Fairbury Speedway
Semi win slips away, but Duty cracks PDC field
By Kevin Kovac
DirtonDirt senior writer
Justin Duty (15) battles Bobby Pierce (32) in Friday's prelims. (joshjamesartwork.com)
FAIRBURY, Ill. (July 24) — For a driver who just lost the lead with two laps to go, Justin Duty was in an especially jovial mood.
A seemingly heartbreaking loss in Friday’s third 25-lap Prairie Dirt Classic semifeature at Fairbury Speedway couldn’t dim Duty’s spirt. His whole night — third-fastest qualifying lap in his group, contending for a $5,000 victory on a big stage — was exhilarating for the 29-year-old from Molalla, Ore. | RaceWire
“That’s what it’s all about. It’s awesome,” Duty said while standing near his car in the infield during tech inspection after his runner-up finish. “It’s what a guy really comes here to do, right? Yeah, it was it was cool, man. Opportunities like this don’t come every day, so to be able to just do a good job all night tonight is really what I was shooting for.”
Duty’s father, John, a veteran Pacific Northwest Dirt Late Model racer who now focuses on fielding and wrenching on his son’s machine, was riding even higher than Justin. The elder Duty couldn’t hide his excitement over watching his kid run up front and lock into the World of Outlaws Late Model Series-sanctioned PDC finale for the first time in seven tries.
“That was so awesome!” John Duty exclaimed as he walked through the infield to meet his son. “Sooooo awesome!”
Justin understood the impact his performance had on his father, who operates the family’s Don Frank Floors business while allowing Justin to spend much of the racing season far from home competing in the Midwest.
“I mean, my dad’s been busting his ass for me for years, right?” Duty said. “So I really want to make sure people understand that. I mean, he is everything to me. We argue like brothers when I suck because we just want to be good so bad, but I owe all this to him.
“I’ve been wanting to make this race for years. There’s a million people here. This is by far my family’s favorite racetrack in the country. I mean, my dad says he wants to buy property here. He loves it here so much, man.”
Taking the green flag outside the country’s No. 1-ranked Dirt Late Model driver, Bobby Pierce of Oakwood, Ill., on the front row of the third of four semifeatures, Duty “got a good start right there against Bobby and got to the lead and ran a good, clean 20 laps.” The race distance, however, was 25 laps, and Duty wasn’t quite able to make it there still at the head of the pack.
But Duty gave it his best shot. He had Pierce chasing him throughout those 20 caution-free circuits and never wavered, using aggressiveness through lapped traffic to maintain command.
“I feel bad for them guys, and if I screwed them, I’m sorry, but you gotta go, man,” Duty said of his moves through slower cars with the 29-year-old Pierce hot in his tire tracks. “I've been coming here since 2017 trying to make this race, and we’ve been one or two short a few times, and I had an opportunity to get in (the 100-lap feature) so we just had to go for it.
“I’m sure them guys might be mad or whatever,” he added, “but to be honest, I really don’t care right now.”
Duty appeared headed to a monumental breakthrough checkered flag until “that damn caution came out,” he quipped with a wry smile. When the race’s first yellow flag flew on lap 20, it gave his competition new life, no one more than three-time PDC champion Brandon Sheppard of New Berlin, Ill., who restarted fifth but exploded forward in the quarter-mile oval’s groove when the green flag returned .
Sheppard slid by Pierce for second on lap 22 and then did the same to Duty, surging ahead as lap 23 was scored and a caution flag was displayed just a tick later. It was essentially the end of Duty’s bid for victory because Sheppard pulled away on the final restart, but Duty still outdueled his good friend Tyler Erb of New Waverly, Texas, over the two-lap sprint to preserve a runner-up finish.
“One mistake in (turns) three and four,” Duty said, pinpointing the critical moment that cost him. “I mean, Sheppard was really good on the bottom, don’t get me wrong. He might have been there at the end anyway, but I just killed my momentum one time (heading to complete lap 23) and left too high leaving four, and he got a run down the straightaway.
“I got tight across the center and it made me shove, and I had to reset the car and it hung over the banking off of four and I just couldn’t go down the hill and go forward. He passed me on the bottom and then the caution came out and it just kind of killed my opportunity there.”
Duty didn’t hang his head. He tipped his helmet to Sheppard’s low-side strength and remarked that “racing with my buddy Tyler was fun.” He was as enthusiastic as a driver could be without celebrating in victory lane.
“We’re in the show,” said Duty, whose closest brushes with a PDC feature berth came in 2018 and ’25 when he missed transferring by a single spot in a B-main. “We’re in the redraw (for positions 5-8), no less. which is badass, man.”
Duty offered credit for his speed to VG Performance’s Vinny Guliani, who has been providing him shock and suspension assistance on his Longhorn Chassis.
“I gotta thank Vinny,” said Duty, who has made a modest 19 starts this season, including three shows in his native Oregon and a respectable 10th-place finish in May 9’s Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series feature at Fairbury. “He’s here with me this weekend, just hanging out and helping me.
“I don’t put myself in this position very often, unfortunately. We’re fast at times. We just don’t capitalize all the time, so it’s been good to have somebody here to just kind of keep me calm today.
“But yeah, cool opportunity,” he continued. “We did a good job. We’re in a good spot. We had a good car. Everything went the way it was supposed to go other than five laps after a restart, but that’s OK. We’ll see what we can do.”
