Kevin Kovac's Take Five
Take Five: Alberson back home, recovery ongoing
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: An update posted this morning to Garrett Alberson’s racing Facebook page by his wife Dani revealed that the 37-year-old driver is back at his residence in Colona, Ill., continuing his recovery from the facial injuries he suffered Aug. 8 when he was struck by an object during the Sunoco North-South 100 at Florence Speedway in Union, Ky. The doctors treating him in Cincinnati allowed him to head home over the weekend after he crossed the “critical point” in his care; he’s “active(ish) and mobile(ish)” and will now continue followup care close to home, including a surgical procedure scheduled for Thursday. Alberson, whose timeline for returning to competition remains 6-8 weeks, and his wife also offered thanks to the many people who have “so generously sent food, encouragement and funds” to them while Garrett is sidelined. What’s more, Dani noted that race fans have shown their support of Garrett by flooding his merchandise website to purchase apparel — so many orders, in fact, that they ran out of inventory and have had to restock.
No. 2: During Tuesday’s FloRacing broadcast of the FloRacing Night in America event at Marshalltown (Iowa) Speedway, I loved seeing the sponsor of the track’s technical inspection area: a local Dairy Queen. That meant the spot could be dubbed the “DQ Tech Zone,” which is an appropriate title for the place where offending teams can end up being disqualified.
No. 3: Looking back to the past weekend’s Ace Doran Topless 100 at Batesville Motor Speedway in Locust Grove, Ark., I have to give some praise to Charlie Cole, a 42-year-old racer from Wynne, Ark., who finished a solid third in a Friday semifeature — despite running half the distance without power steering — to lock into his home state’s crown jewel event for the first time in his career. “I’ve been racing for 30 years and I’ve only tried this race three times,” Cole said. “This is our big crown jewel, our big race, so it feels good to make it in.” An infrequent competitor this year (the Topless was just his sixth start of 2026) because he’s been busy running a couple small businesses, Cole finished 16th in the finale after leading all drivers in the marathon race with seven pit stops, most of them in an effort to make adjustments that would speed up his car. And the self-owned No. 2 he drove was unique: a Trak-Star Chassis, the brand started by Mississippi racer Mike Boland two decades ago but not heard from much in national touring series action.
No. 4: Speaking of Batesville, I mentioned in Tuesday’s Take Five that the 3/8-mile oval’s banked turns were pitched more steeply than I thought after only previously seeing the track on video. One moment I caught before Saturday’s feature offered more evidence. As crews were crossing the third turn to set up shop in the hot pit area, I noticed Rocket1 team members Austin Hargrove and Danny White pushing their tire cart, which carried 10 tires, to the infield. The cart started picking up speed as they went down the hill, however, and it looked for a moment that they might lose control of it. Fortunately, they got it onto level ground without incident, but “it got some pretty good speed there,” said Hargrove, whose T-shirt was soaked with sweat after he put his strength into slowing down the cart on the sultry night.
No. 5: Here’s a leftover from Florence’s recent North-South 100 that I found in my notebook: during the final night of action on Aug. 8, I saw former World of Outlaws Late Model Series regular Darrell Lanigan, who lives barely a mile up the road from the track, in the middle of the infield taking in the program with his family. His youngest daughter, 13-year-old Lila, was wearing a T-shirt that caught my eye: a true Darrell Lanigan throwback, an original from early in his career — probably 1988, according to Lanigan. He said his late mother Joyce, who passed away last year, gave it to Lila from her stash of old Darrell Lanigan T-shirts. In addition, Lanigan’s 19-month-old grandson, Charleston, wore a kid’s T-shirt produced after Darrell’s 2003 Dream victory; Charleston’s mother, Lanigan’s 25-year-old daughter Tiffany, reported that the shirt was originally hers, then was passed down to his sister Brittany and a decade later to Lila. Now it’s Charleston’s, and next in line to wear it is Brittany’s 6-month-old son Kohen.
