Racer safety has always been one of my highest priorities that I take very seriously. It’s always on my mind at races, and I feel it’s as much my responsibility as it is the racers themselves. And to be honest, I have always had a pretty good feeling of the safety of every racer entering an event I'm involved with.

But late last year there was a sequence of events that brought me back to reality. There had been much talk on the Dirt Late Model scene about racer injuries with a series of MORE

As I do from time to time, I was checking out one of the racing message boards to see what the latest gossip and fodder of the day was. I stumbled across a thread that asked “Where is Late Model Racing Headed?” or something to that effect. I thought, now here’s a good topic.

I read through all of the responses that had been posted. Some were very poignant and thought-provoking, while others were just someone’s idea of a big joke. And all of that is OK. It’s an open forum so you can say MORE

During the seven full seasons and parts of two others that I spent as the World of Outlaws Late Model Series P.R. director, I interviewed Darrell Lanigan a lot. He recorded 48 of his tour-record 53 career victories during my stint with the circuit, so there were plenty of good reasons to converse.

Lanigan, though, wouldn’t have minded one bit if I simply forgot to visit his hauler after his victories. For Lanigan, interviews are something to be endured, not embraced. Almost on cue after each of MORE

For the longest, I have been a proponent of a cheaper form of racing. I’ve considered Crate racing and I’ve urged promoters to come up with a true economy engine for Late Models.

I’m happy to say that I received a lot of feedback from both of those blogs, both through this website and from folks at my local tracks. It’s always nice to get feedback from people you see every weekend, yet never realized they were DirtonDirt subscribers who followed along with my sometimes senseless babble.

I� MORE

It was more than 10 years ago, one night back in the early 2000s, when I was an assistant editor and columnist for Area Auto Racing News in Trenton, N.J. I was at Volusia Speedway Park in Barberville, Fla., covering the February Speedweeks action of both the DIRTcar big-block modifieds — my primary beat for the Northeast-focused weekly trade paper — and the Dirt Late Models.

As I made my way around Volusia’s pit area to interview Dirt Late Model drivers following the evening’s feature, I MORE