Kevin Kovac's Take Five
Take Five: Will Silver Dollar Nat'ls settle in?
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: There was no announcement during the Al Belts Custom Homes Silver Dollar Nationals weekend at Shelby County Speedway that the crown jewel event will return to the third-mile oval in Corning, Iowa, for a second straight year in 2027. But Joe Kosiski, who founded the SDN with his family in 2011 at I-80 Speedway in Greenwood, Neb., outside Omaha, and ran it there until the track’s closing after the 2022 edition, seemed to indicate it’s likely the race’s first time being contested at Shelby County after a three-year run at Huset’s Speedway in Brandon, S.D., turned out strong enough to warrant a second engagement. “I got to check out how they thought it went,” Kosiski said after Saturday’s finale of Shelby County operators Gary Hopp and Doug Batz. “I think the whole weekend’s gonna be all right (financially), but I don’t know numbers today. I’ll find them out midweek. The vibe, it was 100 percent there, but you just gotta make sure everything’s good with (the track promoters). We’re going to get together and talk about it. I believe it’ll work out. Overall, I was fine with it.”
No. 2: The Silver Dollar Nationals shift to Shelby County brought the event back directly under the promotion of the Kosiski family’s I-80 Promotions — Huset’s owner Tod Quiring had run the race the last three years with Kosiski’s blessing — and put it just an hour from Omaha after being nearly four hours away at Huset’s. The race also drew 54 entries, above the average of 51.58 cars for the 12 events held at I-80 and a significant uptick from the fields at Huset’s (33, 26 and 44 cars from 2023-25). “Huset’s is a great facility. I know they’ve got the money to pay whatever they need to pay,” Kosiski said of the track known best for sprint car racing. “It’s just, I don't believe it was working real good for them, and I said, ‘If you ever decide to get rid of it, I’d like to get it back. I can move it.’ Bringing it here makes it easier on my (staff) help (hailing from the Omaha area). And the thing that I’m seeing right now is a lot of fans saying, ‘Thank you for bringing it back where we can go to it.’ ”
No. 3: Why did Kosiski offer a unique Silver Dollar Nationals purse structure paid more to runner-up Jonathan Davenport ($53,000) than to winner Ricky Thornton Jr. ($52,000)? He said the numbers him and his brother Steve used during their racing days — 53 for Joe, 52 for Steve — played a role, but it was really a marketing strategy to earn the event some extra attention. “How many people have said, when they saw second was paying more than first, ‘That’s got to be a misprint. Somebody’s made a mistake there. Who’s goofy in this whole thing?’ Well, Joe Kosiski don't mind being goofy. I think it’s just a neat advertisement to keep everybody talking about I-80 promotions and the Silver Dollar Nationals. I mean, that’s it. And as long as they’re talking about the race, I’m happy.” Kosiski also loved “the idea that two guys get to go with 50-grand instead of one at, say, 75 (thousand) and one at 25 (thousand).”
No. 4: Tuesday’s Schaeffer’s Southern Nationals event at Senoia (Ga.) Raceway will include a driver who’s climbing back into the Dirt Late Model fray: Max McLaughlin, the 26-year-old Mooresville, N.C., who has made only a handful of starts since chasing the 2024 World of Outlaws Late Model Series with G.R. Smith’s Team 22 Inc. He made a social media post of a blue-and-white No. 8 fielded by Ohsweken (Ontario) promoter and race team owner Glenn Styres, who had McLaughlin make a couple starts in his Dirt Late Model earlier this year during the DIRTcar Nationals at Volusia Speedway Park in Barberville, Fla. McLaughlin mused on Facebook that “there are a lot of big paying Dirt Late Model shows coming up,” indicating that he plans to be active with Styres’s equipment.
No. 5: Tuesday morning brought a Facebook post from Bobby Pierce offering more good news on his father and crew chief Bob, who remains hospitalized in Omaha, Neb., after suffering a stroke Wednesday morning. The 74-year-old Bob Pierce underwent a procedure Monday to have a stent placed in his carotid artery and Bobby said he “took it like a champ with no sedation or anesthesia.” Doctors considered it a success and Bobby said they’re “hoping to find out tomorrow when he can come home.”
