Kevin Kovac's Take Five
Take Five: Strickler flip triggers blame game
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: That was one strange-looking flip Kyle Strickler took in a heat race during Friday night’s World of Outlaws Late Model Series program at Volunteer Speedway in Bulls Gap, Tenn. The Mooresville, N.C., driver’s car seemed to be slowing down as he drifted up, and then back down, the steep turn-four hill with Ethan Dotson of Bakersfield, Calif., until contact from Dotson turned Strickler to the right, and then a hard hit from the right-front corner of Illinois veteran Dennis Erb Jr.’s machine popped Strickler into the air. Strickler rolled a couple times before coming to rest on his roof. He wasn’t injured, but he was certainly hot with Dotson. Strickler called it “a racing deal until he turned as hard left as he could and throttled up,” which put Strickler in the vulnerable sideways position to be thrown over. It was Strickler’s opinion that Dotson should be penalized by WoO officials; Dotson’s view was clear from a post on the ASD Motorsports Facebook page that put the blame on Strickler for instigating the incident: “Funny how the car that got hit (first) was the problem.”
No. 2: According to Strickler, the crashed “killed” his AK Race Cars entry; he headed back to North Carolina rather than sticking around for Saturday’s WoO show at Smoky Mountain Speedway in Maryville, Tenn., so his team could “tear it apart and see how bad it is.” Dotson, meanwhile, was able to start Friday’s feature thanks to a WoO provisional in the same car that was in the tangle with Strickler, but his crew — with help from members of several other teams — had to scramble to patch it up in time for him to make the race’s green flag and salvage a 16th-place finish.
No. 3: The high hopes that Jimmy Owens of Newport, Tenn., had for the WoO doubleheader in his home state — and the start of his 35th racing season — disintegrated quickly on the opening lap of Volunteer’s feature when he rolled the Vic Hill-fielded CVR Race Car he was driving. He took the blame for triggering the accident, commenting on the DIRTVision broadcast that he “killed the engine” when he made an inside move through the third and fourth corners. As Owens’s car stalled, contact from Tristan Chamberlain flipped him over and he absorbed a secondary hit while on his side from Jake Timm. The crash damaged the frame of Hill’s machine to end Owens’s planned run in it at Smoky Mountain, but on Saturday afternoon Owens posted that he still would enter Smoky Mountain’s action after he thrashed to prepare a Koehler Motorsports-provided Rocket Chassis car in his shop.
No. 4: Volunteer Speedway was also rough on Garrett Smith of Eatonton, Ga., who clipped the turn-four wall hard with the right-rear corner of his car during his qualifying run. The 22-year-old wasn’t injured from the heavy impact, but it did bring his weekend in Tennessee to an abrupt end. “We decided to come home and see what kind of damage we have on the car,” he reported on Saturday afternoon.
No. 5: Tony Jackson Jr.’s $5,000 victory in Friday’s Midwest Late Model Association-sanctioned March Madness opener at Springfield (Mo.) Raceway came in a new Longhorn wrenched by Tim Douglas, a veteran mechanic who has joined Jackson’s Lebanon, Mo.-based team full-time as crew chief this season. Douglas, who spent 2025 working as a traveling technical representative for Hazard, Ky.-based Infinity Chassis while still living in Missouri’s Lake of the Ozarks, is a California native with plenty of Dirt Late Model mechanical experience. He was the 2024 World of Outlaws Late Model Series Crew Chief of the Year with Ryan Gustin and has also worked over the past decade-plus with Dillon McCowan, Earl Pearson Jr., Jason Papich and Tony Toste.
