Kevin Kovac's Take Five
Take Five: Hicks escapes violent crash
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: Saturday night’s 53-lap Schaeffer’s Spring Nationals feature at Lake Cumberland Speedway in Burnside, Ky., was a rough one for Benji Hicks of Mount Airy, N.C. The 30-year-old Double Nickel chassis builder has enjoyed several noteworthy runs this season — including runner-up finishes on March 28 at Friendship Motor Speedway in Elkin, N.C., and April 15 at Volunteer Speedway in Bulls Gap, Tenn. — but he suffered a setback on lap 45 of Lake Cumberland’s A-main when he caught the homestretch retaining wall while running at the back end of the top 10 and wildly flipped several times. He slithered out of his upside-down machine without injury and immediately received hugs on the track from his parents and children. In a Sunday morning Facebook post about the accident, he directly referenced his mother, who he calls his biggest supporter, by saying he was “sorry I had to bring in Mother’s Day the way I did” and joked “if I didn’t give you a heart attack and stress you out I wouldn’t be doing my job.” As for Hicks’s car, he reported that he wasn’t yet certain about the extent of the damage because afterward “we were just trying our best to get it to roll so we could get loaded.” He noted that it was the third time in his career that he’s flipped but the previous rollovers were “nothing like that.”
No. 2: While Brandon Sheppard of New Berlin, Ill., drove the Rocket Chassis house car to his second straight Illinois Speedweek victory in Saturday’s 60-lap Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series-sanctioned FALS Spring Shootout at Fairbury (Ill.) Speedway, another very similar-looking car reached victory lane in a WISSOTA Late Model feature at Ogilvie (Minn.) Speedway. Tyler Peter of Hickson, N.D., captured a weekly event piloting a Rocket Chassis sporting a wrap that was a throwback to the colorful scheme on Mark Richards’s original Rocket1 house car a quarter-century ago.
No. 3: Rocket Chassis co-owner Mark Richards was of course excited about Sheppard’s triumph at Fairbury, but after the race he was even more animated talking about a nugget of news he had just learned: Jerry Bowersock’s $5,000 victory in a Valvoline American Late Model Iron-Man Series feature at Atomic Speedway in Alma, Ohio. The 60-year-old veteran from Wapakoneta, Ohio, was behind the wheel of a fresh Rocket XR2 Chassis as he recorded his first touring series victory since 2009 (an ALMS event) and first full-fender win of any kind since a DIRTcar Super Late Model triumph at Montpelier (Ind.) Speedway on Sept. 2, 2023. Richards expressed his happiness with Bowersock’s victory in a post-race conversation with DirtonDirt’s Kyle McFadden. “I did all his shocks, set everything up for him,” Richards said. “He texted me today and he says, ‘Hey, can I run that setup you did for Eldora?’ I said, ‘Yeah, just put it in there.’ I told him a couple of little things to do. And he was happy. He texted me after the race. I was happy for him. Jerry’s been a great driver over the years. He’s just never had really good equipment. Now he’s got a good car, a good motor. He’s got a guy that's helping him out and they got some good equipment.”
No. 4: Speaking of Richards, after my Inside Dirt Late Model column on the late Hall of Famer Larry Moore was posted on Thursday and he had some time to read it in his hauler following an Illinois Speedweek rainout, he texted me an old photo of the top three finishers in a National Dirt Racing Association 100-lapper on June 21, 1980, at Tri-City Speedway in Granite City, Ill. There was winner Rodney Combs — the driver whom a young Richards was working as crew chief — alongside runner-up Moore and third-place Kevin Gundaker. It was an awesome shot that demonstrated how festive NDRA victory lanes were back during its brief run as Dirt Late Model racing’s first national tour with the three drivers joined by famed Miss NDRA Eva Taylor in her swimsuit and NDRA founder Robert Smawley posing with them dressed very dapperly in all white and a checkered flag vest.
No. 5: Kyle McFadden relayed to me a humorous anecdote from a conversation he had during Saturday’s program at Fairbury with Lucas Oil Series regular Clay Harris of Jupiter, Fla. The 25-year-old driver told McFadden before the feature that a fan had approached him earlier and pointed out that he’s been struggling, prompting Harris to ask that fan: “You think tonight is my night?” His visitor nonchalantly responded, “Nah, it’s not. You won’t win.” “The things some people tell you are crazy,” quipped Harris, who threatened to prove the fan wrong when he charged from 12th to second in the A-main before fading to finish eighth.
