Inside Dirt Late Model Racing
Column: Journeyman's new race car pays off
Jerry Bowersock found himself in an unusual situation Saturday at Atomic Speedway in Alma, Ohio — and not only because his victory in the 30-lap Valvoline American Late Model Iron-Man Series feature marked his first Super Late Model touring win in nearly 17 years.
That Rocket XR2 Chassis he drove to the $5,000 checkered flag? It was the first brand-new Dirt Late Model that the 60-year-old veteran from Wapakoneta, Ohio, has had since … well, back in ’09, the year he captured his last regional touring event in a June show for the Sunoco American Late Model Series at Moler Raceway Park in Williamsburg, Ohio.
“It’s been a while since I had a new car,” the friendly Bowersock said with a chuckle earlier this week by phone from his race shop.
Bowersock has campaigned only Rocket machines since ’09, but his modest racing budget — he fields his own Dirt Late Model program — has kept him running used cars and being frugal with the components he puts on them. For the last six years he drove a 2018-vintage Rocket that he purchased from Tyler Erb, the national touring driver from New Waverly, Texas, whom Bowersock has come to know well because he lives about a half-mile from Bowersock while racing for St. Marys, Ohio-based Best Performance Motorsports.
“We had gotten our money’s worth out of it,” Bowersock said of the car Erb ran for one season. “We sold it to a gentleman in South Carolina.”
The sale came during the offseason after Bowersock unexpectedly went forward with plans to debut a new car in 2026. As he remarked, his equipment upgrade upon hitting the big 6-0 — he celebrated his milestone birthday on Feb. 3 — just sort of … happened.
“I had two guys that I met, older guys in their mid 60s or so, and they’ve both stepped up,” Bowersock said, singling out Larry Dondrea and Nick Vanmeter. “Larry and his wife kind of got the ball rolling.”
Bowersock actually became acquainted with Dondrea “through Twitter of all things,” he said. “He would like stuff I would post about racing and he would (direct) message me on there. And then finally, a couple years ago, he actually stopped by the trailer at the track, and then he just got to where he was hanging out and helping him wipe the car off and whatnot.”
One day late last season Dondrea was with Bowersock when “overheard me and one of my crew guys talking about trying to get a different car during the winter,” Bowersock said. “And when we were talking a different car, we were just talking a used car, like not a new one.
“So then a little bit later he came up to me when I was by myself and he’s like, ‘Well, why don’t you get a new car?’ And I’m like, ‘Oh, shoot, I can’t afford a new one. That's not even a possibility.’ And he was kind of like, ‘Well, I think I can help.’ So we were like, ‘OK.’ ”
The process began with Dondrea talking at a race with members of Mark Richards-owned Rocket Chassis house car team. Conversations with Bowersock ensued, and in early December Bowersock placed an order with Richards for a new XR2 model.
“At first we were thinking we were just getting like a frame and cockpit and deck and then we’d utilize some of our old parts,” Bowersock said. “But then we just kept picking up more help as it was going along. Nick (Vanmeter) helped. I ended up with Mike Hawk from Hawk Farms helping me out with some sponsorship money. And Matt (Barton) from Village Contractors, he helped me with some money. And then all my other sponsors, they kind of raised up the amount they normally gave me, and then I was able to sell the old car.
“Things just kind of kept falling into place, and the next thing you know, we're like, ‘Shoot, we’re going to be able to get a get a new car here.’ I mean, we reused our fuel cell and just a very few other little trinkets, but for the most part, I’d say like 95 percent of the car is brand new.”
Bowersock’s engine wasn’t new, but the Clements powerplant, which he bought two years ago from World of Outlaws Late Model Series regular Nick Hoffman’s team owner Tye Twarog, was freshened during the offseason. His sponsor, Clint Jamison of North Star Drilling, “paid a big chunk of the bill,” Bowersock said of the engine rebuild, “and then me and my wife took care of the rest of it.”
Amid the excitement of the new car, Bowersock experienced a setback to his building enthusiasm when, earlier this as he was just a week or two from heading to Shinnston, W.Va., to pick up the vehicle, someone broke into his race car trailer parked in the driveway of his shop and stole a set of shocks. One of his crew members, Jerry Russell, who joined Bowersock, Dondrea and another crewman on the trip to Rocket, mentioned the theft, and thus the need for a new set, while Richards was showing them around the shop. Richards proceeded to step up and assist a longtime customer.
“Mark said he’d look to see if he had something to use that he could hook us up with and he didn’t have anything,” Bowersock said. “Then on the way home Austin Hargrove (a Rocket1 crewman) called me and he said, ‘Hey, Mark’s working on something here with Fox to get you a new set of shocks.’ And Mark, he got them built and put springs on them and sent them to me and told me they were ready to go.”
Bowersock wanted to bring his car out for the first time in April 18’s Iron-Man event at his home track, Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio, and Richards “had me pretty well set to go” with a setup, but the race was called off by cold and wet weather. That moved his debut to Saturday at Atomic.
“I texted (Richards) Saturday morning,” Bowersock said. “I said, ‘Well, I’m going to Atomic — that stuff you sent me (for a setup), will that be good there?’ And he was like, ‘Yeah, it’ll be fine,’ and he told me what little changes to make if the track got slick. So I just did what he told me before the feature, and man, it was perfect. I couldn’t ask for it to be any better.”
Bowersock started fourth and ran third most of the way before overtaking Freddie Carpenter for second. He ascended to the lead on lap 22 when young pacesetter Caiden Black slowed.
“Caiden Black was leading and he was running a pretty good pace, but I could tell I was creeping in on him a little bit and he had kind of gotten up close to the wall a couple times,” said Bowersock, who ran a set of lightly-used tires from a batch of 16 he recently purchased from Twarog (“We won on four of Nick’s takeoffs,” he joked). “Right when I kind of caught up to him and was getting ready to pass him he actually got up high and three and four, got into the wall a little bit it looked like, and then he ended up stopping and went pitside.
“But with like five to go the yellow come out. I hear they had a medical emergency in the pit area and the ambulance had to cross the track, and I was like, ‘You gotta be kidding me!’ I felt like everything was going smooth and then the yellow come out, but we was able to hold R.J. Conley off and R.J.’s pretty good at Atomic.”
When it was noted to Bowersock that he was joined in the feature’s top-five finishers by the 61-year-old Conley and the 55-year-old Carpenter (fourth), he let out a hearty laugh.
“Yeah, the Old Man’s Club,” he quipped.
Bowersock good-naturedly realizes he qualifies for full-fledged veteran’s status now as a racer in his 60s who’s in his 41st season of competition, but he’s anything but over the hill. He runs a limited number of Super Late Model special events — with one car and one engine he can’t overdo it — but he also is a two-division competitor with an open-wheel modified ride fielded by Eric and Al Austin of Lima, Ohio, where Bowersock often runs at Limaland Motorsports Park. Last year, in fact, Bowersock won his fifth career modified championship at Eldora behind the wheel of the Austins’ Elite Chassis.
A Dirt Late Model entrant since 1989, Bowersock is an accomplished journeyman driver. He won the ALMS title in 1999 and has victories at numerous tracks across his portion of the Midwest, including Ohio’s Eldora, Limaland, Attica and Atomic (he captured an ALMS show there in 1998), Indiana’s Lawrenceburg, Gas City and Montpelier and Michigan’s Crystal Motor Speedway. He’s also been a stalwart face in the pit area of Eldora’s crown jewels for over a quarter-century, taking on the big boys and breaking through to make four World 100 feature starts with a top finish of 13th in 2012.
Bowersock has never raced full time — he’s a welder-fabricator at Brown Industrial in Botkins, Ohio — and hard largely been an owner-operator for his Dirt Late Model racing over the years, but he has driver for some car owners, including Lawrence Motorsports and the well-known St. Henry’s Nite Club car. He also had a couple brushes with landing deals in the 2000s that could have put him on the road for higher-level action.
“There was a team up around the Oakshade-Wauseon area,” Bowersock said. “I really can’t remember the people’s name, but they had hit the lottery for quite a sum of money and they approached me and wanted to go racing. So I kind of thought that’s what was going to happen, and then my big mistake was I let a guy know what was going on that was from Lima, not far from me, and he was a big sprint car guy. And lo and behold, he went up and approached these people and they went World of Outlaws sprint car racing with Jac Haudenschild. So I should have kept my mouth shut there, but they only made it about halfway through the season and I think that team folded anyway.
“And I was close to having the opportunity to drive the car Matt Miller drove, the one that Steve McCullough owned. He was looking for a driver and was at PRI walking around that year. I think he had his list narrowed down to Matt Miller, me and somebody else, and happened to run into Matt Miller before he ran into me and Matt got the job. It was just one of those timing situations. And, of course, you know, Matt did one helluva job for him. That would’ve been cool to get the opportunity, but you never know how that stuff's going to pan out.”
A driver never knows when their last win will come, too, especially once they’ve started getting up in age. Bowersock wasn’t sure if he’d ever land another touring series triumph until he pulled it off on Saturday.
“It’d been a couple years since the last one, so yeah, just a big relief,” Bowersock said. “Heck, you don’t know if you can still do it. You think you can, but you just got to get all the right pieces, especially nowadays as expensive as everything’s become and the technology.”
Bowersock hadn’t won a Super Late Model feature of any kind since Sept. 2, 2023, at Montpelier, so the Atomic success was especially heartwarming. It also quite an interesting moment for Bowersock, who admitted that he had never been involved in a postrace technical inspection since the “droop” rule that measures rear-deck height came into play a few years ago.
“I never had to go through no droop check before, you know?” Bowersock said. “I was like, ‘Oh, man.’ I never even measured the droop on this car, but Rocket had put the body on it and stuff so I kind of thought, Well, I’m sure they got everything set in the right spot, and I knew I had my chain-limiter adjusted where they said it needed to be to clear the droop. It was right on the money, but I couldn’t even have told you probably what the measurement was. I had no idea.”
Not surprisingly, Bowersock was inundated by congratulatory texts and calls following his victory.
“My phone blew up,” he said. “I kind of wondered why all of a sudden I was getting bombarded with messages and then I found out that they had announced it on Flo (Racing) on the broadcast (of Saturday’s Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series event at Illinois’s Fairbury Speedway). I was like, ‘OK, now it makes sense why everybody is texting and calling.’ Mark (Richards) was one of the first ones that texted me. He was jacked that we won — and he had won that night (at Fairbury with Brandon Sheppard). But I think people, they pretty much expect him to win. Not so much the case for me being 60.”
Bowersock didn’t stick around too long to celebrate his victory. He savored being the center of attention for a bit but then soon was on the road 150-mile ride home.
“Everybody in the pits come over,” said Bowersock, who didn’t have Dondrea along because his benefactor was recovering from recent surgery. “We got our tire samples and got our body bracing unhooked and loaded up, and hell, I was whooped, and then everybody that was with me, you know, we’re all getting older, and so it was like, ‘Hey, let’s get heading home. It's early.’ So we didn't really hang around long.
“I guess if I’d been younger, I might have hung out for a while. But it was like, ‘Well, that was cool. Let’s get home.’”
More nights like Saturday would please Bowersock. He feels his new car gives him a better chance for success in his regional and local starts than he’s had in years. He’s especially excited to see what the car can do in next month’s Dream at Eldora, which is why he might take it easy with his Dirt Late Model racing for the next few weeks so his motor will be fresh for the Big E.
Whether Bowersock will be able to finally make his first-ever start in the Dream finale — and first Eldora crown jewel headliner appearance since the 2013 World 100 — remains to be seen. He’s just happy he’ll be taking some momentum to his beloved track as he rolls on with his long-running racing career.
As Bowersock pointed out, racing is his life.
“It’s all I’ve ever did,” Bowersock said. “I mean, it’s no different than (veterans like) Dale McDowell, Billy Moyer and all that. It’s just what I’ve always did, and do, and shoot, I don’t know how to do nothing else. I go to some ball games in the offseason and whatnot, but really all I do is, you know, go racing and work on race cars. That’s just what I've always did, and probably will always do as long as I’m capable.”
