Kevin Kovac's Take Five
Take Five: Speedweeks recap (and fresh eyes)
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: With this year’s reimagined, post-Daytona 500 Georgia-Florida Speedweeks schedule for the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series, something I was interested in seeing play out was how many entries the Saturday finale of Ocala (Fla.) Speedway’s Wieland Winternationals would draw. Last year the $25,000-to-win closer boasted the largest field of the week at a robust 47 cars (up from 38 for Tuesday’s opener), boosted by several drivers dropping in at the end of the week to race before the start of the following week’s Federated Auto Parts DIRTcar Nationals at Volusia Speedway Park in Barberville, Fla., including 2025 World of Outlaws Late Model Series regulars Bobby Pierce, Ryan Gustin and Tanner English. Would Ocala no longer leading into Volusia’s DIRTcar-WoO meet affect the car count? Well, you could argue that, as Saturday’s program pulled 34 cars, which in fact was the smallest field of the week at Ocala. Of course, the heavy rain that hit Ocala on Friday, producing the week’s lone cancellation, prompted several teams to skip Saturday’s action out of fear that the surface would be rough from the precipitation, but the turnout would have still likely fallen short of last year’s finale with Volusia’s events not up next this time to bring in a few more entries.
No. 2: The DirtonDirt-FloRacing gang — Michael Rigsby, Dustin Jarrett and Ben Shelton — picked a unique spot to record the RaceDay video for Saturday’s finale at Ocala. Since they were staying in a house in Gainesville, Fla., on Saturday morning they headed over to the nearby University of Florida campus, where ESPN’s College Basketball Game Day crew was on hand previewing the evening’s Florida-Arkansas game. They went inside Florida’s arena to gather some B-roll footage and then shot the RaceDay outside standing in front of the ESPN College Game Day bus. Rigsby’s dog, Dottie, even was along and seen frolicking on the Florida campus grass with Rigsby’s wife Amber.
No. 3: You know what can be entertaining? Watching a broadcast of a Dirt Late Model race with someone who’s never seen dirt-track racing and has no idea what’s going on. On Saturday night my wife and I were out with some friends and I put Ocala’s coverage on my phone during time trials. Our friend Jen glimpsed it and was perplexed by the action. “Look at all that mud!” she said, not realizing that the clay was hard-packed. Then she analyzed that the cars “are so low to the ground” and thus wondered “what happens if they hit a dirt pile?” (Actually, that was kind of a legitimate question.) Then came her best comment following the accident on the opening lap of the first heat in which Daulton Wilson went spinning off turn two and was smoked at full-speed by Justin Weaver, whose car nearly flipped. She was shocked by the contact, and then exclaimed, “Oh my God, the police are there!” We told her those vehicles swarming the crash scene with flashing lights were actually safety vehicles and an official on a four-wheeler, but her reaction was certainly worth a good laugh.
No. 4: I’ll be back at the track this week from March 4-7 to cover the final four-day stretch of Lucas Oil’s Wieland Winternationals at Golden Isles Speedway near Brunswick, Ga. The weather forecast is looking excellent — highs in the 70s every day, which is definitely the type of warmth Lucas Oil officials were hoping for when the track’s Speedweeks stretch was shifted from January to March. And I’m realizing this will be the first time I see racing at Golden Isles in person with fans actually on hand; my lone visit to the track came in May 2020 when I covered Lucas Oil’s comeback from the Covid shutdown with no spectators allowed in the stands. This week’s racing will offer me a bit different feel.
No. 5: How about that news that Eldora Speedway released on Saturday of a significant purse increase for the 2026 World 100? Dirt Late Model racing’s most prestigious event will have its winner’s payoff boosted to six figures for the first time at $100,000, up from the $72,000 it paid to last year’s victor Ricky Thornton Jr. It’s almost double the first-place prize of $57,000 in 2024, which marked the last year that the race followed its tradition of upping the winner’s money by $1,000 a year. Last year the payoff jumped to $72,000 in honor of Eldora’s 72nd year of racing, so dispensing with the $1,000-a-year deal made sense for ’26. There’s no doubt the World 100 has been the most coveted race in the sport, but it’s also clear that, with so many Dirt Late Model events now paying $75,000 or more, it was time for the World’s winner’s check to vault into the upper echelon. Now it’s there, and, in fact, its total weekend purse of $680,200 will exceed the payout for June’s Dream for the first time.
