Clarksville Speedway
Arthur's success raising his level of recognition
By Todd Turner
DirtonDirt.com managing editor
Walker Arthur
CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. — When the heralded driver you’ve just outrun isn’t sure of your name, you’re either racing far from home or haven’t found enough success to be instantly recognized.
It was a little of both for Walker Arthur, the 28-year-old driver from Forest, Va., who topped UMP DIRTcar weekly and Summernationals champion Brian Shirley last week at Clarksville Speedway’s opener for the Tuckassee Toilet Bowl Classic.
Arthur earned $3,000 in becoming the first Virginia driver to win on the Missouri-based MARS DIRTcar Series, climbing another rung in the world of Dirt Late Model racing. It was nice to raise his recognition level a notch, Arthur said, and it’s likely Shirley will remember his name.
“It’s good to have that finally. Because we’ve been at this quite a while ... we always showed up at shows, and a lot of people knew who I was — a lot of drivers knew who I was — but the fans didn’t know who we were,” Arthur said. “It finally feels great to get up there and be able to run up front with some of the better guys like (MARS champion Jesse) Stovall and Brian (Shirley), and so many guys. It finally feels great to be able to race with those guys and run up front for once.”
Not that Clarksville was Arthur’s first success. The former Limited Late Model champion at Virginia Motor Speedway also won the 2010 and ’11 championships with the Steel Block Bandits, and when he branched out in 2012 to run Super Late Model races throughout the country, Arthur took his lumps before finding late-season success.
His first-ever $10,000 victory at Natural Bridge (Va.) Speedway’s Sunoco Fall Classic came last October, followed the next month by a $10,000 victory on the Ultimate Super Late Model Series at County Line Raceway in Elm City, N.C.
And now the victory at Clarksville, coming a week after his fourth-place finish in the Bama Bash at Green Valley Speedway in Glencoe, Ala.
“It’s good to come out to a different state where we haven’t run a good bit, and get to show off in a front of a crowd,” said Arthur, who received help in the pits from fellow Virginia driver J.R. Overstreet. “And hopefully we can continue to do that the rest of the year.”
Arthur, a certified diesel tech who on his father’s beef and bucking bulls farm during the week, says his Super Late Model success in part comes from the MasterSbilt Race Car out of Huey Wilcoxon’s New Freedom, Pa., shop that he debuted a year earlier in Clarksville.
“Immediately, we loved the way that it felt, loved the way that it drove. And we took off with it right away, a considerable amount better than we’d run previously,” Arthur said. “And like I said, we’ve just been growing all along, getting more comfortable with the car, getting more comfortable with the adjustments ... I hope we can keep putting together (good finishes) here in the future.
“Just getting behind the wheel and having a car that drives as well these do, just steers into the corner and has the forward traction up off the corner. It used to be before — we were laughing about it today — we were always looking for a racetrack that had grip to it so we’d be good. Now we don’t have that anymore. We can go to a slippery racetrack, a fast racetrack and we’re usually not way off anymore, and can usually run with the crowd.”
