West Virginia Motor Speedway

Under microscope, WVMS crew provides worthy oval

October 18, 2026, 6:58 am

By Kyle McFadden

DirtonDirt staff reporter

The WVMS track crew (front left): Mackie Flood, Joe George, Robert Phillips and Danny Staten. (DirtonDirt)

MINERAL WELLS, W.Va. (Oct. 17) — Mackie Flood and the West Virginia Motor Speedway track crew don’t need reminding. They know the entire dirt racing industry is watching closely — some with curiosity, others with skepticism — as the track hosts this weekend’s 46th annual ARP Dirt Track World Championship.

Can the third-mile oval deliver a race worthy of a $100,000 winner’s purse with the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series championship on the line? Can one of Dirt Late Model racing’s longstanding crown jewels thrive at WVMS?

Much of the responsibility for answering those questions rests with Flood and his crew.

“When you do something like this, everybody’s watching,” Flood said. “We create the dance floor here for the racers to show their talent. If we don’t create a dance floor, they don’t have anything to dance on. All the pressure’s on us. Everybody up there paid ticket prices to come here and watch this race. They’re going to blame us if it’s a bad show.”

After both 25-lap semifeatures Saturday, Flood and his crew — Robert Phillips, Joe George and Danny Staten — gathered outside victory lane and approached each podium finisher for an honest assessment of the track surface.

“I went to the top three tonight. The consensus with all of them: ‘Don’t do anything to the racetrack. It’s perfect,’ ” Flood said. “That means a lot coming from some of the top guys in the sport. They do this every weekend.”

Ricky Thornton Jr. appreciated both the surface and the willingness to ask.

“I’ll give Mike (Hurley) and them credit,” Thornton said. “They asked me, they asked Devin, they asked Dillon, all of us after the feature, ‘What can we do to be better for tomorrow?’ Most places, they really don’t care.

“I thought the racetrack was awesome. Dillon passed a bunch of cars. Max (Blair) ran fifth from 16th (actually 14th), so he passed a bunch of cars. There was passing going on. If you’re better, it might take you a lap or two, but you could figure out how to pass a guy.”

Of course, Flood doesn’t assume the third-mile oval is perfect. Even a night of praise gives him something to improve upon.

“I think every time we race on it, we learn something. We learn something different we can do to help it: sheepfooting more, maybe not sheepfooting as much, blading it one more time, plowing and putting more water on it,” Flood said. “You learn something new every time, and weather dictates a lot of that.”

And Saturday brought another lesson.

“Without the support classes, it took a little bit longer to clean up,” Flood said. “I learned something from that tonight.”

That eagerness to keep learning offers a snapshot of just how determined Flood and the WVMS track crew are to deliver the best possible experience for drivers, fans, officials, event partners and everyone else.

“This group had a lot of pressure put on us by this race coming back. A lot of people were skeptical about the abilities here, everything here, from the grounds to the racetrack,” Flood said. “I didn’t sleep a wink last night. My wife will tell you my brain works constantly when it comes to this stuff, because I take pride in this.”

The weather gave him plenty more to lose sleep over. At least 4 inches of rain fell during the week, flooding portions of the property and leaving Flood and his crew with a delicate balance: drawing moisture out of the surface while keeping more from getting in.

“When we first got here, it was very wet because of all the weather,” Flood said. “We started on it Monday. We plowed all day long just to aerate it enough to get the firmness back in the racetrack. After that, we had to keep sealing the racetrack back up because every other night it would rain.”

Each round of rain threatened to undo the crew’s progress. Leaving the surface open would allow more water to soak in, potentially creating problems that would be much harder to correct.

“It made it even harder to keep working it because you had to keep repeating everything and sealing the racetrack off to make sure we didn’t get too much water in it while we had it open. Then we’d really have a problem,” Flood said. “Luckily, we were able to keep it sealed up. No soft spots, no holes.”

By Saturday night, Flood estimated the crew had put in more than 40 or 50 hours for the week. The glassy smooth surface gave little indication of that struggle — or the work beyond the racetrack needed to keep preparations moving.

“Like today, I’m out here working on the racetrack, and they’re fixing the water pump,” Flood said. “It’s not a one-man show. It’s a team effort.”

Rain wasn’t the last weather hurdle before Sunday’s 100-lap finale. With the surface drying more slowly and temperatures hovering around freezing, Flood planned to go light on watering overnight to avoid a frozen racetrack Sunday morning.

“I’m going to till the racetrack and maybe put a little bit of water on it. I don’t want to put too much water on it because of the temperatures. I don’t want it to freeze,” Flood said. “There are a lot of different things you’ve got to think about when you’re doing that. Like I said, if you’ve got a frozen racetrack in the morning, that’s not good.

“The weekend’s not over, but I think we proved tonight that we can adapt and overcome what we’ve been through in the last couple of weeks with the rain and everything,” Flood said. “Everybody’s come together and gotten everything moved around. Everybody’s worked together really well.”

After a week spent fighting the weather, the smooth surface was more than a relief. It was the kind of racetrack he takes pride in preparing.

“Some people like character in racetracks. I’m not one of them. I like it smooth. I like it when it looks like that,” Flood said. “I think the more we race on this racetrack, the better it’s going to be each time, because we’re going to finesse it a little bit more.”

Getting WVMS to that point has been an education for Flood, whose background was in building gokart tracks throughout the Southeast. Before the reconfigured oval opened last year, track owner Mike Hurley called with a request that would put those skills to a bigger test.

“He called me after he got this place almost ready and said, ‘Hey, I need you to come see if you can do a racetrack for me up here,’ ” Flood said. “ ‘Well, I haven’t done many car tracks.’ ‘Well, it can’t be much different.’ I said, ‘It just may take me a little bit longer.’ ”

Traveling from Campobello, S.C., Flood helps with as many WVMS events as he can make. Along the way, he’s leaned on experienced track preparers and drivers to help him understand what the surface needs.

Ahead of June 12-13’s World of Outlaws Late Model Dirt Series weekend, Fairbury Speedway’s Chad Bauman, who also heads track preparation at the Wild West Shootout, spent the week working with Flood and the WVMS crew.

“They showed me a lot that I was able to build off of. I took their knowledge, and it helped me a lot,” Flood said. “When you’re around other people like that who have done it a lot, they’ve already had that learning curve and can show us.”

One lesson was how to build a cushion, something Flood hadn’t needed to do for go-karts. On Saturday, he was soaking in more pointers from National Dirt Late Model Hall of Fame driver and occasional Lucas Oil official Earl Pearson Jr.

“I got to work tonight with Earl Pearson Jr. Earl pointed some things out from a driver’s standpoint, and a Hall of Famer’s, that you don’t look at all the time,” Flood said. “Every time we race or other people are involved, whether it’s the World of Outlaws or Lucas or whoever, you learn something from somebody who’s been doing it for a long time.”

Flood’s track-prep education also included help from longtime friend Scott Bloomquist. About six years ago, while Flood was putting new dirt on Cherokee Speedway, the late Hall of Famer — never shy to give his two cents on track prep — showed him how to shape progressive banking.

“I’d never put progressive banking in a racetrack before, because you don’t put progressive banking in a go-kart track,” Flood said. “Scott came with me and got on the blade of the motor grader and showed me how to put progressive banking in a racetrack.”

Bloomquist remained a resource whenever Flood needed track-prep advice.

“After that, if I had a question or something, I’d FaceTime him, and he’d say, ‘You know how to do this s--- You’ve done it before,’ ” Flood said. “He would help do anything.”

Those lessons now guide Flood’s work at WVMS, where Saturday gave him something to celebrate before Sunday puts a full week’s preparation through its biggest test.

“I’m celebrating tonight. We’ve got to celebrate tonight. We got the first night. I think the first night here was very successful,” Flood said. “I think it’s going to race better tomorrow night than what it showed tonight. For 100 laps, they’ve got to conserve. I think we can put on a good show tomorrow.”

For the crew, Sunday’s stakes extend to solidifying the DTWC’s long-term future at WVMS. The event has changed venues seven times over the last 26 years, counting its two stops at WVMS, which hosted the race on its former 5/8-mile oval in 2000 and ’10.

“We hope it comes back,” George said. “We hope we please them in order for them to come back.”

Editor's note: Additional information from Kevin Kovac.