Kevin Kovac's Take Five
Take Five: Rumley pays tribute to late Ray Tucker
Kevin Rumley after a July 22 victory at Fairbury (Ill.) Speedway.
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: There hasn’t been much on the roof of the K&L Rumley Enterprises No. 6 driven by Hudson O’Neal for the past month except for one notable adornment: the name “Ray Tucker” in a script decal above the driver’s side window. It’s an ode to one of North Carolina’s winningest Dirt Late Model racers — and a driver who earned many of his 478 career victories piloting the iconic No. 6 machine fielded by the late Lee Roy Rumley. After Tucker died July 13 at the age of 68 following a battle with cancer, Rumley’s son Kevin, who has carried on his family’s racing tradition since his father’s passing in 2020, decided to stick Tucker’s name on his car beginning with last month’s FloRacing Night in America event at Fairbury (Ill.) Speedway “So when I saw the pictures (of Tucker) on Facebook, all the old pictures, a lot of memories came back and we had to do something to honor him and his family,” Rumley said. “I did (the name on the roof) before we went to the funeral and showed everybody a picture, and I think it went a long way. I think they appreciated it.” O’Neal won that first night out at Fairbury carrying Tucker’s name, which gave Rumley another dose of nostalgia. “When (Tucker’s) dad (racer Donald Tucker) passed away, we put a little memorial sticker on our car for him and we won at Atomic (Speedway) the next week, a Lucas Oil race, with (Jonathan) Davenport in 2016,” recalled Rumley, who has watched O’Neal tally nothing but podium finishes in the six full-field features he’s run with Tucker’s name on the roof (three wins, two seconds, one third).
No. 2: Kevin Rumley’s memories of Ray Tucker run deep. He was an eager youngster helping out in the shop and at the track while Tucker spent most of the period from 1983-'94 driving his father’s No. 6. “I remember when I was a kid, we would go to the store every night during a break from working on the car and I would always ride with Ray and get some drinks and stuff,” Rumley said. “Ray was the first really good driver my dad had. He was a gasser, but he could run the bottom and park on the bottom. He was a very smart racer. He could take care of the race car and go when he needed to.” And Tucker’s work ethic made an impression on Rumley. “There was nothing lazy about him,” Rumley said. “They felt like they could outwork the competition, so that was very instrumental for me early in life. I definitely appreciate all the wisdom and everything I’ve learned from the Tucker family.”
No. 3: One memory Rumley offered of Tucker’s hard-nosed nature: “He was very stern … so one time when he was driving my dad’s car at 311 (Motor) Speedway (in Madison, N.C.), we broke a rocker arm and he ran the bottom and people couldn’t get around him. They was trying to beat the quarter-panel off, and somehow he wrecked four cars behind him. Then he got out (after the race) and went to each one of them’s window and said, pretty much, ‘You better not touch my race car again.’ There were no more problems. He was tough. No one messed with him.”
No. 4: Speaking of Kevin Rumley’s No. 6, there’s another detail on the car that I’ve noticed: the Longhorn Chassis feature winner stickers that are displayed on the roll bars above O’Neal. I can’t say I’ve seen many other Longhorn campaigners with the decals on their machines, but Rumley is certainly embracing the opportunity to stick them on his car — to the tune of nine so far with O’Neal enjoying so much success in the car this season. It’s kind of an old-school feel for me; I recall feature win stickers from chassis builders being a pretty big deal in Northeast modified racing in the ‘80s when I was a young fan. I’d see a bunch of win stickers on a guy’s quarterpanel and would immediately know he must be pretty darn good.
No. 5: The top three finishers in Wednesday’s World of Outlaws Late Model Series feature at Southern Iowa Speedway in Oskaloosa, Iowa— winner Tyler Erb, runner-up Ethan Dotson and third-place Dustin Sorensen — certainly produced a fun podium photo shoot. They’re all buddies and WoO regulars who are close in age, and they joked around with Sorensen and Dotson holding Erb horizontally for a picture. Erb added to the scene by hamming it up by holding a victory cigar he received from photographer Mike Ruefer to his mouth. (And speaking of cigars, the front of the new driver uniform Erb wore at Oskaloosa sported a cartoon dog with a cigar in its mouth; I thought it was Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, but Erb said it was drawn by a little girl and selected as the winning entry in a firesuit-design contest his team ran on Facebook.)
