Kevin Kovac's Take Five
Take Five: T-Mac's rig back after hitching rides
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: Tim McCreadie and the Briggs Transport team have their toterhome back for tonight’s World of Outlaws Late Model Series stop at Norman County Raceway in Ada, Minn. It’s a relief after they had to make their way to the last two events of the circuit’s Upper Midwest tour using borrowed vehicles. McCreadie and Co. were at the Fargo, N.D., shop of Mike and Deanne Svaleson — the brother-in-law and sister of WoO Sprint Car star Donny Schatz — prepping for last Friday’s WoO show at River Cities Speedway in Grand Forks, N.D., when their rig was sidelined by a faulty diesel exhaust fluid filter. Mike Svaleson, who owns Turf Tamers Lawncare and Landscaping, offered up one of his company’s dump trucks to tow the team’s trailer to River Cities, where McCreadie finished seventh. Svaleson then allowed the team to use his motorhome for the trip to Sunday’s race at Nodak Speedway in Minot, N.D., where T-Mac netted a third-place finish. Team co-owner Boom Briggs said “$6,500 later” the mechanical problem has been fixed thanks to Svaleson and the Schatz family, who handled coordinating the repairs.
No. 2: Mike Svaleson’s wife Deanne is the mother of 18-year-old twins Amelia and Laela Eisenschenk, the nieces of Donny Schatz who are aspiring Dirt Late Model racers. The sisters competed in the WoO events at I-94 EMR Speedway in Fergus Falls, Minn., River Cities and Nodak with Amelia recording finishes of 21st, 20th and 19th and Laela placing 24th, 22nd and 22nd.
No. 3: While McCreadie was out west with the Briggs Transport team, Boom Briggs’s familiar No. 99B car was in action during the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series-sanctioned Firecracker 100 at Lernerville Speedway in Sarver, Pa., with his cousin, Chub Frank of Bear Lake, Pa., behind the wheel. The 64-year-old had a quiet weekend with an eighth-place finish in Friday’s semifeature and a DNF in the 100-lap headliner, but I learned from an inside source that Frank’s preliminary program outing was a bit eventful behind the scenes. It seems that when officials announced the first of the twin 25-lap semifeatures was being moved up on the schedule with rain threatening, Frank didn’t hear it because he was up in the stands visiting with some people. His crew didn’t know where he was and couldn’t contact him by phone, so that had Andy Boozel drive Frank’s car up to the staging area — and bring along Frank’s helmet and safety equipment — while they tracked down Chub. Frank appeared in time to climb in the car for the semifeature and later brushed off talk that he had almost missed the race. “I’m old,” he quipped. “They gotta wait.”
No. 4: I noticed at Lernerville that Gregg Satterlee of Indiana, Pa., has downsized his family-owned team, exchanging the full-size toterhome and lift-gate trailer he’s used for years in favor of a smaller toter and a single-car enclosed trailer. He said the Robby Allen-led operation decided that, with their focus more on regional racing and thus shorter road trips, it would make unloading and loading easier and just generally streamline their program.
No. 5: During Saturday’s Firecracker 100 finale I bumped into the spectating Michael Lake of Uniontown, Pa., who the previous week finished fourth at Elkins Speedway in Kerens, W.Va., in his first start of 2026. The 25-year-old said his grandfather Bobby Lake, who has retired from fielding a team after 50 years, gave him a Longhorn Chassis to race and Michael went forward assembling the backing to put himself back on the track. Lake said he hopes to race his gray-and-red No. 27 at least once per weekend for the remainder of the season.
