Eldora Speedway
Surprise throwback wrap for No. 58 touches Roberts
By Kevin Kovac
DirtonDirt senior writer
Ken Roberts and the team's throwback wrap. (DirtonDirt)
ROSSBURG, Ohio (Sept. 5) — Ken Roberts thought he was done with surprises for the World 100 weekend when he arrived at Eldora Speedway on Wednesday afternoon and had an unexpected, but familiar, face greet him.
Right there, standing by Roberts’s race team hauler in the parking lot as his driver Garrett Alberson and crew waited to enter the pit area, was his wife Beth. | Complete World 100 coverage
“I drove up here with Bill Norden, one of our sponsors (Bill’s Sport Shop), and we were in the car seven hours,” said Roberts, who lives in East Moline, Ill. “On the way, I said to him, ‘This is gonna sound strange, but I really don’t know where my wife is. She hasn’t texted back. I’ve never heard from her.’
“And he kept his mouth quiet. He knew she was flying here.”
Norden, as well as Beth Roberts and the whole Roberts Motorsports team, were in on a secret that Ken wasn’t privy to. Beth traveled to Eldora from Florida, where she had spent the week with friends attending a conference at Disney World, without telling her husband because she wanted to see his reaction when the big surprise was finally revealed to him.
Beth’s presence sort of threw Ken off the scent of what was to come.
“We pull up and there’s my wife. It’s like, ‘Holy cow!’ ” Roberts said. “She goes to mostly nearby races, or our grandkids are down in Tennessee and she’ll go to, like, Smoky Mountain (Speedway), that kind of thing. So that was a shock, a pleasant surprise.”
Beth joined her husband and Norden in spending the night at a home just a few miles from the track where Roberts and Norden had arranged to stay with some friends. Come the morning, the time for the big reveal approached with Roberts completely oblivious.
“One of the guys said, ‘Man, we’ve never seen the tech (inspection). We really should get to the track and see the tech,’ ” Roberts said. “And I thought, This guy's strange. This is at like 8:45 (a.m.). Tech doesn’t even start till 11. So I said, ‘Well, Let’s just go do breakfast and then we’ll go down and watch tech.’
“So we then ate breakfast and came to the track and we started walking through the (turn three) tunnel, which was about 11:20.”
What Roberts saw across the pit area as he emerged from Eldora’s famed Love Tunnel under the third turn drew his attention. Then, upon further inspection, it grabbed his emotions.
“I walked up, and all my guys and Garrett’s standing in front (of the pit stall). They’re all in a red shirts. I thought, Well, that’s strange,” Roberts said. “And I look over and saw the car, and I couldn’t even speak. I just had goosebumps.”
Roberts, 63, was transported back in time when he spotted Alberson’s Dirt Late Model, which sported a new, bright-red wrap that made the car look just like the machine Roberts’s legendary late father, Hershel, and hired gun Ray Guss Jr. drove for a stretch beginning in 2008. The special wrap blindsided Roberts, who had no inkling that Alberson and his crew had been planning this sentimental throwback for months.
“The memories, the flashback — it was so emotional,” Roberts said while standing in his trailer during Thursday’s preliminary racing program. “I couldn't even speak. I mean, just all the emotions and memories, just so much there. My dad’s name is even in the number.”
Hershel Roberts was a longtime standout in the Midwest, winning more than 300 features over a 40-year driving career before succumbing to cancer in 2011 at the age of 68. The elder Roberts’s last racing years were spent behind the wheel of the red No. 58 that Alberson and Co. reproduced for their boss, who has continued the family tradition of fielding a Dirt Late Model since his father’s passing.
“My dad drove that in 2008, 2009, and then Ray Guss Jr. drove it in 2010 and he drove it to an IMCA national title and a Deery (Brothers Series) title and I think he won the (IMCA) Super Nationals that year, too,” Roberts said. “So it was just a really, really special car. That car won a lot of races. The last race my dad ever won (in late 2009) was in that car. Guss started driving part-time in middle of 2009 while my dad was going through chemo (treatments), but when my dad felt good he would drive it so they kind of shared it, and then Gus was full time in 2010.”
“I’m just shocked because they’ve all been working on this since May,” he continued. “And my wife, here she coordinated with them. There were so many people involved. It’s shocking to me how many people were involved. It’s just super cool. I had zero knowledge.”
Alberson, 36, of Las Cruces, N.M., said the team actually began working on the idea “probably around Speedweeks” in February. They took great pains keep their plans off Roberts’s radar, even going so far as to have necessary pieces that might trigger Roberts’s suspicions — like the red nose — delivered to crew chief Zach Huston’s home in East Moline.
The final preparation of the car was done by Alberson and the crew on the road after last weekend’s Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series-sanctioned Hillbilly Hundred at Lernerville Speedway in Sarver, Pa. Lucas Oil Series director Rick Schwallie allowed the team to use the shop where he keeps the tour’s equipment to ready the machine.
Roberts wanted Alberson to compete in Sunday’s Baltes Classic at Eldora, but that idea shot down by his crew — because, of course, they had some extra work to do before the World 100.
“I was putting pressure on the guys. I really wanted to race here Sunday,” Roberts said. “We won (the Baltes Classic) race last year. I’ve been on the guys that it’s one race that meant a lot to me when we won it, thinking of how my dad and I sat up in that (first) corner for years (watching Eldora events).
“I was kind of let down with our team during our team meetings when we voted on whether we should go. I was the only one who voted for it. I thought that was weird, but now thinking back about it, it was like, ‘Hey, guys, I really want to go.’ Well, they couldn’t, because they had to put this entire thing together. They had to wrap the hood, the spoiler, all that, and they’ve already been working their tails off. For them to go through all that, it’s really special.”
“How they did it,” he added, “I’m still floored.”
Alberson said he was a bit surprised that Roberts didn’t react more demonstrably upon seeing the car for the first time, but he understood there was plenty going through Roberts’s mind.
“I maybe was hoping he’d jump up and down, but I think he was maybe a little bit more emotional and was just trying to hide it a little bit,” Alberson said. “It was really cool. The main thing was that we knew it was going to mean a lot to a lot of people.”
Alberson was correct with that assessment. Roberts wasn’t the only one who had a connection to that old red car.
“Immediately when they posted it (on social media), now my phone is just being flooded with texts and calls, drivers that raced with my dad in 2009,” Roberts said. “One guy said tears just started flowing down his face.
“The memories of people racing with my dad and Ray Guss Jr. … I had one guy, he told me, ‘I want that car. I’m buying that car with that wrap on it.’
“And the coolest thing was, the guy that bought the (original red) car when we were all done with it is here at this race,” he continued. “Larry Harris, an Iowa racer, his dad and my dad just hit it off, and to see him here, with all the memories, he was like, ‘There’s that car.’ ”
