A by-the-numbers snapshot of my July 13-20 road trip that included events with the DIRTcar Summer Nationals and the Schaeffer’s Southern Nationals, including a number of useless facts and the occasional poke at Georgia’s Ashton Winger, who not only found victory lane on multiple occasions, but also had a knack for making me laugh:

1: Victory by a Hall of Famer, Chickamauga, Ga.’s Dale McDowell, who won Tuesday’s Schaeffer’s Southern Nationals main event at I-75 Raceway in Sweetwater, MORE

Ashton Winger has had plenty of chances to cut bait and head home from this year’s DIRTcar Summer Nationals. He’s crashed cars. He’s been upside-down — during time trials no less — and he’s missed a few golden opportunities to record much better finishes than the end results have shown.

But the Hampton, Ga., driver has kept on digging. And Tuesday at Knox County Fair Raceway, Winger’s fortunes finally turned for the better as he topped series points leader Bobby Pierce to win his MORE

One of the coolest things about traveling the country covering Dirt Late Model racing is getting the opportunity to visit new tracks. There are definitely favorites that I always look forward to returning to — and, of course, a few that I’d rather not see again — but discovering new ones is pretty awesome.

It’s not a surprise that I’ve been to more tracks in my home state of Tennessee than I have anywhere else. I’m not sure which one I actually went to first, either Duck River Raceway MORE