Brownstown Bullring
Notes: Eventful debut for Montana teenager
By Todd Turner
DirtonDirt.com managing editor
Tyler Leach (05) leads his heat at the Brownstown Bullring. (Tim Hunt)
BROWNSTOWN, Ill. (June 9) — Racing to a victory in your first-ever Super Late Model heat race is pretty exciting. It was also pretty stressful for 17-year-old Tyler Leach of Sun River, Mont., who on Tuesday at the Brownstown Bullring panicked when his left glove got stuck to his side, forcing him to drive only right-handed for a few laps midway through the eight-lap DIRTcar Summer Nationals prelim.
"My glove got stuck to my seat, so I was driving with one hand,” Leach said. "Like somehow it just got caught onto my belts or something. It just stuck. I couldn't get it off.” | RaceWire
He primarily drives with his left hand, so clumsily handling the car with his right hand on the wheel only caused problems, including when he nearly lost control in turn two midway through the race.
After a couple of laps with his left hand stuck at his side, he was finally able to pull it loose and coasted the rest of the way. The team tried to determine what happened after the heat, but “we couldn't figure it out,” Leach said. “I got lucky there, to be honest.”
Leach last year had his rookie season in Late Models, driving a spec-engine style WISSOTA car to a track championship at Electric City Speedway in Great Falls, Mont. Overall he won four Late Model features at three home-state tracks and was an honorable mention among 2025’s top Late Model newcomers for DirtonDirt.
Leach, whose father Paul Leach also races (and co-owns Longhorn Chassis), hopes to follow the tire tracks of 22-year-old brother Michael Leach, who is in his third full season of Super Late Model action and scored a semifeature victory in February during the Federated Auto Parts DIRTcar Nationals at Volusia Speedway Park in Barberville, Fla.
"We're planning on running most of the Summer Nationals,” Tyler Leach said. “We’ve got some other racing going on too, but we're planning probably over half of it.”
His first Super Late Model feature didn’t turn out as well as the heat. He ended up in a second-lap mess in turn two, tangling with Jackson Hise and collecting Mike Harrison.
"I was trying to get up to the top,” Leach said. "Someone was there and just got spun out.”
Brother Michael finished fourth in the first Late Model race for the brothers. They’d raced against each other a few times in modifieds before Michael headed to North Carolina to continue his racing career after being unbeaten in the Late Model division in Montana.
Tyler Leach will start his senior year at 150-student Simms High School later this year and he plans to continue his racing career after graduating.
“I’ll go straight into racing right after,” he said. “We'll probably go regionally for a little bit, then we'll see how that goes. We might just go full-time pro like (Michael is) doing right now.”
The younger Leach got a kick out of running a Super Late Model for the first time. He hadn’t tried it out until Tuesday’s hot laps.
“The cars are funner to drive,” he said. “You’re just able to use the throttle more on entry and get it loose, but it's a blast to drive. I prefer it over the WISSOTA cars at home.”
Near-perfect night
Shannon Babb has competed in enough Summer Nationals races to know that things don’t always go your way. So when they do, you need to take advantage of it.
The four-time series champion on Tuesday captured his tour-leading 103rd victory on a near-perfect night at the Brownstown Bullring, where he won for the third time on the series. His first came in 2002 (the third of three tour victories in a row) and he also won in 2022.
“We always talk about those nights all have to go your way, and tonight went my way,” said Babb, who led all 30 laps in keeping Frank Heckenast Jr. and then Tanner English at bay. “I was in the right place in the heat race and won that, was in the right place in the feature and I drew that (second starting spot), and that’s what won me the race. I think if Tanner (started second), he might have won the race.
"So my car was really good. I was trying not to push it too hard. (A crew member) was telling me I was OK, so I was just trying not to boil the tires.”
Babb was able to turn back English’s challenges on restart.
“He got right here,” Babb said, holding his hand out to the side. "He made me speed up quite a bit. I was in the driver's seat. I knew if I let him in front of me, if I screwed up, he was going to go by me. That always makes you nervous, but I just try to slow down my breathing and slow down my mind and just drive smart.”
It was a good night to win for Babb with Nutrien Ag Solutions sponsoring the event because Babb’s longtime sponsor, Dyna-Gro Seed, is a division of Nutrien, whose Warren Jones was on hand at the races. Babb was also glad he got to race at all after rain soaked the Fayette County Fairgrounds, putting the event in doubt until promoter Josh Carroll decided to forge ahead with an 11 a.m. decision.
“With what they was dealt with the rain, the circumstances they had, I'm glad we got the race in,” Babb said. “They could have just as easily called it, so the track wasn't as perfect as we've seen it before here, but it was at least pretty smooth.”
Solid series start
Tanner English of Benton, Ky., has scores of Summer Nationals races on his record, but not with an AK Race Car. So in his series pursuit, running at many tracks that have hosted more than 25 series races, he’ll have to figure out how the Austin Kirkpatrick-designed chassis reacts.
"I need to run this whole deal just so I can build a notebook and get (stuff) figured out,” said the 33-year-old English, who debuted a fresh AK frame at the Brownstown Bullring that allows him to have the security of a backup car.
“I just wanted to start fresh and I got that other one sitting at home just ready to go just in case,” English said. “Right now, I plan on doing all of (the Summer Nationals), but that may be shortlived. You just don't ever know. We may go tomorrow and tear up some stuff and decide to go home. But starting out like this, that’s what you need.”
English ran second to Shannon Babb in the 30-lap feature as well as the opening eight-lap heat race.
"I knew in that heat race he was pretty damn good,” English said.
The high-flying Babb led all the way in the main event, but English tried to make it interesting on a couple restarts by driving as hard as he could into the low groove on the corners, at least giving Babb something to think about.
"I just think it takes about a lap to get your momentum going up there on the top. If the top would have slowed down just a touch more, I think I could have made the bottom work, but it was just too fast up there, too big of a ledge,” English said. "I was like, 'I better make something happen.’ So I hit it just right and I was like, 'Man, I could do it again probably if another restart came.’ I think I about had him fooled there because he tried to go down there to the bottom on the second restart after I showed him the nose the first time. That’s what I was wanting to do was bait him a little bit. He’d have been hard to beat.”
Odds and ends
Only seven entrants were previous Summer Nationals winners. Last year’s 44-car Brownstown Bullring field had 14 previous winners. … The first completed lap of DIRTcar Summer Nationals action in 2026 took long enough. The first heat required six starts amid bad starts, spins and collisions. … Former series champ Brian Shirley of Chatham, Ill., loaded up after getting banged around on the first lap of a heat. … Reigning series champ Jason Feger pounded the turn-two wall on the opening lap and retired from his heat. ... Blaze Burwell and Matthew Larson had their qualifying times disallowed for using unapproved right-rear tires. ... Chris Simpson scratched after hot laps.
