Kevin Kovac's Take Five
Take Five: Turning back clock at West Plains
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: Time was turned back Saturday at Legit Raceway Park in West Plains, Mo. After Terry Phillips of Springfield, Mo., won the POWRi Heartland Late Model Tour’s Steve Rushin Memorial over Billy Moyer of Batesville, Ark., you might have thought it was actually … 1999, when Phillips and Moyer finished one-two in the Show-Me 100 at the same track when it was then known at West Plains Motor Speedway. Both drivers, of course, are now Dirt Late Model Hall of Famers, and, with Phillips celebrating his 60th birthday earlier this year on June 24, they’re both now sixtysomethings (Moyer turns 69 on Oct. 19). Pretty neat night for the fans at Legit to see a pair of Midwest legends reprise their exact finishing order in the track’s crown jewel event 27 years ago.
No. 2: Phillips, who earlier this season also won a Dirt Late Model feature at Legit in his Mann Motorsport entry, noted in his victory lane comments after his $5,014 victory on Saturday that the slick, 3/8-mile oval happens to be perfect for veterans like him and Moyer. “It seems like when we come here, it’s one of the last tracks where you drive off the right-front (tire) and us old guys tend to do that all right,” said Phillips, who added a third-place finish (behind winner Kyle Beard of Trumann, Ark., and Moyer) in Sunday’s rain-postponed 30-lap feature at Legit. He also called racing for the lead in Saturday’s 40-lapper with Moyer “a lot of fun” because Moyer “is a hero of mine” and “we raced each other clean. That’s how it’s supposed to be. I really appreciate that.”
No. 3: Alabama driver Sam Seawright is mourning the passing of his best friend Buckner Anderson, a 21-year-old occasional Dirt Late Model racer from Scottsboro, Ala., who died Friday. The 23-year-old Seawright said Anderson had a full-time job working for his father but “came with me off-and-on” to assist Seawright’s Coltman Farms Racing team as a crew member. “Words can’t describe how much I’m going to miss this fella,” Seawright wrote in a Facebook post remembering Anderson. “You never failed to make me smile, no matter how bad of a day I was having. I’ll cherish every moment we spent together, buddy.” Condolences go out to Seawright and Anderson’s family and friends dealing with his loss.
No. 4. There have been some extremely notable heartbreaking defeats in Dirt Late Model racing this season — Trey Mills’s flip out of the ballpark while battling for the lead in a March Lucas Oil Series feature at Golden Isles Speedway and Ryan Gustin’s restart mechanical failure while leading the World 100 immediately come to mind. Saturday night produced another when Michael Leach of Sun River, Mont., came a couple corners from winning the MARS-sanctioned FALS Frenzy finale at Fairbury (Ill.) Speedway. The 22-year-old grabbed the lead from Jason Feger of Bloomington, Ill., on lap 11 of the 50-lapper, was running the race of his life, mastering the cushion of the quarter-mile bullring lap after lap to repel Feger’s comeback attempts. But entering turn three on the final lap Leach’s right-rear tire blew out as laid into the cushion for the last time, sending him into the outside wall — and nearly upside down — as Feger went on to the $10,000 victory. Leach was left with a 13th-place finish, but the preternaturally upbeat kid seemed to bounce back well from the disappointment with comments he relayed afterward. “I really thought we had it in the bag and all of a sudden the car yanked right,” Leach wrote on Facebook. “Hate it for my guys, but either way we had a hell of a battle with our good friend and mentor Jason Feger, I always knew that me and Feger would be racing for a win around Fairbury someday … at least we put on a show!”
No. 5: After driving a brand-new Briggs Transport Longhorn Chassis to a strong runner-up finish in Saturday’s Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series-sanctioned Pittsburgher finale at Pittsburgh’s Pennsylvania Motor Speedway, Tim McCreadie of Watertown, N.Y., will bypass this weekend’s Clash on the Wabash at Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio, to return to his Northeast big-block modified roots. He’s heading for Super DIRT Week at Oswego (N.Y.) Speedway to compete in the $50,000-to-win Billy Whittaker Cars 200, big-block modified racing’s most prestigious event. McCreadie, 52, has a ride in a modified fielded by veteran New York racer Vinny Vitale that will carry the No. 9 as a throwback to his legendary late father “Barefoot” Bob McCreadie, who won the 200 in 1986 when it was was contested at the Syracuse Mile. T-Mac will chase his 20th career start in the Super DIRT Week headliner, including 16 at Syracuse from 1997-2015 and three since the event was relocated to Oswego in ’16. It’s a race that has eluded McCreadie, who finished second at the Mile in 2009 and at Oswego has placed fifth (’16), seventh (’17) and 31st (’23).
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