Inside Dirt Late Model Racing
Column: Stovall still seeks dirt racing fix
Walking through the pit area at Georgetown (Del.) Speedway during last week’s Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series-sanctioned Melvin L. Joseph Memorial, I spotted an unexpectedly familiar face. There was Jesse Stovall, leaning on the right side of tour rookie Dillon McCowan’s car with a phone in his hands and the hood of his sweatshirt pulled tightly around his head on a chilly evening.
What was Stovall, a 45-year-old from Billings, Mo., who has been largely out of Dirt Late Model racing as a competitor for the last three years, doing at a random event so far from home along the Atlantic Coast? It’s an excellent question and one I asked him.
“Kind of a bucket list thing,” Stovall said. “I’ve always wanted to see some of these tracks out here but I never had a chance to race at ‘em.”
Stovall has a close relationship with the 22-year-old McCowan and his father Charlie — they live nearby in Urbana, Mo., and in 2023 Stovall spent some time mentoring the young driver including during the Wild West Shootout at Vado (N.M.) Speedway Park — so he tagged along in their hauler for the long trek east to visit Georgetown, BAPS Motor Speedway in Newberrytown, Pa., and Hagerstown (Md.) Speedway. The BAPS event was rained out while Georgetown’s show was underway, but Stovall still had the opportunity to check out some new, far-flung territory.
In the process, Stovall also imparted a bit of his experience and knowledge to the up-and-coming McCowan.
“I want to try to make Dillon better,” Stovall said. “He’s struggling a little bit, but he’s very talented and I think I can help him in a few areas. Just get him going in the right direction.”
Stovall, of course, has plenty of insight to offer a racer like McCowan, who showed some notable improvement at Georgetown with his first single-digit starting spot (eighth) of the Lucas Oil Series campaign and a solid 10th-place finish after briefly climbing as high as fifth early in the 49-lap feature. While Stovall has been out of the sport’s spotlight in recent years, he has a resume that ranks him among the best drivers from his region.
There was a time not too long ago — the early- to mid-2010s to be specific — when Stovall was performing around the Midwest at a level that seemed to stamp him as a prospect for national success. Coming into his own in his 30s, he won the MARS Championship Series title in 2012 (when the tour was still based in Missouri) and captured the Midwest LateModel Racing Association title in ’16. His ’15 season was especially stellar with 18 overall victories spread almost evenly across the MARS and MLRA circuits, though he fell short of the points crown on both tours.
Stovall also flirted with breakthroughs on big stages during the period, scoring third-place finishes in the 2015 Silver Dollar Nationals at I-80 Speedway in Greenwood, Neb., and the ’16 Show-Me 100 at Lucas Oil Speedway in Wheatland, Mo. He was on a roll, carving out a living as a regional racer and harboring aspirations of branching out to a national tour.
But the momentum didn’t continue into the 2017 season. And in the middle of that campaign came a career-altering moment. On July 17, 2017, during a practice session before the start of I-80’s Silver Dollar Nationals weekend, Stovall’s car bicycled into turn three and wildly barrel-rolled numerous times. He climbed out of his car, declined further medical attention and even competed the rest of the weekend, though he used an MLRA provisional to start the headliner and was the first retiree.
The crash had hurt him more than he realized or wanted to admit. In an interview for FloRacing’s Road to Eldora video series from 2023, Stovall told Ben Shelton that “about a week-and-a-half, two weeks after the wreck,” he was sitting on his living room floor playing with his son and simply passed out. He went to get checked out and underwent tests that determined he had suffered a severe concussion and over the next couple months dealt with an incessant lethargic feeling almost every morning. Stovall sat out some time to recover and started feeling well enough to return to the cockpit — he even won twice that October — but a head-on wall hit in a modified at Humboldt (Kan.) Speedway sent him to a hospital and he was found to have some bleeding on the brain.
“Bad got worse then,” Stovall told Shelton, “and anxiety set in.”
Stovall continued racing in the ensuing years and won some races, but his output — two special-event triumphs each year from 2018-21 — wasn’t sufficient to make a comfortable living. And while he still felt good when he was behind the wheel, the aftereffects of the concussion that lingered had changed the mental side of life for him. He said in a 2023 DirtonDirt interview that he couldn’t handle “the day-in and day-out” side of the sport, that single-minded preparation necessary to be successful.
So after the ’21 season Stovall essentially retired from full-time racing, albeit not from racing entirely. In ’22 he took a suggestion to visit the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center for further evaluation of his post-concussion symptoms with neurologists and rehabilitation specialists and found the help he received to be very beneficial. He was put back on the right track with how to handle the mental struggle that comes with a brain injury.
But racing regularly again? Stovall didn’t, and probably won’t, make that jump, though he admitted at Georgetown that he misses the competition dearly.
“I tried getting every side-by-side, motorbike, whatever you can think of, to find something else for fun,” said Stovall, who ranks fourth on the all-time MARS win list (31 victories) and sixth on the MLRA win list (28). “But nothing’s been the same. It’s just not the same as racing for me.”
Stovall’s last Dirt Late Model start came in June 2023 when he drove fellow Missouri standout Tony Jackson Jr.’s backup car to an 11th-place finish in a Comp Cams Super Dirt Series event at Arrowhead Speedway in Colcord, Okla. He’s been active over the past two seasons in the open-wheel modified class, however, making a modest number of starts, including March 2025’s XR Dominator event at Salina (Okla.) Highbanks Speedway where Stovall finished fourth after a controversial restart with two laps remaining knocked him from contention for the $100,000 winner’s prize.
The most recent modified action for Stovall was last November’s Turkey Bowl at Springfield (Mo.) Raceway, but he rode out a flipping crash. He fortunately didn’t sustain any recurrence of his concussion problems and he said the machine is repaired and sitting in his shop but he hasn’t decided if he’ll race at.
These days Stovall is trying to find a way to make his livelihood outside of racing, which he pointed out isn’t the easiest of transitions for someone who’s been earning his money from the sport for so long.
“When you’ve done this (racing) for 22 years, you become pretty independent,” Stovall said. “As a racer, you do it when you want to do it. There’s no set hours. It’s a whole different deal going to work on a regular schedule. It’s definitely something you’re not used to doing.”
Stovall spent the past two years still full-time in the industry playing a different role. He went to work at Monett (Mo.) Motor Speedway, one of his longtime home tracks, after meeting its new promoter Steve Andrews, who took over the oval’s lease in 2024 and purchased it in ’25. Stovall began helping Andrews with track prep and other aspects of the facility’s operation and eventually was named Monett’s general manager, but he’s not returning to the post this season.
Last year Stovall also attempted to launch a new Missouri-based Super Late Model tour following Lucas Oil’s shut down of the MLRA circuit, but he announced the closure of the United LateModel Racing Association late in the summer after running just five events and cancelling three others. MLRA has returned this year under its former director Ernie Leftwich and Stovall has expressed no plans to give the ULRA another try.
Stovall has dabbled in some other business pursuits over the years, including a dump truck enterprise in 2022 and buying-and-selling the toter homes that so many race teams now use. He said the hauler resale business was quite lucrative when he first entered it but as prices rose his profit margin thinned, eventually leading him to abandon the pursuit because the numbers weren’t worth the investment.
Without a full-time job at the moment, Stovall said he’s taking various jobs working for local farmers to pay the bills. He didn’t rule out working more with McCowan after last weekend’s excursion but also doesn’t seem to be seriously interested in a regular crew chief position.
Well, there is one crew chief spot that Stovall appears very anxious to fill. It’s with his 15-year-old son Jett, who is starting his driving career in the legends car division at tracks near their home like Springfield.
“I’m really interested in the legend cars,” Stovall said. “It’s tons of fun for me to race them with my son. I’m trying to go with him as much as I can. It’s not the same as driving myself, but I’m enjoying it.”
