Volunteer Speedway
Owens adds memorable victory to brilliant career
By Kyle McFadden
DirtonDirt staff reporter
Jimmy Owens and his supporters. (Austin Bumgarner)
BULLS GAP, Tenn. (Oct. 22) — Jimmy Owens has had some incredible achievements in his illustrious racing career. Charging from 13th to win the 2007 World 100. Overtaking Scott Bloomquist and Tony Stewart on the same lap to take the lead for good, in a race he started 19th, to capture 2009’s Dream. Winning three consecutive Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series titles, then adding a fourth seven years later to affirm his longevity. | RaceWire
Thursday’s FloRacing Night in America victory at Volunteer Speedway, the last of four tracks he once considered home, now ranks among the most impactful moments of his Hall of Fame journey with clearly more still in the tank.
A 93-event national touring drought spanning two years and eight months — his longest since running such races regularly in 2007 — snapped, along with a season-long winless streak. A photo finish decided by 0.002 of a second. A victory lane celebration so chaotic that credentialed photographers and teeming fans clashed over space to capture the moment.
And, perhaps what Owens will remember most fondly, the loudest ovation he’s ever received as a driver.
“If you go by percentage of people, we’re going to go with ‘yeah,’ ” Owens said, adding, “I mean, you win at Eldora, you can’t beat that crowd.”
But at Volunteer? The reception carried a sentiment all its own.
“They were probably a little bit louder than when we won our first Late Model race,” said Owens following his first national touring victory since February 2024 at East Bay Raceway Park and his first FloRacing triumph since October 2022 at 411 Motor Speedway. “It was definitely cool. The way everybody was giving us high-fives and all that stuff, it was awesome.”
Rumors of Volunteer's impending sale raised the possibility that Thursday marked the track’s final race, heightening the emotion that erupted among the East Tennessee faithful when Owens was declared the winner.
“We’ve had so many fans here and so much support at this track,” Owens said. “For it to maybe be the final race, it’s something. It’s awesome. Hopefully it ain’t. We’ll live to play another day here, hopefully.”
Owens led all 51 laps, an extra circuit inadvertently added to the scheduled 50-lapper because of a scoring malfunction. He narrowly averted a nightmare scenario, holding off Jonathan Davenport by two-hundredths of a second after leading by two-tenths on lap 50.
Before the closing dramatics, Davenport felt the pull of an Owens victory — until he had a chance to snatch it away.
“Seeing Jimmy up front, it’s kind of like it’s meant to be. Like I told them, when I was running fourth or fifth, I was rooting for Jimmy,” Davenport said. “But then once I got to second (following the final restart with six laps left), I changed it up a little bit. I was going to win myself.”
He nearly made Owens pay for the extra lap and his uncertainty about how to tackle turns three and four.
“I didn’t know what to do when I was leading. I knew one and two was pretty high-side dominant, but three and four, you could run everywhere,” Owens said. “That last lap, I went high, and I probably shouldn’t have. I probably should have gone through the center. Live and learn, but we held on.”
Under the series rulebook, a race run one lap short or long ends when the checkered flag is displayed. Owens learned of the scoring issue well after the checkers but recalled something unusual entering the final circuit.
“I did notice when I went under the flagman for the white flag, he wasn’t waving the flag. He just had it in his hand,” Owens said. “I wasn’t really concerned with it, but it was something I noticed, now that you bring that up.”
The winner's defining move came much earlier in the evening during his heat race. On the fourth lap, Owens stuck the bottom through turns one and two to draw alongside Devin Moran, then slid cleanly across Moran’s nose at the other end.
It was vintage Owens: patient enough to find an opening, forceful enough to capitalize.
“Qualifying and heats anymore are just everything. You’ve got to put yourself in a spot to win it to be able to win it,” Owens said. “It’s really, really hard to come from the back at a lot of places and get anything done.”
The heat victory affirmed what he felt in his Rocket Chassis XR2.
“I thought, ‘Well, I know we’ve got a pretty good hot rod now if I just don’t mess it up,’ ” he said.
The performance came amid a season of inconsistent crew help and difficulty finding rhythm and, at times, motivation.
“You get what you give. If you put a lot of effort into it, a lot of times you’ll get rewarded,” said Owens, who won the Hunt the Front Super Dirt Series championship last season. “We’ve had help, not had help, and then just trying hard to get motivated and stuff. It has been tough, but we were able to get her done tonight.”
Equipment problems discovered after he missed Eldora’s Dream and World 100 features helped explain some of his missing speed.
“It was amazing what we found,” Owens said. “But it paid off. You could tell tonight.”
Jeff Hodges of Hodges Farms, Bobby Koehler of Koehler Motorsports and the McCarter brothers — Mack and Pierce — have all played substantial roles in keeping Owens afloat.
“A little bit from everybody helps a lot,” Owens said. “We’ve not gotten any major, major sponsor, but if we could get something like that, who knows? We might be back on tour or something like that.”
Even amid the drought, Owens wouldn’t characterize the season as disappointing. What bothers him more, he explained away from the camera, is how some announcers and others portray him as a 54-year-old whose success ought to come as a surprise.
“It’s hard to keep your confidence up when — I don’t know how you would say it — when we have interviews like this, asking questions like this,” Owens said plainly yet respectfully. “Nothing against that. … When people make it sound like it’s a miracle you’re even racing: that part just really — they need to cut that out. You need to quit doing that.”
For all his program’s uncertainty, Owens hasn’t questioned whether he can still win.
“No, I never doubted it at all,” said Owens, who rose to fame was a modified wunderkind at Volunteer and beyond 30 years ago. “I still feel like I’m as competitive as — maybe not ever was, but I feel like I can get her done.”
Returning to a national tour depends on funding and his appetite for the road.
He’s scaled back considerably the last two seasons, from 61 national touring appearances in 2024 to 31 last year and 13 this season. His overall schedule has shrunk just as sharply: 82 events last season, only 30 this year. Before this season, he had entered at least 53 events annually since 2008, according to schedules on his website, with that previous low coming in 2011.
“It’s kind of fun hitting and missing, being home with the family and all that stuff, too,” Owens said. “It doesn’t bother me to cut back either way.”
His interest in touring again changes daily. Even his next appearance remains undecided.
“My web guys would like to choke me half the time. They’re always on me: ‘Where are you going to go? Where are you going?’ ” Owens said. “I’m like, ‘I don’t know. Wherever they take me.’ ”
At a track he hopes he hasn’t helped send off, Owens delivered a night he’ll have a hard time matching in significance and sentiment.
“I don’t see this one getting beaten for a while,” Owens said when asked where the victory ranks among his most memorable. “For it to be such a close race, to be part of a good race and just be up there mixing it up with the best guys in the country, knowing we can still do it.”
