After the Checkers
Hoffman doesn't feel dominant in Volusia win
By Kevin Kovac
DirtonDirt senior writer
Nick Hoffman on his way to victory at Volusia. (Josh James)
BARBERVILLE, Fla. (Feb. 12) — Instant reaction and analysis from Thursday’s Federated Auto Parts DIRTcar Nationals action at Volusia Speedway Park, a $12,000-to-win World of Outlaws Late Model Series event won by Nick Hoffman (RaceWire):
UNEASY FEELING: For as dominant as Nick Hoffman appeared in his march to a flag-to-flag victory in Thursday’s 35-lap feature, the 33-year-old driver from Mooresville, N.C., his view from the cockpit was decidedly different. He never was seriously challenged and stretched his advantage in the closing circuits to beat Tim McCreadie of Watertown, N.Y., by a commanding margin of 5.270 seconds, but was uncomfortable throughout the distance. “I’m telling you, there’s a couple laps I’m like, ‘Man, I’m a sitting duck out here,’ ” Hoffman said. “They (his crew) were still showing me I had a big lead and I kind of tried to watch that video board off of four a little bit, but there was a couple of times where I just felt like I slid too much and didn’t have what I needed to get back going again so I started searching there pretty late in the race because I couldn't carry the speed into three like I felt like I needed to.” An observer’s naked eye, though, saw Hoffman cruising smoothly around the corners just off the cushion through the race’s middle stages — his Tye Twarog-owned Longhorn car purring while most of his rivals were aggressively on the fuel — and producing more speed when necessary.
RIDING THE HUB: He’s long been known as Topside Timmy, but these days, as a 51-year-old veteran, Tim McCreadie will unapologetically run the bottom of a racetrack. It’s exactly the strategy he employed to make most of his time while advancing from the 22nd starting spot to a runner-up finish in the 35-lapper. Sticking snugly to the half-mile oval’s inside wall aside from a few late-race circuits spent testing the cushion, McCreadie kept chugging forward in his Briggs Transport Longhorn, finally reaching second place with a lap-33 pass of Oakwood, Ill.’s Bobby Pierce. “I feel like I’m a versatile driver, but (the inside lane is) probably more in my wheelhouse than it used to be,” McCreadie said. “I was down there where Earl Pearson (Jr.) would run. You go back and watch a video from 10, 15 years ago where I was the one up on the cushion, and Earl drove by me and won by half a track.”
A POSITIVE NIGHT: Bobby Pierce thought there was a moment in Thursday’s feature when “it looked like maybe we were going to win the race.” And yes, the 29-year-old star who hustled from the 10th starting spot to second in 13 laps did appear to be closing on leader Nick Hoffman just after the halfway point. He couldn’t get all the way to Hoffman before the eventual winner turned up the wick through lapped traffic, however, and he fell to third in the finishing order, but a podium result put him in an unusually satisfied mood. “You get that far up there and you want to win the race, but definitely, a third-place, it's like a win,” said Pierce, who scored his first top-five finish in seven Volusia starts this season. “We finally had a decent qualifying effort, we started front row in the heat race … we made gains.”
PERPLEXED COMBATANTS: Ryan Gustin of Marshalltown, Iowa, said he wasn’t sure how he came together with Tyler Erb of New Waverly, Texas, in turn two and spun out of a battle for third place on lap 12. Erb was equally uncertain about the tangle that he escaped with only damage to his left-side door and engine headers. So was it simply a racing incident, one that resulted from Erb diamonding the corner just as Gustin decided to try running the middle lane? Or was one of the drivers involved at fault? Neither racer offered a clear answer after Erb survived to finish fourth while Gustin, who restarted at mid-pack via the “blend” rule because his wheels never stopped turning amid his twirl, settled for a 12th-place result.
STAT OF THE NIGHT: Nick Hoffman has won at least once during the DIRTcar Nationals in 11 of the last 12 years. A victor 22 times in modified action and four in Super Late Model competition after Thursday, his only winless DCN since 2015 came in ’23, his first year as a WoO regular.
