Lincoln Park Speedway
Full-fender cars make inroads at Lincoln Park
By Bryan Ault
Special to DirtonDirt
Lincoln Park Speedway in Putnamville, Ind. (joshjamesartwork.com)
PUTNAMVILLE, Ind. (Sept. 23) — Indiana is known for being a basketball hub, with the famous movie Hoosiers starring the late Gene Hackman cementing the state’s legacy as a hoops state. Fans flock to watch the Indiana Hoosiers, Purdue Boilermakers, NBA’s Pacers, and more recently, the WNBA’s Indiana Fever and superstar Caitlin Clark, as well as packing high school gyms on wintry nights to watch dribbles, passes and shots. | RaceWire
In nearly equal measure, Indiana’s auto racing is famed for its open-wheel varieties, especially with the legendary Indianapolis Motor Speedway and dirt tracks such as Bloomington (Ind.) Speedway providing a perfect environment for sprint car and midget drivers to test their mettle during events like Indiana Sprint Week.
Indiana’s Dirt Late Model competitors, and tracks who run theh division, often play second fiddle.
But if you poll Dirt Late Model drivers, many say they’d love to have more races in the Hoosier State. Bobby Pierce of Oakwood, Ill., who took home the checkered flag at Wednesday’s FloRacing Night in America event at Lincoln Park Speedway, certainly does. He enjoyed navigating the track’s heavy cushion that sprint car racers enjoy so much, and with a few tweaks, Pierce thinks Lincoln Park has a chance to host more full-fendered races in the future and Devin Moran of Dresden, Ohio, who led the first 10 laps at Lincoln Park, agrees.
“I love coming to Indiana,” said Moran, who heads into the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series-sanctioned Jackson 100 weekend at Brownstown (Ind.) Speedway as a three-time winner of the track's Indiana Icebreaker. “I feel like I tell people all the time, Indiana is underrated, and people ain't going to like it, but Illinois is a little bit overrated. I wish we could come to Indiana a little bit more than what we do.”
Dirt Late Model racing at Lincoln Park has been a rarity in recent years. Until Wednesday, the 5/16-mile oval hadn’t held a Super Late Model race since a 2012 DIRTcar Summer Nationals event.
Outside of the Lucas Oil tour’s at Circle City Raceway in Indianapolis, the Indiana Icebreaker and this weekend’s Jackson 100, major Dirt Late Model races in the entire state have been a rarity.
The 2026 racing season is the first in decades — or maybe ever — that Lincoln Park, Paragon (Ind.) Speedway, and Bloomington (Ind.) Speedway all hosted Super Late Models, with the FloRacing tour and James Essex’s Northern Allstars Late Model Series backing the shows.
The World of Outlaws Late Model Series hasn’t scheduled an Indiana oval for the past two seasons while racing in Illinois and Ohio on 22 occasions during that span.
In 2026, the DIRTcar Summer Nationals sanctioned 22 events in Ohio, Michigan and Illinois, with just two events in Indiana on the schedule at Haubstadt’s Tri-State Speedway and Montpelier Motor Speedway.
“Indiana needs more Super Late Model races,” Pierce said in the Lincoln Park pit after his $20,000 victory. “You know, Brownstown's kind of like the lone soldier here. Indiana needs it, and this track has good shape. Like, it's got an oval shape because a lot of times we go to tracks that are so circular and they just don't race well, but I think if they fix the banking a little bit, maybe take a little out on the top, I think it'll race really well.”
The curb in the upper grooves was difficult for throttle-smashers like SSI Motorsport’s Hudson O’Neal of Martinsville, Ind., who finished fifth after setting fast time. Crew chief Jason Durham and O’Neal were surveying some damage underneath the car as it was being raised on the trailer’s lift, noticing a couple of bumps and bruises on the rear of the frame.
“It was OK,” O’Neal said. “We just take different things than sprint cars do. That’s all there is to it. It’s not that it’s a bad racetrack or they didn’t do a good job. It’s just the nature of our race cars versus what they normally race here. Our race cars really aren't made be against a cushion like that. And it's fine when we do, but whenever it's live-or-die against that cushion, then you see spectacular things happen. It was a little rough-and-tumble. We’ve got quite a bit of stuff tore up, but that’s OK.”
Most drivers acknowledge that the cushion at Lincoln Park was treacherous, thanks in part to overcast skies and misty weather that kept moisture in a track that provided few opportunities for passing. The quarter-mile oval between Indianapolis and Terre Haute struggled to widen out, especially around the lower grooves.
“I've been here once in a modified,” Hoffman said. “It was a lot different than what it is now. Being as nice as I can, we were one-lane around the top there. The bottom, like, they must have watered the entry of (turn) three too much, and it was like a mud puddle. You couldn't even think about going down there.”
“They’ve got a big cup in the racetrack, so when all of us drivers were talking before the race, before even hot laps or anything, it was like, ‘We're going to be married up there,’ just because it is so banked at that very top and holds a curb up there,” Hoffman added. “A couple laps after a restart, you can make a little bit of speed, like middle-bottom, but pretty much after that, you better get back to that top and get back in line. So make those restarts pretty aggressive. We kind of knew what to expect, just looking at it visually, and that's exactly how it played out.”
Indeed, the curb in the corners threw drivers for a loop. Even third-place finisher Brandon Sheppard of New Berlin, Ill. struggled to tame the track’s tight confines.
“I didn't think I navigated it very well, honestly,” said Sheppard, who is accustomed to running in the upper grooves on his native Illinois bullrings. “It was like, if you hit (the curb) late, you got tight, and if you hit it too early, you got tight, so you’re flirting a fine line there when you got against it. And I couldn't steer real good there late in the race, so I was really kind of getting to it as easy as I could. We needed to be a little bit better, but all in all, I think we're definitely not going to hang our heads on third.”
Moran, who led 10 laps from the pole before a flat tire helped hand the lead to Pierce, believes Lincoln Park has a chance to host more Super Late Model races, especially if the track takes off a little bit of dirt off the upper crust.
“I can tell why sprint cars love it,” said Moran, who rebounded to finish eighth. “You know, it's got a massive curb and it's something we can definitely race on, but it's just a little tough, you know? It's got so much cup in it that we kind of just get in that cup and kind of ride it.
“It made it tough to pass, but it wasn't horrible. They moved the tires down (right after time trials) so we could at least get down there and try to move around, so, not my favorite, but definitely not my least favorite.”
