “The promoter was struggling and they wanted the track to be good, so they teamed up and brought some equipment down and work weekends on it. They didn’t get paid for doing it. They just wanted to help.”
No. 4: Good to hear that Tim Tungate, the veteran Kentucky racer who now manages the JRR Motorsports shop, has bounced back well from the stroke he suffered March 20. He was hospitalized until last Friday when he was released after having a stent placed in his nearly completely blocked right carotid artery. And Tungate, 61, was back at the racetrack the next day, spending Saturday’s Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series-sanctioned Icebreaker at Brownstown (Ind.) Speedway in the pit area with JRR drivers Jason Jameson and Josh Rice.
No. 5: Today is April Fool’s Day, so of course there were plenty of joking social media posts made by Dirt Late Model teams. One that caught my eye: Illinois veteran Jason Feger posting that he will be using a new AI setup tool, RACEiq2.0, to make all the setup calls on his race car this year. I don’t think there’s any such tool available to racers — and Feger noted it was an April Fool’s joke at the end of his post — but one wonders if AI might play into setup decisions sooner rather than later.
