Wayne County Speedway
Notes: Top competition burnishes Montgomery
By Kyle McFadden
DirtonDirt staff reporter
Ryan Montgomery at Wayne County. (highsideraceshots.com)
ORRVILLE, Ohio (July 12) — Ryan Montgomery couldn't have come much closer to his first victory of the 2026 season.
The 29-year-old from Fairmont, W.Va., saw two prime opportunities disappear over the weekend — a spinning lapped car collected him while he was leading Friday at Hilltop Speedway in Millersburg, Ohio, and a flat right-rear tire that thwarted another potential victory while he led Sunday’s DIRTcar Summer Nationals feature on lap 10 at Wayne County Speedway. | RaceWire
Rather than dwell on the heartbreak, Montgomery believes his Josh Wamsley-owned team is inching closer to its breakthrough.
“I led my first laps in a Hell Tour race, so you gotta look at the positives, right?” said Montgomery, who led only lap 10 of Sunday's 30-lap feature before his tire gave out, but rallied to finish fourth. “That (lap-eight) restart kind of worked out where I slid Eric (Wilson), and then Tyler (Carpenter) slid Eric and kind of slowed his momentum, so I could get back up to him.
“I went down the front straightaway and I just hit the hole wrong … the spring steel on the door got into the right-rear tire and cooked her. Our monkey's gonna get off our back at some point, you know?”
Montgomery has challenged himself more than ever this season, racing 21 of his 30 events against national touring competition. That experience has begun to pay dividends, too, as he's posted ninth-place finishes in two of his last three World of Outlaws Late Model Series starts — Saturday at Sharon Speedway in Hartford, Ohio, and June 13 at West Virginia Motor Speedway in Mineral Wells, W.Va.
“I feel like the national touring guys kind of know my name now, I guess,” Montgomery said. “When I walk up to them, I don’t look like some crazed man in a driving suit. So I can ask them questions and they kind of know who I am.”
Montgomery has also leaned on veteran engineers Keith Berner, Vinny Guliani and Longhorn Chassis staffers Kevin Rumley and Matt Langston to accelerate his progression.
“We’ve had a lot of help, obviously from our Longhorn Dynamics guys and Berner and VG (Guliani), and all those guys have really been helping me and they've been really great,” Montgomery said. “So, just kind of taking notes from everybody and getting better.
“Not everything's going to fit my driving style, right? Everybody's driving style is a little bit different. Just trying to learn as much as I can. Those guys have all been super, super, super helpful with everything that they do.”
The next step in Montgomery's national-caliber campaign comes July 22 at FloRacing Night in America at Fairbury (Ill.) Speedway, followed by the July 24-25 Prairie Dirt Classic. The famed quarter-mile — which Montgomery calls "the greatest place ever" — will be his first visit and first race on the Midwest's renowned black dirt.
“I don't know if you count The Dome as Midwest dirt because that's a lot different than anything that I watch,” he said. “Kind of hoping to run good, but, you know, there's a lot of unknowns.”
Hell Tour outlook
DIRTcar Summer Nationals director Sam Driggers is relieved to have the 2026 Hell Tour in the books.
In his 24 years overseeing the series, the 67-year-old navigated one of its most challenging seasons yet as weather wreaked havoc on the schedule, forcing 13 of the tour's 32 race nights to be canceled or postponed.
“I'm glad they're in the books. … I've never been rained out as many nights back to back to back to back,” Driggers said. “Things were weird. That's the only way I could say it. Our races were really, really good. And we were down on some cars, but there's been people poaching my drivers, and between, you know, guys getting fed up, just going home, and running out of money and all that — it was just a variation of things, too.”
Even with eight rainouts, Driggers considers the installment a success. The Hell Tour averaged 30.5 cars over 23 completed events, featured 13 winners, crowned first-time series winners Tyler Carpenter, Cade Dillard and Sam Seawright, and ended lengthy victory droughts for Frank Heckenast Jr. (six years) and Rusty Schlenk (16 years).
“Was it a plus or a minus? I’d say it was a plus,” Driggers said. “Promoters made money, that’s the main thing, I know that.”
While only three drivers — series champion Tanner English, Mitch McGrath and Mark Voigt — competed in every event, Driggers believes the weekly points format remains vital to the Hell Tour.
Now in its fourth season, the five-week championship structure rewarded drivers for committing to portions of the grueling schedule, with English claiming three weekly titles (Weeks 1, 4 and 5) and Jason Feger (Week 2) and Billy Moyer (Week 3) earning the other $10,000 bonuses.
“If it wasn’t for that, I’d be dead in the water,” Driggers said of the weekly points structure. “That’s what’s saving me right now — absolutely. We average 12-15 guys that try to do the whole week. Some can’t because the track conditions are so horrible. This year was terrible with that. Everything that could go wrong, did.”
Driggers expects next year's Summer Nationals schedule to again feature roughly 30 races and another relentless stretch of night-after-night action.
“When you rain out races, you gotta have something, you gotta race more,” Driggers said. “The 30s is good. Hopefully we won’t have as many rainouts back to back.”
While the championship format has evolved in recent years, Driggers has no plans to alter the Hell Tour's defining characteristic — its relentless, night-after-night schedule — because, as he put it, "when you let them (the teams) go home, they get lazy.”
Driggers laughed before doubling down: “They do,” he said.
So don't expect many, if any, breaks on the 2027 schedule.
“Nah, no breaks,” Driggers said. “Hell, I’m 67. If I could do it, they can do it.”
Wilson’s near-miss
Eric Wilson said he lost significant power in his engine with five laps remaining while running second to Tyler Carpenter in Sunday's DIRTcar Summer Nationals finale at Wayne County Speedway.
The 29-year-old regional racer from Vienna, Ohio — driving Kinsman, Ohio, schoolteacher Howard Fraley's No. 217 Warrior Chassis in an open-trailer effort — led the opening eight laps before ceding the lead to Ryan Montgomery and, then, Carpenter before Montgomery’s eventual flat tire on lap 10.
Despite the late mechanical issue, Wilson was "over the moon" with a runner-up finish in a Summer Nationals feature, especially considering Fraley's team only races sparingly — a deal for Wilson that augments his family-owned team that races infrequently.
"We only run six to 10 times a year," said Wilson, who only has one Super Late Model victory to his name July 2023 at Hummingbird Speedway in Reynoldsville, Pa.
Asked if he would've done anything differently, Wilson replied, "I don't know if there's much I would change, truthfully. Tyler was just really, really good.”
Odds and ends
J.R. Gentry of Wooster, Ohio, completed a remarkable comeback Sunday at his home track, rebounding from a rollover in time trials to finish third in the DIRTcar Summer Nationals finale — all in the same race car he flipped earlier in the night. The veteran's race car is a 2022 XR1 Rocket Chassis with plenty of history, the same car that carried Hudson O'Neal to victory in the 2023 World 100 and Brandon Sheppard to the 2024 Gateway Dirt Nationals victory. … Coltman Farms Racing teammates Sam Seawright and Luke Morey were among the drivers who loaded up before heat race action Sunday at Wayne County Speedway, seemingly opting not to risk their equipment on a rough racing surface after heavy rainfall in the days leading up to the event. … DIRTcar Summer Nationals champion Tanner English also took a conservative approach, deciding before the night began to start-and-park in both his heat race and the 30-lap feature after already clinching the title. The Benton, Ky., driver, who campaigns his family-owned operation, said preserving equipment for the upcoming Prairie Dirt Classic at Fairbury Speedway on July 24-25 outweighed chasing a potential fifth victory on the Hell Tour this season: "This has taken a toll on me and our equipment," English said. "I'd like to get ready for the PDC, like 100 percent.”
