Eldora Speedway
Hoffman's World-winning rally in the Nick of time
By Kyle McFadden
DirtonDirt staff reporter
Team owner Tye Twarog and Nick Hoffman in victory lane. (Zach Yost)
ROSSBURG, Ohio (Sept. 12) — Nick Hoffman had made this drive before.
In the previous four Eldora Speedway crown jewels, he’d finished third, fifth, third and third while gaining a combined 36 positions. The results affirmed the burgeoning Mooresville, N.C., superstar’s ability to make deep rallies to become a bona fide Eldora major-event contender. | RaceWire
The finishes also revealed a pattern — not necessarily a bad habit, but a tendency that continually tested his father’s patience. The 34-year-old Hoffman would bide his time, begin moving forward and arrive near the front only after his window to finish the job had all but closed.
So when Hoffman found himself facing a mountainous 10-second deficit to leader Ryan Gustin, seemingly mired in eighth with 40 laps remaining, father Darrell Hoffman knew his son would eventually pick up the pace. He also feared time was, once again, slipping away.
“He’s really bad for riding, and we always worry that he’s going to run out of time,” the elder Hoffman said, shaking his head as he recounted the characteristic that has made so many of his son’s Eldora charges equal parts riveting and exasperating. “It was the same deal there. It looked like he was about to run out of time.”
By lap 76, Hoffman had sliced the deficit in half and surged into fourth. Still, five seconds and two of the sport's best — Jonathan Davenport and Ricky Thornton Jr. — separated him from Gustin. Five laps later, with fewer than 20 remaining, the gap had dwindled to less than three seconds.
“Then he got to where he was on the same straightaway as they were,” the elder Hoffman said. “Then it looked like, man, he’s really running them down — and he actually got to them.”
Davenport eventually fell by the wayside with a flat tire on lap 88, and Gustin’s race unraveled shortly thereafter with driveline failure. But even had both remained at full strength, Hoffman’s march toward the lead appeared undeniable.
The proof was plastered across Hoffman’s driver-side door.
By the finish, the left side of his Tye Twarog-owned machine was caked in Eldora’s light-brown clay, a stark contrast to every other car in the field. Hoffman had spent much of the 100-lapper tucked so tightly against the infield wall that moisture left by the day’s rain splashed onto his door as he carved out a groove virtually no one else sought.
The extreme inside route wasn’t always the fastest way around the half-mile. And that was precisely the point. Hoffman traded early urgency for late-race leverage. By staying as low as possible, he kept his left-side tires cool and preserved traction-providing “edges” he would need when he finally unleashed his charge.
“That was all the traction right there,” Hoffman said, gesturing toward the mud-caked door. “I was splashing through the mud. There was so much mud right against the infield wall, and it was a fine line between running through it and not dragging mud onto the racetrack, because then it kind of ruins it for a couple laps. I was as low as I could possibly get.
“I was just trying to keep my left-side tires cool the entire race, so that’s why it looks like that. It was just a matter of knowing I still had edges left on my tires.”
Hoffman had spent exactly a decade working toward a drive like this through one of Eldora’s cutthroat crown jewel fields — 21 attempts across the World 100, Dream, Dirt Track World Championship and 2020’s Stream Invitational, many of them part-time efforts until Twarog gave him his first full-time shot in 2023. Each trip taught him a little more about unlocking the secrets of the daunting half-mile.
He studied Dale McDowell’s mastery of the extreme inside lane — the very route he banked on — and picked Jonathan Davenport’s brain about building a car for Eldora’s demands and pacing it across 100 laps. He pitted alongside Davenport’s Double L Motorsports operation during many of his recent trips to Eldora. Coincidentally, he didn’t this year, though Hoffman emphasized that he remains “buddies” with the 11-time Eldora major-event winner.
Hoffman also spent years trying to make a Late Model perform like the modifieds he had dominated for so long. Darrell recognized Saturday’s performance as the clearest indication yet that his son had finally found that familiar feel.
“He drives it just like he did the modified — straight and driving off,” Darrell said. “He makes so much speed right through the center. That’s how he made his money with his modified, and that’s what he worked on. … When it gets slick, he showed you what it’ll do.”
The question was never whether Hoffman could drive a Late Model forward. It was whether he could make one react precisely enough to execute his brand of driving throughout an entire Eldora 100-lapper.
“He always felt like, ‘I don’t have that Late Model just where I want it yet,’ ” Darrell said. “I knew that when he got exactly what he was looking for, they were in trouble. He was already right there, and you could see it over those last 12 laps. That thing was good.”
On Saturday, those years of development and study converged.
“I cruised for a long time,” Hoffman said. “I said in one of the interviews that I rode around there like I was Dale McDowell, right inside the infield wall, for the longest time. I knew that wasn’t the fastest way around the racetrack, but it bought me time and kept my left-side tires cool the entire race.”
Hoffman erased 9.197 seconds of Gustin’s advantage over 29 circuits, pulling to within 0.932 seconds by the time Davenport’s flat tire produced the lap-88 caution. While advancing from eighth to third, Hoffman gained an average of more than three-tenths of a second per lap on the leader.
Any concern Darrell had that his son had waited too long disappeared, too, with the caution. Once the field regrouped, he knew Hoffman had saved enough to leave no doubt.
“When they threw that caution, I knew he was going to drive by them because he’d been riding around down there saving his tires, and those guys were running out in the middle, burning their stuff up,” Darrell said. “I knew he was good then.”
“I got clear and made it to fourth or fifth — fifth, I think — and then I ran J.D. down pretty quickly and was able to get by him,” Hoffman said. “We’re buddies and stuff, so I felt like once I really showed him a nose, he kind of let me go.
“Then (Davenport) got that flat, or whatever caused that caution with 13 to go. I had already kind of caught the leaders, too. At least I could see Gustin as I was coming down the frontstretch, so I knew I had run him down from a pretty long way back.”
Once the lap-88 caution erased what remained of Gustin’s lead, Hoffman launched into turn one and mounted a run he believed would have propelled him past Gustin even had the leader maintained his speed.
“Man, I hammered turn one pretty hard,” Hoffman said. “I ran off in there really hard and was able to get to his door quickly. Then, obviously, he broke off turn two, but I was like, ‘Man, this is my race to take now.’ ”
One final restart placed reigning World 100 winner Ricky Thornton Jr. alongside Hoffman. Thornton had been charging around the outside to that point, but Hoffman had studied the narrow cushion in turns three and four under caution and understood the risk Thornton would have to take.
“I rolled around here and was just scanning the racetrack,” Hoffman said. “It was so thin down here. If he was going to run the cushion, he was going to have to hit the fence, and 90 percent of the time, you knock the spoiler off and then you’re not any good.
“I wasn’t going to try to protect or anything like that,” he added. “I was just circling, trying to make as fast of laps as I could. I think (modified driver) Charlie Medford or one of those guys said my fastest lap was around lap 91 or something.”
Indeed, Hoffman’s quickest circuit of 17.143 seconds came on lap 91 and ranked fifth-fastest among the top-10 laps, all of which otherwise came within the opening 15 circuits. Thornton’s fastest lap came on the 89th circuit, but his 17.453-second lap was still more than three-tenths slower. Gustin hadn’t run better than an 18.387 from lap 80 onward.
That late-race speed represented the clearest difference between this pursuit and Hoffman’s previous Eldora charges. He hadn’t exhausted his car reaching the front. With fewer than 10 laps remaining in a 100-lap crown jewel, Hoffman remained capable of producing his fastest circuit of the night.
“I was hustling pretty hard, just trying to make speed, get myself as far out there as I could and hope there wasn’t another caution,” Hoffman said. “You’re just clicking them off. I’m looking at the board like, ‘All right, 10 to go, nine to go,’ all the way through.
“Then you get the white, and it’s like, ‘Just don’t let anything stupid happen here. Make sure I can make it back around.’ I didn’t start celebrating until I was in turn two, making sure this deal was actually over. It all happened so fast. It’s just wild.”
The victory completed a week that even Hoffman acknowledged would have sounded too storybook-like had someone attempted to script it.
He opened the week by winning Sunday’s Baltes Classic, ending a nearly three-month winless stretch. There, he discovered an ideal qualifying and heat-race package that positioned him third in World 100 preliminary points. On Thursday, Spire Motorsports announced it had hired him to launch a full-time national Dirt Late Model effort in 2027.
Then Hoffman delivered Twarog the crowning achievement of their four-year partnership, which will conclude at November’s FloRacing Night in America finale at Senoia (Ga.) Raceway.
“It’s unreal,” Hoffman said. “You couldn’t script any of it better. They probably need to write a book about this one for me.”
Though they have two months left together, winning for Twarog gave Hoffman a profound sense of closure. He had fulfilled the Coshocton, Ohio, car owner’s life-long racing dream and left Twarog emotional in victory lane.
“We still have plenty of races left, but at the end of the day, I was able to get him the biggest win of his Late Model career,” Hoffman said. “I know you saw him on stage and how much it meant to him. That made me really proud to get it for him.
“At the end of the day, this basically solidifies his Late Model career and even mine. I could retire tomorrow and be happy knowing my career was successful.”
Hoffman and his team remained very much awake well into the wee hours — until at least 5 a.m. — celebrating through the night. Even when Eldora shut off its lights around 4 a.m., the crew lowered the liftgate on the Twarog Racing toter and turned on lights of its own.
Hoffman remained in his firesuit and a NOS Energy Drink hat, proudly wearing his bedazzled World 100 ring. Twarog seemingly couldn’t stop reminding himself and everyone around him of what they had accomplished: “We won the World 100.”
“You never know if it’ll happen again, so you’ve got to cherish it while you can,” Hoffman said.
His father, however, doesn’t believe Saturday marked the culmination of his son’s ascent. Darrell's confidence carries weight because he isn’t one to make bold declarations.
The elder Hoffman came from humble beginnings in racing, working for years as an engine builder and one of three employees on Mittler Brothers Motorsports’ Craftsman Truck Series program before moving his family to North Carolina in 2002, when Nick was 10, and before now working as an instructor at NASCAR's Technical Institute.
Now that he has watched his son find the feel he spent years seeking in the Late Model, Darrell believes the breakthrough represents the beginnings of something special.
“I can pretty much guarantee you this ain’t the last one of these,” Darrell said. “He’s getting this car where he wants it — and you can see those guys are in trouble.”
