DirtonDirt.com Dispatches
Dispatches: Mitchell bags elusive Cherokee victory
Zack Mitchell in victory lane at Cherokee. (Kevin Ritchie)
Among the latest notes and quotes from around Dirt Late Model racing the weekend of Feb. 28-March 2, including season-opening Schaeffer’s Spring Nationals action in Georgia, the MLRA Throwback doubleheader at Springfield (Mo.) Raceway and the Ginger Owens March Madness event at Cherokee Speedway in Gaffney, S.C.:
Mitchell’s March Madness
Zack Mitchell has been one of the most prolific special event winners at Cherokee Speedway in recent years, but the two biggest annual races on the Gaffney, S.C., track’s schedule have continually eluded him.
The 29-year-old standout from Enoree, S.C., began to change that on Sunday, scoring a flag-to-flag victory in the 50-lap Ginger Owens March Madness headliner. He finally broke through in his 12th career start in the feature of Cherokee’s early-season show, leaving the track’s fall classic — the long-running Blue-Gray 100 — remaining on his to-do list.
“Oh man, it feels good,” Mitchell said after his $15,000 triumph. “I’ve been coming over here (to run March Madness) for seems like forever and never could get the job done.”
Mitchell began the day, however, wondering if he might see March Madness come and go without a victory celebration once again. He recorded the afternoon’s overall fastest lap on his first circuit of time trials, but on the second he hit the wall, flattening the right-front tire and inflicting other body and suspension damage to his Coltman Farms Racing Longhorn Chassis.
The miscue put Mitchell’s crew to work, but they responded by making repairs in time for him to win his heat race. Mitchell then rewarded their toil by rolling off the A-main’s outside pole to pace the entire distance on a cold but sunny day.
“My crew, they busted their butts after I smoked the wall in qualifying,” said Mitchell, who tallied his first win of 2025 and third since joining Coltman Farms Racing last August. “Dwayne, my dad, Brock, everybody that pitched in, man, I really appreciate it. I just got behind on my steering I guess (on the second qualifying lap), but man, this thing run flawless tonight.
“I’ve put the guys through a wringer the last few weeks — down in Florida (three World of Outlaws Late Model Series DNQs Feb. 13-15 at Barberville’s Volusia Speedway Park) and Friday and Saturday night this week (Schaeffer’s Spring Nationals races in Georgia with finishes of 11th at Swainsboro Raceway and eighth at Senoia Raceway), but we rebounded tonight and ended the weekend off really good.”
Mitchell repelled a late-race threat from Joseph Joiner of Milton, Fla., who ran second from lap 15 to the checkered flag and finished 0.322 of a second behind the victor.
“I knew he was pretty close,” Mitchell said of Joiner. “I knew there probably wasn’t gonna be much of a chance he’d get around me on the outside because it was dirtying up a lot, but I was just trying to keep my tires up under me and just keep it going straight.
Joiner couldn’t summon enough speed to make a real strong run at Mitchell.
“I just felt really good and, I mean, I feel like I was pacing Zack,” Joiner said. “They're pretty good, and I was just waiting on a mistake. He didn't make one. He done a really good job, so hat’s off for that crew there.”
Mitchell’s triumph was his sixth special-event success at Cherokee since 2018, including two on the Carolina Clash tour (2018’s Stick Elliott Memorial and a victory in ’23) and one each with the Southern All Star circuit (2023’s Mike Duvall Memorial), Ultimate Southeast Series (2024) and Hunt the Front Super Dirt Series (June 2024’s $20,000 Rock Gault Memorial). His half-dozen wins have earned him a total of $66,000.
Entering Sunday’s action, though, Mitchell’s best finish in a March Madness feature was fifth, in 2018 and ’24. He ran the event’s feature for the first time in 2011 when he was 15 years old, finishing 12th.
As for Cherokee’s Blue-Gray 100, Mitchell has started the feature 13 times since his first-ever appearance in the race in 2009 when he was just 13 (he finished 22nd). He has a single top-five finish (third in 2023) in the event, which this year is a $35,000-to-win Hunt the Front-sanctioned show scheduled for Oct. 11-12.
Memorable night
The biggest win of his burgeoning career. A victory for his father’s chassis business. And, perhaps most notably, an uplifting moment for his ailing sibling.
Saturday at Springfield (Mo.) Raceway was unforgettable for Clay Stuckey of Shreveport, La., who left the track some six-and-a-half hours from his home riding high after capturing the 36-lap MLRA Throwback finale.
The 21-year-old son of Black Diamond Race Cars owner Ronnie Stuckey earned a personal-best $10,036 for his triumph, which came with his older brother and fellow racer, Jarret, still hospitalized in Dallas, Texas, receiving treatment after suffering multiple heart attacks related to an autoimmune disease he was diagnosed with in recent months.
“My brother, hopefully he gets better,” Clay said in victory lane. “We’re praying for him every day.”
Stuckey also had praise for his newest Black Diamond Chassis, a car that carried him past Gordy Gundaker of St. Charles, Mo., for the lead on lap 15 and kept him there for the remainder of the distance. He beat Gundaker to the finish line by 1.578 seconds for his second win of the 2025 season (he scored a $2,500 Early Thaw victory on Jan. 24 at Central Arizona Raceway) and the second triumph of his career at Springfield (he captured a $5,000 Comp Cams Super Dirt Series event there on March 16, 2024).
“I was just trying to feel Gordy out and just see what his weaknesses were,” said Stuckey, who started on the outside pole. “On that first restart I was on the bottom behind him. I didn’t really hit it right, then the next restart I got a lucky break. I timed it right and I figured there was enough brown in the middle (of the track) that I could get by him (on the outside).
“Luckily it worked out, and after that it was just practice laps, one-by-one, and just looking up at that board every lap, counting them down.”
Gundaker, 32, was outgunned by Stuckey on the lap-14 restart after leading from the initial green flag and briefly fell to third, but he regained second on a lap-23 restart to tally a strong result in his first weekend of Dirt Late Model action in 2025. He recorded just a single runner-up finish in his winless ’24 campaign.
“I led there for a while, and you know, we had to restart, and I mean, you don't really move off of where you've been running good,” Gundaker said. “Dad was showing me I had to leave the bottom during the yellow, and (Stuckey) just got around me on the restart. After that I felt like I could pace him but never could really get close enough.”
Stuckey proclaimed the victory his biggest ever and was very appreciative of Springfield promoter Jerry Hoffman presenting the special early-season event, which honored Lucas Oil MLRA tour founders Ken Essary and Randy Mooneyham as well as former champions and officials of the regional tour that was shut down following the 2024 season.
“MLRA was one of my favorite series and it sucks that it had to go, but it is what it is,” said Stuckey, who has 10 starts under his belt already this season as he embarks on the most ambitious schedule of his career. “Hell of a night. We’ll see what we can do the rest of the year.”
Great rebound
If a test of a driver’s mettle is how they respond to adversity, Cody Overton showed Saturday at Senoia (Ga.) Raceway that he has the necessary grit to get the job done.
One night after his outing at Swainsboro (Ga.) Raceway was effectively dive-bombed before it even started by a tossed right-rear wheel during time trials, Overton roared back with a convincing victory in Senoia’s 53-lap Schaeffer’s Spring Nationals feature. The rising 27-year-old talent from Evans, Ga., overtook Cory Hedgecock of Loudon, Tenn., for the lead on lap four and never looked back en route to a $10,053 payday.
Relief was evident on Overton’s face following his triumphant comeback from Friday’s frustrating Spring Nationals effort.
“Just proves how good my guys are,” Overton said of the crew members who wrench his Dave Steine-owned Longhorn Chassis. “I mean, s— happens. I mean, accidents happen. It’s just tough. We’re nonstop going, going, changing, changing, (and) just some things get left behind.
“But hey, they rebounded tonight. I really felt like I had a good car last night, too, just you get so stuck back there and these (rival) guys are so good, it’s just hard to keep up. I just feel like (starting in) the first three rows are very important.”
Overton settled for an 18th-place finish in Swainsboro’s feature after receiving an extra B-main transfer spot handed out because no drivers needed to use a Spring Nationals provisional. Saturday was a different story as he qualified well, won a heat race and came off the outside pole to assume command from the polesitting Hedgecock early in the distance.
Ethan Dotson of Bakersfield, Calif., passed Ashton Winger of Hampton, Ga., for second on lap 34 but finished 0.837 of a second behind Overton on a track surface that locked down in the closing circuits.
“Man, it’s important to be out front,” Overton said. “I hate that it rubbered up because I felt like I had a car that could move anywhere. I mean, Cory (Hedgecock) did what he had to do and kinda tried to get out front early and it just all worked out I guess.”
The victory was Overton’s second five-figure score of the young 2025 season, coming three weeks after his career-high $15,000 checkered flag in Feb. 8’s Southern Thunder Super Dirt Series Winter Freeze finale at Screven Motor Speedway in Sylvania, Ga. It marked just the third Super Late Model win of his career, further pumping up his confidence for his sophomore campaign as a World of Outlaws Late Model Series regular.
Overton credited his crew as well as technical help he received from Anthony Burroughs, the veteran crew chief of Overton’s older brother Brandon’s Riggs Motorsports Longhorn Factory Team effort. Brandon didn’t compete in the event to spend time with his wife, Heather, and their newborn daughter Stevie Rae, who was born on Tuesday.
“Burroughs, I’ve been on the phone with him all day,” said Overton. “Just had to fresh my mind up a little bit man, I kinda got down on myself thinking I didn’t really know, but I felt like both days my car was just as good and he got me definitely on the right track.”
Back on track
Chris Madden of Gray Court, S.C., and Brian Shirley of Chatham, Ill., needed just one race to officially put frustrating Georgia-Florida Speedweeks results behind them.
Both drivers returned to winning form Friday night in their first post-Speedweeks action — Madden with a $7,553 victory in the 40-lap Schaeffer’s Spring Nationals season opener at Swainsboro (Ga.) Raceway and Shirley with a $5,036 triumph in the 30-lap MLRA Throwback Weekend preliminary feature at Springfield (Mo.) Raceway.
The duo combined for 27 starts during Speedweeks — 18 for Shirley, nine for Madden — and tallied a total of two top-five and four top-10 finishes. Shirley accounted for all those placings as Madden never finished higher than 11th.
Madden’s Speedweeks statistics driving for Team 22 Inc. owner G.R. Smith of Cornelius, N.C., were especially downtrodden. Racing only at Golden Isles Speedway near Brunswick, Ga., and Volusia Speedway Park in Barberville, Fla., he absorbed more DNQs (five) than feature starts (four), including three straight early nights in the World of Outlaws Late Model Series events that closed Volusia’s Federated DIRTcar Nationals.
But a short break brought new life to the 49-year-old Madden, who came off Swainsboro’s outside pole to outgun his front-row mate — and teenage teammate — Drake Troutman of Hyndman, Pa., for the lead at the initial green flag and never looked back. He just had to negotiate some slower cars in the closing circuits to beat Wil Herrington of Hawkinsville, Ga., by 1.786 seconds and turn around his Speedweeks misery.
“We got into lapped traffic late there and just kinda was trying to tiptoe around those guys and I didn’t know who was behind me, where they were running or whatnot,” said Madden, whose last victory, in last November’s WoO World Finals finale at The Dirt Track at Charlotte in Concord, N.C., was his first checkered flag paired with Smith. “It’s kinda hard to see here. We tried to not mess up there and get through lapped traffic the best we could and not leave the fastest lane open.
“The bottom got pretty slick right there and we couldn’t leave the corner real good off of (turn) two anymore, and I could see the line coming in at the top. I knew there were some top-rippers here and I knew it was gonna be a point there that I was gonna have to get up there and do it, so we did.”
Shirley, meanwhile, headed west to Springfield to recapture his rhythm following a Speedweeks that was filled with simply horrid luck. He started Speedweeks with a fifth-place finish in Jan. 17’s Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series opener at Golden Isles but didn’t register another top-five until running fifth in a Triple 20 semifeature on Feb. 12 at Volusia. In between he failed to qualify for five features and experienced all sorts of misfortunes, the most notable being a fire that engulfed his Bob Cullen-owned car during heat action for Jan. 28’s Hunt the Front Super Dirt Series event at Needmore Speedway in Norman Park, Ga.
Back behind the wheel of the same Longhorn Chassis that was refurbished after the Needmore blaze — and now carries the nickname “Ol’ Smokey” — the 43-year-old Shirley led from flag-to-flag to claim Springfield’s weekend opener. He beat Dillon McCowan of Urbana, Mo., to the finish line by 1.751 seconds for an incredibly uplifting triumph.
“Just happy for my team, my guys,” Shirley said. “You know they’ve been working their butt off. Obviously everybody knows how tough Speedweeks was for us. These guys have been through the wringer with me over the last month with ups and downs.”
