Inside Dirt Late Model Racing
Column: Ebert's low turns into a high
Dan Ebert has absorbed plenty of hard knocks in his year-and-a-half as a Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series regular. The hardest yet came early in Aug. 8’s Sunoco North-South 100 at Florence Speedway in Union, Ky.
Just as the 38-year-old driver from Lake Shore, Minn., seemed on the cusp of a breakthrough in his second season of Super Late Model competition — he earned the pole position for the crown jewel event with a $5,000 dash victory and led the first seven laps — a broken lift bar on a lap-12 restart abruptly slowed his car to trigger a massive wreck involving more than half the 24-car starting field. Ebert said it made him “sick” to climb out of his machine and see all the carnage his problem had caused; pouring salt into his wound, his car was the last one towed off the track, forcing him to agonizingly witness the entire cleanup.
The aftermath was difficult, especially hearing critics question his driving (as if he could control a mechanical failure). The next week was a long one and became even more frustrating when his return to the track, for Friday’s Ace Doran Topless 100 preliminary program at Batesville Motor Speedway in Locust Grove, Ark., saw him knocked from the lead in a 25-lap semifeature by a cut tire.
But then everything changed in Saturday’s Topless 100 finale. Making a memorable comeback from a lap-34 flat tire, Ebert wrapped up his first-ever Super Late Model, Lucas Oil Series and crown jewel triumph in one neat ball that completely turned around his fortunes.
Amid equal parts relief and elation, Ebert stood in Batesville’s pit area last Saturday after his car was teched and shook his head in dismay.
“I mean, the lowest of lows to the highest of highs,” Ebert said, “and in like a matter of a week.”
No one would have predicted such an amazing rebound, least of all Ebert himself. Sure, the best finish of his brief Super Late Model and Lucas Oil Series career — in fact, his only top-five run in a full-field Lucas Oil feature prior to last Saturday night — came last year at Batesville when he finished fourth in the Topless 100, but winning the race in his second try? Not likely.
Ebert has been inching ever-so-steadily toward national relevance, though, this season, including recording a first-ever heat win and fast time honor on the Lucas Oil Series over the past couple months. He’s felt an increase in performance and corresponding boost in confidence.
“I know I sound like a broken record, but we’ve had good speed,” Ebert said. “It’s just a matter of putting it all together.”
That’s been an ongoing challenge for Ebert and his race team fielded by fellow Minnesotan James Trantina III, who operates the expansive Collins Brothers Towing and has a growing list of motorsports holdings, including ownership of three Minnesota dirt tracks (Brainerd’s North Central Speedway, Sauk Rapids’s Granite City Motor Park and Fergus Falls’s I-94 EMR Speedway). Ebert is pushing 40 but is a true newcomer to Dirt Late Model racing after spending most of his life excelling in varied racing disciplines such as BMX, motocross, snocross and open-wheel modifieds.
When Ebert and Trantina announced plans before the 2025 season to chase the Lucas Oil Series, it was a giant leap of faith. There was no easing into Super Late Models with regional racing. They went all out immediately, and that put Ebert in a situation of learning on the fly.
“We jumped in,” Ebert said. “We all knew how hard it was going to be. Keeping the morale up, and setting attainable goals, was the biggest thing. I mean, last year, the goal was to make the feature. If we could make the feature, we’re high-fiving all the way home because it’s a battle to make these races.
“It’s just baby steps, attainable goals. I never lose faith. I’ve always been super positive. Don’t get me wrong, there’s times when you question everything, but my team owner James has full faith in us, totally believes in us, gives us the tools we need to be successful and let’s us go.”
Trantina’s unflinching backing pushed Ebert through a ’25 campaign with only fleeting moments of success. It’s continued this year, most notably in the wake of Ebert’s North-South 100 misery.
“He’s just naturally like, ‘Man, I wish we could just get this monkey off our back,’” Ebert said. “I think James has a lot of faith in our team and our program. He’s super supportive. He sent me a really nice text message (after the Topless 100 prelim program) just about how far we’ve come as a team and just how proud he is, which really means a lot from James.”
Ebert was warned about the tough days ahead of him on the Lucas Oil Series by Rocket Chassis co-owner Mark Richards, whose company was selected by Ebert and Trantina as their chassis brand of choice. Richards and his Rocket house car team with driver Brandon Sheppard of New Berlin, Ill., have been by Ebert’s side from the start of their Lucas Oil Series odyssey.
“Dan, he’s a competitive person, obviously, with all the other stuff he’s done — the snowmobiles, the modified, all that stuff,” Richards said. “He’s no dummy, and I told him when they came (into Super Late Model racing), I said, ‘It’s going to take you a little while to learn this.’ I told him, ‘You’ll get it,’ because I knew he had the ability, but this is a different world. you know, than snowmobiles or even modifieds.
“And he’s at the toughest level in a Dirt Lake Model. He didn’t go regional racing. He picked the toughest level, so it takes time.”
Richards noticed throughout this season that Ebert has been “starting to come around and show his ability.”
“Getting him to calm down is the big issue,” Richards said. “Like, at Florence (during the North-South 100 weekend), I told him, before the prelim on Friday, I said, ‘Look, all you need is a good finish. You don’t need no heroics. You don’t need to be no hero tonight. Just finish, and then you’ll be up front in the heat (on Saturday),’ and that’s what he did.
“He’s plenty fast enough. It’s just, there for a while, he might have been going too hard, and he’s starting to learn that you don’t have to go hard, especially in these long races. You can take your time a little bit.”
Ebert readily acknowledges the role Richards and the Rocket gang have played in his development.
“Mark’s awesome,” Ebert said. “He’s just got a wealth of knowledge. Mark is the type of guy where he’ll get you hunting in the right direction, and then he’ll kind of let you figure it out on your own. You know what I mean?
“And honestly, I think I take a lot of pride in that. I don’t need to be spoon-fed, you know? I feel like some tidbits here and there really help, and then we can kind of navigate it ourselves. We’ve learned a lot that way. Obviously, he’s got a program to run and a championship that I hope he can win.
“But yeah, everybody at Rocket Chassis … that whole team, we spent a fair amount of time there the last year-and-a-half working there when we’re on the east coast, and it’s like a family. Steve Baker (Richards’s partner), everybody in the fab shop, the sheet metal shop, just everybody’s awesome. You just feel at home, you feel so welcome. You have a place the plug (the hauler) in, a car to use (while in town), a shop to work out of.
“I mean, it literally feels like a long-lost friend that you never met,” he added. “Like whenever we have problems, it’s drop everything and put us first and get the car fixed. That goes a long way.”
All the guidance from Richards, all the experience gained on the road since the start of the 2025 season, came together in a winning mix for Ebert at Batesville. Even the despair of a flat right-rear tire while running in the top-five on lap 34 didn’t deter him.
“Normally, I think when you would get a flat, you feel like your night is over, totally demoralized,” Ebert said. “But honestly, it didn’t hardly bother me at all because it was early in the race. I knew there was going to be more flat tires, I knew there was going to be a lot of attrition, so I really wasn't that concerned. I just had the mindset of, Don't wreck your stuff. You know you got a good car. You clearly were driving to the front before that happened, so don’t wreck this thing on your own.
“I did start to get a little nervous when it started rubbering up (midway through the race) and getting a little one-lane, but then it started widening out. I kind of had a couple bonsai moves there getting into (turns) one and two on the top, got a good move going into the bottom of three there, so we were able to get some spots” to move into contention.
Ebert’s key move came on a lap-87 restart when he shot underneath two-time Topless 100 winner Dale McDowell of Chickamauga, Ga., for second with a powerful move off turn two and into the third corner. It set him up to grab the lead on lap 89 as pacesetter Josh Rice of Crittenden, Ky., began to slow with a blown right-rear tire.
“I mean, I’m not gonna lie, looking back on it with that many laps left and not knowing exactly how wide the rubber was, to roll in there (to pass McDowell) was a little ballsy,” Ebert said. “I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to get Dale, but in talking to (McDowell’s younger brother) Shane there, he had right-side tires going down, so his handling started getting away.
“And then I honestly felt like when I was second to Rice there I was actually gaining on him, so I was like, ‘All right, just chill out. Like, you got some time yet. Don’t burn it up.’ Then I saw him starting getting laid over (on the right-rear tire) … and it got real nerve-racking, leading the race there, coming to get the flag and just not knowing how much tire we had left.
“I won the International 500 Snowmobile race, a cross-country 500-mile race, and I remember with like 20 miles left, coming to the checkered flag, I knew I was leading, and I’m like, ‘What’s that noise? What’s that vibration? I feel like that’s a little different, man.’ And tonight, I’m like, ‘Man, I feel like my right-rear is starting to shake,’ but I’m like, ‘Well, at this point, that was the white flag, so if it blows I’m going to burn this thing down and hopefully I can scatter a debris field and limp this thing to the checkered flag.’”
Ebert’s rally impressed Richards.
“He did a good job coming back up there because he just took his time passing cars, and when it was time to go, he went,” Richards said. “I knew his car was good, and the rubber here, it’s wider, where you can enter and you can almost get against somebody and get your left sides in the rubber, which is how you make a pass. He did it perfectly on them restarts.”
Richards was the first person to congratulate Ebert when he pulled onto the winner’s stage. He saw the joy in Ebert’s eyes, knowing how much Ebert and his team had put in to reach this moment.
“He’s tickled to death, which we’re tickled for him, because he has worked hard,” Richards said. “And he’s doing it with a young group that doesn’t have much experience. They’re new to this, and they’re absorbing what they’re learning.”
Ebert made sure he mentioned all the members of his crew: Shelby Cooper, who is following in the footsteps of Dennis Erb Jr.’s longtime mechanic Heather Lyne as a female wrenching on Dirt Late Models, Hunter Schutte, Ben Ahlers and, for the Topless 100 weekend and other selected events, Jeff McGee, who works on Sheppard’s family-owned No. B5 machines.
“And I keep forgetting to thank my wife, Ashley, and then my mom and my dad,” Ebert said. “They got me to this point in my career, and they come down and help a lot whenever I run around home. I wouldn’t be the man I am today without them.”
The satisfaction of finally winning a Super Late Model feature was evident in Ebert’s postrace demeanor.
“Like my mentor Dick Trickle always said, you can’t win your second, fifth, 10th, 100th or 1000th (race) until you win your first,” said Ebert, whose father, Russ, worked for the legendary late Wisconsin driver during his ASA days.
Certifying himself with a high-level victory also had Ebert holding his head high.
“I’m just trying to earn respect amongst my fellow competitors,” Ebert said. “You know, I think at first I was definitely a little wild, learning a lot, but yeah, I finally won a Super Late Model race. I mean, the first one, to be a crown jewel, is incredible.
“I think now,” he added with a smile, “I can officially say that I’m a Late Model driver.”
