Eldora Speedway
Zeigler's violent flip ends his bid at Dream XXXII
By Kevin Kovac
DirtonDirt senior writer
Mason Zeigler's flipping wreck at Eldora. (joshjamesartwork.com)
ROSSBURG, Ohio (June 5) — Mason Zeigler didn’t lob any angry accusations. He didn’t hurl F-bombs. He didn’t threaten retribution.
After flipping wildly out of contention on lap 16 of Friday’s 50-lap Dream XXXII preliminary feature at Eldora Speedway, the 33-year-old driver from Chalk Hill, Pa., simply stood in street clothes a few feet from his mangled car at the fourth-turn end of the pit area and calmly discussed his horrible fate. | Complete Dream coverage
“It is what it is,” Zeigler began, the words tumbling from his mouth in a matter-of-fact manner that made it clear he understood he couldn’t hit rewind on what had occurred.
There were already disparaging comments on social media being directed toward Nick Hoffman, whose slide up the track in turn four had led to the contact that sent Zeigler sideways across the nose of Brandon Sheppard and then into a tumble toward the inside wall on the homestretch. But Zeigler didn’t join the keyboard warriors piling on Hoffman.
“I’m not mad at Nick or nothing,” said Zeigler, who escaped the crash completely uninjured. “You know, I’ve goofed up and ran him over before. Heck, I remember back at Path Valley (Speedway Park in Spring Valley, Pa.), I freaking went to pass him for the lead (in a May 2024 World of Outlaws Late Model Series feature) and knocked his left-front off, so I’m not innocent in that aspect. It happens sometimes.
“But it just sucks that it happened here and as good as we were running.”
Yes, Zeigler appeared on his way to a solid finish in Friday’s qualifying feature, one that would have continued his strong launch (three wins in 13 starts) to the 2026 season. He started from the pole position, ran second behind early leader Jason Feger of Bloomington, Ind., for 13 laps and sat fourth when the race’s first caution flag was displayed on lap 15.
Zeigler is no stranger to the famed Eldora half-mile; he made his major-event debut in 2013 and has qualified for 18 crown jewel finales: nine World 100s, seven Dreams and two Dirt Track World Championships. He’s finished as high as fifth in the Dream and sixth in the World 100 (both in 2023) and won a Dream preliminary feature in ’17.
As he circled the demanding track early in Friday’s headliner, Zeigler’s Eldora experience told him he couldn’t press too hard.
“We got in lapped traffic there and I got held up and we got passed (to fall to fourth) and the car was a little tight,” Zeigler said. “But then I had got back by Dale (McDowell) there (on the lap-15 restart) and was back up to third (by the backstretch) and I know we had a good piece.
“Whenever I was running second I was trying to really focus on running the car straight. I was trying to just keep my tires under me because there on Wednesday night (in the 50-lap FloRacing Night in America feature) we really killed our tires (resulting in a 16th-place finish). I was just trying to get through the first 20 laps, keep my tires under me, keep my edges fresh, and then really start hammering it for the last 25. Just trying to be in that contention, you know?”
Exiting turn four heading toward the completion of lap 16, however, Zeigler’s outing became a nightmare. Running the outside around turns three and four in close quarters with McDowell, Sheppard and Hoffman — and with eventual $30,000 winner Jonathan Davenport of Blairsville, Ga., a few lengths back in seventh — Zeigler angled off toward the frontstretch hard on the gas.
Then a car — Hoffman’s Tye Twarog-owned No. 9 — suddenly flashed into Zeigler’s view, skating toward him from the bottom of the track.
“I saw him coming up,” Zeigler said of Hoffman. “I didn’t realize he was going to be, like, going that fast, or coming up that fast.”
Hoffman, 34, pushed up the banking across Sheppard’s nose and then almost flush into Zeigler’s left side. It looked at first glance like he was attempting a slide job on Sheppard with Zeigler’s car occupying the usual run-off space nearing the outside wall, but Hoffman said a miscue actually put him in an unwanted position.
“So basically I get in there and Dale (McDowell) leaves a little bit of a lane, and so I’m trying to get lower than him to make sure I have clean air,” Hoffman said after finishing fifth. “I just touch the infield wall (in turn four), and that shoots me out across the racetrack. And then whenever that happened, (Zeigler) was still out there. I knew he was out there, so I’m out of the gas and he’s coming with a head of speed and he just barely nicked my right front and right-side door.”
Contact ensued, turning Zeigler’s No. 25z crossways down the frontstretch as Hoffman kept his car straight and sped off despite sustaining damage to his door and nose.
“I obviously didn't try and crash them,” Hoffman said. “Looking at the replay, I feel like he was headed back down the racetrack, and that’s what I felt like in real time, too. It was like he was still crossed up and coming down a little bit, but we just kind of meet in the middle.”
The victorious Davenport saw only enough of the incident to avoid it.
“All I seen was Mason get turned across the track, and when he turned across the track, obviously, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Brandon hit him,” Davenport said. “He started flipping immediately, so I just locked the brakes down and tried to watch on the Jumbotron (in turn two as the red flag was put out) to see how he was. Usually they kind of pan away, you know, to make sure he’s OK, but they definitely stayed on him and I could see him moving around and whatever.”
Sheppard, 33, found himself in the middle of the altercation.
“I lost sight of the (Zeigler) because I seen (Hoffman) coming across,” Sheppard said. “I seen (Hoffman) out of the corner of my eye coming across there so I checked up and tried to turn down, cut across the straightaway and slide them in the next (corner). Obviously the video shows that the 9 just run in there. I don’t know if he was gonna slide both of us or just me. I don’t know.
“Next thing I know, all I see is the side of the 25 coming across my nose. I seen him (start flipping) and I thought, Oh, I hope this guy’s gonna be all right.”
Zeigler was essentially along for the ride when he was turned in front of Sheppard’s Rocket Chassis house car. His machine climbed on Sheppard’s nose and vaulted into the air, flipping and spiraling at high speed before coming to rest on its wheels just in front of the inside wall a bit past the winner’s stage. Crew members and spectators watching from the other side of the concrete barrier, which is topped by a catchfence, could be seen scrambling away as Zeigler’s car rolled towards them.
“It sucks that, you know, I wasn’t able to able to just loop it on the frontstretch, but whenever Sheppy got in my left-rear wheel, that was it,” Zeigler said. “Once I started flipping I let go of the (steering) wheel just because I didn’t want to, you know, break my wrist or something. I was just thinking, Oh, s---. I think the most concerning thing when I was flipping, I was hoping the halo (on the top of his car’s roll cage) didn’t land on the wall. That’s actually what was going through my head.”
Of course, Zeigler laid no blame on Sheppard for launching him into the sky; B-Shepp was merely a victim of circumstance. It was the scrape with Hoffman that sent Zeigler out of control.
“The situation just sucks,” Zeigler said. “I thought maybe (Hoffman) didn’t know I was out there. I don’t know. But I wouldn’t think he’d have done it on purpose. I know he wouldn’t have done it on purpose, but it doesn’t change the fact it sucks.”
Hoffman echoed Zeigler’s feelings. Speaking in a subdued tone while looking over the largely cosmetic damage his car sustained, he clearly wished the accident could have been avoided.
“Mason’s one of my buddies. I’m not trying to crash him,” Hoffman said. “I feel like that’s kind of a racing deal as far as you get these situations where you got to go, and yeah, I had a pretty good run, and I just nicked the infield wall and that shoves me way out and then I’m out of the gas. Just part of it, but if I don’t hit inside wall, that doesn’t happen.
“You hate to see him get tore up like that. Yeah, just sucks.”
Hoffman’s hopes of repeating his $20,000 FloRacing Night in America victory on Wednesday were effectively dashed by the tangle. The body damage hampered him the rest of the way.
“Obviously the right-side door being killed like that pretty much ruins a lot of stuff,” said Hoffman, who had climbed from the ninth starting spot to fifth but no higher. “Before then, I felt like I had a car that could possibly win.”
Sheppard also had a promising run short-circuited. He had made even more headway than Hoffman, reaching the top-five from the 11th starting spot before the contact with Zeigler left him with right-front damage the forced him to pit for hasty repairs.
“We had a dang fast race car that was capable of winning the race,” said Sheppard, who manhandled his car to salvage a ninth-place finish. “We were just rolling good. Me and J.D. made a little bit of contact on the front straightaway one time (shortly before the crash), nothing major — you know, he was swinging out and didn’t know I was out there and we got together. Besides that, we just kept our nose clean and was battling the way up through there, and then it's just like, Boom! Out of nowhere.
“It took the (right-front) fender and the T-bar and the floppers. (The crew) put it back together as good as they could, but it wasn’t fastened down good so it was flying up down straightaway and it’d get me all darty. And then once it finally broke off (the fender drew a lap-38 caution flag), then at least it was the same all the way around there. It was still rolling good, but it wasn’t good.
“Just an unfortunate deal. There wasn't a dang thing I could have did honestly (to avoid Zeigler). It’s unfortunate, but it is what it is.”
Without a second car along in his trailer, Zeigler’s weekend was ended by the wreck — the first flip of his racing career — that he called “a nasty one.” His 2023-vintage Rocket Chassis actually came out of the ordeal in better shape than he probably expected since it never came down to earth on its roof, but it was still significantly damaged.
“It doesn’t even have a bent shock,” Zeigler said. “The rear end’s blowed out of it, the under-rail’s blown out of it, the (frame) X is bent, the fuel cell is blowed out, the rear clip’s bent over by a foot, but my Fox Shocks survived.”
Zeigler has another Rocket Chassis back at his shop, a ’24 model that he’s driven to his three victories this season. He doesn’t have a new-style Rocket XR2 in his stable but he’s “probably gonna have to get one now.”
“I mean, I’ve wanted one, but just financially, we’ve been good and it doesn’t make sense to spend money when you don’t have to,” Zeigler said. “And we’re not racing a (national) series or anything, we’re racing for fun. Glenn and Stephanie Elliott have been gracious enough to let me have these cars and race these cars, and we didn’t want to spend any more money to go buy new stuff.
“We’ll just have to get another frame and salvage what we can off this thing and put another one together.”
And he’ll think of what he could have accomplished in his first Dream 100-lapper since 2023.
“I’m not gonna say we were gonna win the race, but we were good enough to be up there,” Zeigler said. “I feel like we had a real shot at it.
“It’s tough. Like, I mean, you come in here and you're racing against the best guys. They race for a living. We’re racing for fun. So when we show up and we're competitive and we have a real shot at it, it sucks to have it taken away like that.”
