West Virginia Motor Speedway
Notes: Veteran Erb enjoys West Virginia trip
By Kyle McFadden
DirtonDirt staff reporter
Dennis Erb Jr. (28) mixes it up at WVMS. (Zach Yost)
MINERAL WELLS, W.Va. (June 13) — Although Dennis Erb Jr. is amid his worst points season since 2018 — and although the 53-year-old isn’t the most expressive driver in the pit area — he does remind himself after weekend’s like these at West Virginia Motor Speedway that he’s still plenty capable of contending for World of Outlaws Late Model Series victories.
“It definitely shows that, you know, we're still gonna be up front running with them,” said Erb, who finished second Friday and sixth Saturday during WVMS's Racefest Summer Championship.
Eleventh in WoO points entering the weekend, Erb is trying to avoid finishing outside the top 10 in national touring standings for the first time since he placed 11th on the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series in 2018. He had a chance Saturday at WVMS to register his first back-to-back top-five runs on the WoO circuit since last Oct. 10-11’s third- and fifth-place finishes at Boothill Speedway.
Slow starts and inadvertently putting himself in harm’s way have hampered his 2026 season. Before Friday, Erb had been caught up in four accidents over his previous eight starts, including Saturday’s third-lap heat race wreck while jockeying for a transfer spot into the Dream XXXII feature at Eldora Speedway.
The string of incidents has also taken a toll on his equipment. Erb has already had four race cars repaired this season at Rocket Chassis headquarters in Shinnston, W.Va. The first came after his Feb. 14 DIRTcar Nationals outing at Volusia Speedway Park. The second followed a violent March 14 crash when contact with Logan Zarin sent Erb spinning into the path of leader Brandon Overton, who slammed hard into Erb's disabled car on the backstretch with three laps remaining. His third trip to Rocket came after being collected in the lap-four multicar pileup May 29 at Mansfield (Ohio) Speedway, while the fourth followed Saturday's Dream heat race crash at Eldora.
The constant repairs have made Erb wonder if underlying mechanical issues have slipped through the cracks.
“We've been struggling a little bit on some things, just getting caught up in some bad luck, and things that aren't my doing. We’re getting caught under that — getting crashed a lot,” Erb said. “We don’t have time to work on our car and stuff, but we’ll get back in shape here and get these cars running good as we’re able to work on them.”
After spending much of the last six weeks in the Northeast and Ohio Valley region, Erb’s looking forward to getting back onto his more-familiar black dirt as the WoO tour heads for the Midwest to start a 10-race swing in 16 days beginning June 19-20 at 141 Speedway in Francis Creek, Wis.
“Looking forward to getting back on the black dirt for sure,” Erb said. “Just like every night, I mean, we go out there to run up front, do the best we can, and to win. Looking at the way things have happened this year, just gotta get back on track and be consistent — be up in the top five spots. Just gotta keep us running good because we definitely want to win, for sure.”
Repping West Virginia
With only four of his 22 starts this season coming outside national touring competition, Ryan Montgomery has challenged himself more than ever.
The added level of competition appears to be paying off, too, as the driver of the Josh Wamsley-owned machine recorded a career-best national tour finish of ninth Saturday at WVMS. The Fairmont, W.Va., native also carried the mantle as the highest-finishing regional driver.
“It’s good to be back on the home turf from what I'll call a mini national tour,” the 28-year-old Montgomery said through a laugh. “We’re not running national. It seems like every weekend we've been running with all the national touring guys. So definitely getting better. You know, I think we kind of hurt ourselves in qualifying (Saturday), which, you know, with these guys, it's not easy to come back from.”
Montgomery qualified 11th of 20 cars in Group A at 14.493 seconds, which was only a little more than two-tenths off Hudson O’Neal’s quick time mark of 14.215. He clawed his way into the final transfer spot — sixth to fourth — through his heat. Starting 13th, Montgomery learned from his mistakes Friday where he finished 16th.
"We bounced back pretty good from last night,” he said. “We went with the wrong tire choice.”
Thanks to Wamsley, the car owner from Philippi, W.Va., Montgomery's schedule has expanded more than ever. Last season he made 37 starts at 24 different racetracks. This year, he's already ventured to Florida-Georgia Speedweeks and, of late, has raced almost exclusively against national touring competition, following the World of Outlaws to Pennsylvania's Marion Center Raceway, Ohio's Wayne County Speedway, Ohio's Mansfield Speedway and nearby WVMS.
He also entered last weekend’s Dream XXXII at Eldora Speedway, where he qualified for Friday’s split-field prelim, but not Saturday’s 100-lap finale.
“With my dad's stuff, we never ran any national tour stuff,” Montgomery said. “So, Josh wants to run these bigger shows and I think we're getting some traction here.”
Special events at Elkins Speedway in Kerens, W.Va., and Beckley (W.Va.) Motor Speedway are up next for Montgomery this Friday and Saturday before he eyes another marquee national touring event in June 25-27’s Firecracker 100 at Lernerville Speedway.
“I love the Firecracker, man," he said. "It’s one of my favorite races. It ranks probably a little bit higher than the North-South 100 for me, which people might get mad at me for. I was only at North-South once. I’ve been going to the Firecracker since I was a kid. … It’s a cool deal, a cool experience for sure.”
Valuable notes
When Brandon Sheppard steadily faded from leading Saturday’s opening lap at WVMS to finishing 13th, it looked as if something had gone awry on the Rocket1 Racing machine during the 60-lap feature.
As it turned out, that wasn’t the case.
“We were just off,” Sheppard said. “We tested a little bit.”
One night after starting and finishing fourth in his first appearance at the reconfigured 3/8-mile oval, Sheppard wouldn’t divulge exactly where he and his Mark Richards-led team missed the mark Saturday.
Either way, he wasn't overly concerned with the result. Instead, Sheppard viewed the night as another opportunity for Rocket1 Racing to gather information ahead of Oct. 17-18's Dirt Track World Championship at WVMS, the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series season finale.
“Yeah, obviously we learned what not to do,” Sheppard said. “All notes are good notes, even if they’re bad. It is what it is. It’s just one of them nights. You gotta hopefully learn from it when we come back.”
Sheppard actually thought the reshaped WVMS oval raced better Saturday than it had Friday, when Hudson O'Neal spun from second on lap 24 while battling eventual winner Bobby Pierce for the lead. The track itself was not the root of Sheppard’s nonfactor outing.
“Truthfully, I thought the track was pretty good,” said Sheppard, whose Lucas Oil campaign continues this Friday and Saturday at Smoky Mountain Speedway in Maryville, Tenn. “Overall it was pretty decent, really. Tonight was better than last night, I thought. It was pretty good.”
Odds and ends
Colten Burdette of Parkersburg, W.Va., can't fully commit to defending his Valvoline American Iron-Man Series title this season because of an upcoming career change. After 11 years with the Parkersburg Fire Department, where he worked his way up the ranks and gained the seniority that afforded him flexibility to race, the 33-year-old is leaving the department July 5 to take a plant mechanic job in Pleasants County, W.Va. Once that transition takes place, Burdette isn't sure what his racing schedule will look like aboard Athens, Ohio, car owner Steve Curtis's Dirt Late Model. … Luke Morey of Zeeland, Mich., whose race shop is now based in Charlotte, N.C., hopes to run "two or three weeks" of the DIRTcar Summer Nationals this June and/or July. The 18-year-old hasn't decided when to make his maiden Hell Tour swing, largely because he's currently operating with just one full-time crewman in fellow 18-year-old Ray Erickson. Morey said he's actively searching for another crew member before committing to the grueling summer trek. … Chris Ferguson was a surprise entry at WVMS this weekend, but when the 36-year-old explained how straightforward the trip is from his Mount Holly, N.C., shop to the 3/8-mile oval, his five-hour tow suddenly made perfect sense: ”It's only four turns from my race shop," Ferguson said. Conveniently enough, Ferguson's shop sits just a few miles from Interstate 77, which runs roughly 330 miles north directly past WVMS. Ferguson mounted 21st-to-sixth and 18th-to-10th runs Friday and Saturday. … Ethan Dotson of Bakersfield, Calif., registered a pair of fifth-place finishes Friday and Saturday at WVMS, the second time this year he’s logged back-to-back top fives. He finished second and fifth Feb. 20-21 at Hendry County Motorsports Park in Clewiston, Fla.
