DirtonDirt exclusive
‘Natural talent’ exhibited by promising Ohio teen
By Kyle McFadden
DirtonDirt staff reporter
Lincoln Smith (DirtonDirt)
Technical specialist Keith Berner has helped shape some of Dirt Late Model racing's top talent.
The Millersburg, Ohio, consultant through AfterBurner Performance played an instrumental role in Devin Moran's development into a Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series champion and has also worked with Drake Troutman, Ricky Thornton Jr. and reigning two-time World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series champion David Gravel.
These days, Berner is focused on another emerging talent — 15-year-old Lincoln Smith of Belmont, Ohio.
In less than a year and just 20 starts into his Super Late Model career, Smith has won his first feature, qualified for national touring events and posted six top-five finishes with eight top-10s, tangible evidence of his promising transition into the division that typically favors veterans over youth.
“He’s made a lot of progress. He just has natural talent,” Berner said earlier this month. “He’s raced a lot in his life between the quarter-midget stuff. He has a lot of race savvy under him. But, man, he’s very talented. He has speed. You can’t teach speed to a young kid. He just has natural speed. He needs to still learn some racecraft. But he’s won in everything he’s been in. He’s won now in these. At 15, that’s pretty good.”
Unlike many young drivers, Smith didn't grow up in a racing family. His father, Heath, owns what Lincoln described as "a very successful propane business" — Pivotal Propane in St. Clairsville, Ohio — alongside his mother, Amy. A family friend introduced Smith to mini wedges at age 4 in 2015, and just two years later he scored a national USAC quarter midget victory in the open-wheel hotbed of Terre Haute, Ind.
Before making the aggressive leap to full-bodied Crate Late Models from quarter midgets in 2024, Smith assembled one of the country's most impressive youth racing résumés, thanks in large part to mentor John Nervo, a former USAC midget racer from Tallmadge, Ohio, whose Nervo Chassis has become one of the sport's most respected quarter-midget brands.
In a single season, Smith captured five NASCAR Youth Series championships: Senior Honda Dirt, Senior Animal Dirt, Light 160 Dirt, Light World Formula Dirt and Light World Formula Pavement. Smith also made history at one of quarter midget racing's marquee events, becoming the first four-time winner of the Robbie Stanley Memorial at Indianapolis's Mini Indy Speedway from 2020-23. The prestigious race's past winners include NASCAR Cup Series driver and Dirt Late Model moonlighter Carson Hocevar and current World of Outlaws sprint car campaigner Emerson Axsom.
Whether Smith ultimately pursues Dirt Late Models full time — and develops into the kind of national contender his résumé suggests he could become — remains to be seen. At 15, however, he's in no rush to map out the rest of his career. For now, he's content learning alongside his father while leaning on the experience of Berner, whose guidance has boosted his transition into the ultracompetitive division.
“I kind of just like to see where racing takes me. … I'm definitely in no rush to do it,” Smith said when asked about a timeline for national tour competition. “Keith Berner is starting to become a fatherly figure in my life to teach me how to race and tell me what to do at what times, and obviously I've raced with my dad for — I'm 15. I've started racing whenever I was 4. I mean, I've raced with him my whole life, so, and obviously, the most successful guy in Dirt Late Model racing right now is Bobby Pierce. Look who he's racing with — his dad.”
Since entering Dirt Late Models through the Crate ranks in 2024, Smith has won three features: two Crate victories at Muskingum County Speedway in October 2024 and June 2025, along with his first Super Late Model triumph, a $3,500 victory over a 17-car field on June 13 at Midway Speedway.
His stay in the Crate division was brief, lasting only from January 2024 through July 2025. Smith made his Super Late Model debut that August at Muskingum, an impressive sixth-place run with a 17-car field.
“I wanted to get out of my Crate car because I feel like it was teaching me bad habits with Crates not as dependent on air, on dirty air,” Smith said. “These are because they got so much more horsepower and torque. So I felt like it was starting to teach me bad habits and obviously in a Crate car, whenever the track’s wide open, you don't really have to lift because they’re 600 horsepower.
“These (Super Late Models), you have to use your pedals and throttle control and steering and everything. It's completely different from a Crate car. So I just wanted to get out of the Crate car so it didn't hurt me running this thing so hard when the track won't take it.”
The jump to Supers from Crates has proven far more technical, requiring Smith to adapt to greater horsepower, more experienced competition and the aerodynamic challenges that separate the sport's premier division.
“I think I always had good racecraft as of knowing where my car is at, but like, I'm still struggling with the dirty air and the aerodynamics compared to these cars, compared to what my quarter midgets were,” Smith said. “Because they're in a tight little circle and you were always on the bottom, like right up to it.
“Now, you can lane choice and lane pick, and there’s just a whole bunch of different opportunities from the quarter midget to the big car. … Like I can't run my car at 100 percent wide open all the time if the track can only give me 70 percent. So that’s probably one of my biggest struggles right now.”
That's where Berner has become an invaluable resource for the Smiths.
“I’m older now, and I’ve tried to not just tell people to do stuff. I’m trying to teach them why — why they’re doing it,” Berner said. “Lincoln and his dad, they both are wanting to learn. I like those kinds of people.”
That mindset reminds Berner of two other national touring drivers he's mentored, Troutman and Moran.
“They wanted to learn, not to just race this car and go fast,” Berner said. “They wanted to learn why it went fast. So I’m way more willing to help those kind of people.
“Like Devin, it sounds crazy, but he only had race experience from watching his (Hall of Fame) dad (Donnie). He didn’t race a whole lot so he actually started racing Late Models. The curve is so different. It’s hard for me to say where they’re at in their life. But Lincoln, he can definitely hold his own right now. And he’ll just get better.”
Smith has already shown he can hold his own against some of the sport's most experienced drivers despite being 15 and less than a year into Super Late Models. He finished 14th in his first national touring feature with the World of Outlaws Late Model Series on May 28 at Wayne County Speedway in Orrville, Ohio, then followed with a 13th-place finish in his Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series debut July 5 at Muskingum.
A week later, Smith started from outside the front row in his DIRTcar Summer Nationals debut at Wayne County before retiring on lap 15 after slowing from fifth.
Smith also failed to qualify for WoO features May 29-30 at Mansfield (Ohio) Speedway, but that's all part of the learning curve. Berner places far less emphasis on sheer results than the traits that indicate long-term success — Smith's smoothness behind the wheel, racecraft, consistency and decision-making from lap to lap.
“You’re not watching him go from the top to the bottom and not knowing what direction he wants to go,” Berner said. “He knows where he’s going, and that’s from the amount of racing he’s done in his past. He just has to get adapted to these cars. If he decides to go this route, he’s 15 — he has a long life ahead of him — but there’s a lot of kids that, kind of like high school sports, they get burned out.
“It’s been more of a challenge than they thought it might be, I think he’ll admit that. But it’s a challenge he feels like he’s up for. And that’s going to be the main thing. He accepts that and works through it.”
Smith's support system is about as strong as a teen could ask for. He stays in regular contact with the Moran family, the Smiths open their shop to Brandon Overton's Riggs Motorsports team whenever it races through the greater Ohio Valley, and his operation includes full-time crewmen Zach Derringer and Wyatt Ogilbee.
Even so, Smith believes he's one more crewman, a bigger hauler and a little more experience away from expanding his schedule beyond the regional level — an assessment Berner shares.
“The crew is so important, having the crew around you,” Berner said. “The people, the crew and a little bit of experience of just getting up and down the road. The grind … people don’t realize what the culture is. If he’s running regional for a year, if he doesn’t make the next track, it’s no big deal. If you sign up for that series, now it’s a commitment.
“I told him to run a bunch of different regional stuff next year, hit-and-miss with the Outlaws and Lucas Oil, and get geared up. There's a lot more to running a series than just going to every race.”
For all of Smith's early promise behind the wheel, he isn't treating a professional racing career as a foregone conclusion. He said there's a realistic possibility he'll become more involved in his family's business, perhaps as soon as after high school, a decision that will ultimately be his to make.
“It’s not that I'd be wasting talent racing, but it might just be a better option for me in the long-term side of things,” Smith said.
At 15, though, that's a decision he doesn't feel any urgency to make. For now, he has everything he needs racing-wise to race a healthy regional schedule through his family-owned team.
“Not even that I'd really have to go for a ride because, obviously, Cornett’s the best engine money can buy, in a brand-new Longhorn (Chassis) — it’s all the best,” Smith said. “I’m not rushing to get out of anything because it’s super nice equipment. We're thankful for my opportunity to race and kind of just like enjoy it.”
Smith isn't interested in broadening his schedule until he proves he's ready, preferring patience over rushing into the next stage of his career.
“I think if I start proving myself that I can run top 10 in Lucas Oil shows and consistently doing that — I mean, I've made A-mains with the World of Outlaws, I won the B-main with the Outlaws at Wayne County — I think that’ll definitely help my cause of expanding our schedule a little more and going on tour.”
