Montpelier Speedway
Notes: Family time caps Heckenast's solid night
By Bryan Ault
Special to DirtonDirt
The happy Heckenasts. (Jim DenHamer)
MONTPELIER, Ind. (July 7) — Putting a complete night together is always a challenge for Dirt Late Model racers. When drivers start deep in the field yet finish a few spots out of victory lane, they lament about poor qualifying, miscues in the heat races or various decisions on suspension setups that hindered their path to victory. | RaceWire
For 38-year-old Frank Heckenast Jr. of Frankfort, Ill., Tuesday’s DIRTcar Summer Nationals outing at Montpelier Motor Speedway was an evening with no regrets. The team started up front with an impressive qualifying effort, overtook Sam Seawright of Fort Payne, Ala., on the third lap of the feature and led the rest of the 30-lap feature for a $5,000 payday and his second series victory of the season.
Heckenast’s seventh career Summer Nationals victory came by nearly six seconds over runner-up Kyle Moore.
“You know, a lot of times in racing, when you qualify, then you win your heat — other people might be different — but us, we hardly win the feature, just because you overadjust, underadjust, overthink it,” said Heckenast, whose first tour win came Saturday at Red Hill Raceway in Sumner, Ill. “And, you know, tonight, we seem to just not (make major changes), you know? It was just one or two little baby changes after the heats. We can't ever seem to put a whole night together, you know, and we did twice here in the last seven days, so that was nice.”
While rugged track conditions meant some contenders bowed out to save their equipment on a night when DIRTcar awarded only showup points, Heckenast stayed in the gas, ripping the quarter-mile northeast Indiana oval’s thick cushion. His efforts were rewarded, experiencing victory lane with his wife, Karime, and his children for the first time.
“I haven't won with my two boys and my wife here,” Heckenast said. “That's the first time, so that was pretty emotional for me, but there's so much blood, sweat, and tears that goes into this. To be able to just finally, you know, win a race with them is great. I told myself, ‘Don't cry,’ but it’s just my wife sacrifices so much to do this at home, taking care of the kids by herself, basically.
“We're running businesses, we're working, we're trying to do it all, we're trying to do family, we're trying to do Fourth of July, we're doing soccer. My kids, one kid likes racing and one kid doesn't, but they want to be with me, so that's great.”
“It's just, it's so much,” he added. “And I feel guilty and I feel like it's very selfish a lot of times because it is about me. But my wife doesn't, you know, hold that against me, so I love her for that. And I just can't thank all my sponsors and people, and everyone who sticks with us during hard times. So it's full circle.”
Heckenast believed the surface, which received reworkings frequently between heat races and consolation races, was rough, but “not the roughest I’ve been to.” He said the track crew deserves credit for smoothening out the rough-and-tumble oval enough before the feature to make it maneuverable.
“The track was super rough in the heat races,” Heckenast said. “Track got rougher after the heats. The guys in the B-main really had to deal with a rough track, and then that little bit of touchup they did there (before the A-main) made it 50-50. It was rough. If you didn't want to hit any holes, you could have went all the way around without hitting any holes. You just weren't going to be very fast, for sure.”
Happy runner-up
With one hand on the wheel and the other holding onto his son, Hudson, Kyle Moore pulled into his pit area at Montpelier in a happy mood. The driver from Mansfield, Ohio was elated with his runner-up finish on Montpelier. While he readily acknowledged some of the Hell Tour’s heavy hitters such as Jason Feger, Tanner English, and fan-favorite Rusty Schlenk dropped out of the race, it didn’t negate the happiness of the 35-year-old Buckeye State driver who rolled into Montpelier on a truck and open trailer.
“That's a tough group of cars, and I think we had the hardest group qualifying,” Moore said. “Car was good. I used my stuff up getting up through there. The track wasn't perfect, but, you know, hey, we're all on the same racetrack and I think a rougher racetrack gives a guy like me and a guy that doesn't do it for a living better odds, you know, to just maneuver holes. It was a damn good night. We show up, man, and if we rolled out of here in the top-eight, top-five, we'd be excited, and then I got second. I felt like I won a feature.”
Moore felt he might have had something for Heckenast around the 30-lapper’s halfway point, but said Heckenast “was gone” after getting around two lapped cars, which dirtied Moore’s air.
“I was like, holy s---, where'd he go? There at the end, he had a better car. I used my stuff up getting up through there,” Moore said.
Moore, who decided to jump on the tour on Tuesday at Montpelier, plans to finish out the tour in Michigan and Ohio, especially if he keeps finishing up front.
“We just got to have the funds to keep going,” said Moore, whose lone Summer Nationals victory came in 2023 at Wayne County Speedway in Orrville, Ohio. “So as long as we keep going from day to day, hell, we're staying out here. Wanted to do this last week, but, you know, we're definitely a small team with limited funds and it just has to make sense. And after tonight, I mean, we definitely got the funds to keep on rolling.”
Morey gains experience
Coltman Farms Racing driver Luke Morey knows his best days as a driver are ahead of him. The 18-year-old driver, who hails from Zeeland, Mich. but races out of Denver, N.C., decided to hop on the Summer Nationals tour during its third week to get more seat time and improve his craft.
While he didn’t finish as well as he would’ve hoped, retiring because of the rough-and-tumble surface, he thinks experience with running on the nightly tour will only make him better for the days ahead. He cited past champions such as Bobby Pierce of Oakwood, Ill., and Tyler Erb of New Waverly, Texas, and the tour’s preparation for the duo running major events on the national level as two examples of how the tour has molded and shaped some of the sport’s top wheelmen.
“Everything you learned doing it, you know, Bobby, Tyler, all the good guys right now, they've all came from the Summer Nationals and they got their teeth kicked in on it and they've won races on it,” Morey said. “We felt like we have to go out here and do it, you know. We get to go to a new track every day. If you run bad one night, you just move on, it's a new day the next day. You just learn a lot and learn a lot about the car, how to drive it and just what it works for you as a driver. You're doing it every night, so it's just another chance to learn something every day.”
Morey has posted a pair of impressive runner-up finishes on the circuit, narrowly finishing behind teammate Sam Seawright at Camden (Tenn.) Speedway and then behind former series champion and national touring star Brandon Sheppard at Macon (Ill.) Speedway’s Pepsi Herald & Review 100.
“I've been to so many tracks this year that I've just watched on TV last year, just hoping I could be there, so it's pretty cool,” Morey said. “We tend to race in the South a little bit more, but as a driver, I like racing up North way better, so we try to get up here as much as we can.”
“A lot of it's just the red clay,” Morey said of the differences between the tracks in the Southeast and Midwest. “I think tracks up here, just for whatever reason, just race way better and the tracks in the South are just so dirty to where you just can't really race with how aerodynamic these cars are also. A lot of tracks up here, they'll get really slick, too, so it always races better than the tracks in the South.”
