Inside Dirt Late Model Racing
Column: Illini connect lifts Herrington to new heights
In the immediate aftermath of his triumph in last Saturday’s 52nd National 100 finale at East Alabama Motor Speedway, Wil Herrington let all of his emotions loose. He climbed on his car’s roof and spiked his helmet. He pumped his fists toward the crowd. He shed tears as he talked about the biggest win of his career in an interview.
But the 30-year-old driver from Hawkinsville, Ga., didn’t have a special moment with his father, Glen, during the post-race celebration. At least not in front of the clicking cameras on the winner’s stage in Phenix City, Ala.
“He didn’t really say a whole lot in victory lane,” Herrington said of his 55-year-old dad, a veteran Southeast dirt-track racer who introduced Wil to the sport.
Probably two hours later, though, when father and son found themselves alone in the pit area after all the friends and supporters who helped them savor the $25,000 win in the 60-lap feature had left, the younger Herrington heard words from his dad that made him realize how much his accomplishment had touched his old man.
“After we finally got everything loaded up, it was just me and him standing there,” Herrington said, rehashing his unforgettable night at EAMS a few days later. “And he said, ‘I never would have thought we’d have our name on the list with all the people that have won this thing.’ I was like, ‘Me either.’ ”
Once Herrington returned home, he scanned over the drivers he joined as a winner of a race that’s one of the longest-running in Dirt Late Model history.
“I actually pulled it up last night just to see the names that have all won that thing,” Herrington said. “There’s some people who’ve done a lot of stuff in the dirt world on there.”
Bloomquist. Moyer. Purvis. Boggs. Moore. Owens. Davenport. McDowell. Madden. Overton. Hughes. Simmons. Mars. Eckert. Francis. An absolute constellation of superstars and all-time greats boasting resumes overflowing with championships and crown jewel victories.
And now Herrington’s name is at the top of the list as the latest winner, which is a bit surreal for a racer who grew up viewing the National 100 as a larger-than-life event.
“When I went there as a kid, you had Scott (Bloomquist), (Rick) Eckert, J.D. (Jonathan Davenport) in the Superman Barry Wright car,” Herrington said. “You never knew who you might show who might show up. My dad just raced locally, so I thought that was the coolest thing in the world to go there and see all them guys.
“Now that I’ve got out and raced a lot of big shows, I mean, I see that it probably wasn’t as big as what I thought it was but it meant a lot because we spent so much time going over there,” he continued. “I finally won the (Alabama) State race (at EAMS) in 2022 (a Southern All Star-sanctioned show) and that was a big deal, but I didn’t think that we could ever get the National 100.”
Herrington’s dream come true came in his 16th season of Dirt Late Model competition but just fifth as a Super Late Model regular, and notably with a team that’s based far from his native Southeast. He piloted a Rocket Chassis No. 33 fielded by Steve Lampley, a veteran racer and car owner from Benton, Ill. Herrington landed in the ride in late August, after multitime DIRTcar modified national champion Mike Harrison of Highland, Ill., decided to step away from the full-fender team to refocus on his modified efforts.
A Georgia boy with a Midwest team? Not exactly a pairing you’d draw up. Even Herrington will admit he was kind of shocked to get the opportunity. He owes it completely to Hall of Famer Randy Korte, the former DIRTcar Late Model national champion who maintains Lampley’s equipment.
Herrington isn’t quite sure when he first met Korte, but conversing about Rocket Chassis eventually “led to me and him talking once or twice a day.” When Harrison’s departure opened up the Lampley seat, Korte, 61, thought of Herrington, whose family-owned Rocket XR2 had been sidelined by engine trouble but had started making some Super Late Model starts in a car provided to him by Alabama’s Billy Franklin.
“I never really got into the whole deal with whatever they had going on with drivers this year,” Herrington said of Lampley’s team. “Randy called me up one day and he’s like, ‘Hey, something probably’s gone happen. You wanna come drive (Lampley’s car?’ I was like, ‘Sure.’ He said, ‘All right. Well, this is what we’re thinking about doing — we're going to go to these MARS (Series) races this weekend.’ I was like, ‘OK, just throw me to the wolves, you know?’ ”
Herrington dived into a great unknown. Not only had he “never talked to Mr. Steve a day in my life, didn’t even know what he looked like,” but his racing experience in the Midwest was limited to running the Prairie Dirt Classic at Fairbury (Ill.) Speedway in 2021 and ’23 and the Gateway Dirt Nationals at The Dome at America’s Center in St. Louis, Mo., the last four years.
“Randy was the only person I knew,” Herrington said. “I went to the Midwest to start racing and had no idea. I mean, yeah, I had a few buddies here and there, but that was about it.
“I got on a plane, flew to St. Louis. Randy picked me up. We went back to his shop to work on the car, mounted my seat, this and that, and then we drove to Benton, Mo., for the MARS race. Mr. Steve was there, I met him, and ever since then everything’s been a pretty good deal so far.”
Herrington very nearly won in his Aug. 28 debut at Benton, leading the race until tangling with a lapped car and finishing 10th. He completed the MARS weekend at I-55 Federated Raceway Park in Pevely, Mo. (finished sixth) and Belle-Clair Speedway in Belleville, Ill. (placed 20th).
“We get to Pevely and Randy’s like, ‘Hey, did you go and look at the racetrack?’ ” Herrington said. “I was like, ‘No. When I go to look at the racetrack, you’re taking me. You’ve got a million laps around here. You’re going to tell me about it. I don’t know nothing about this stuff. I got to lean on you here a little bit because I don’t know.’ ”
Korte has proven to be a superb mentor for Herrington, whose 14 starts with the Lampley team to date — 10 at tracks in the Midwest plus Oct. 23-24’s Coors Light Fall Classic at Whynot Motorsports Park in Meridian, Miss., and the National 100 weekend — have brought him an immense amount of experience.
“It’s been really good to work with him,” Herrington said of Korte. “I mean, he’s been around forever, and he understands how hard it is to race. I can get out of the car and tell him what I think and he don’t say, ‘Well, that’s wrong. You’re doing that wrong. You should be doing it this way.’ It’s just, ‘Well, if you’re gonna do this, think about what it might do to this corner.’”
Korte has eased Herrington’s adjustment to Midwest racing, no small task for a driver born-and-bred on the Southeast’s red clay.
“The first second weekend, we went to La Salle, Farmer City and Fairbury (all in Illinois),” Herrington said. “At Farmer City I redrew a ‘2’ and I started on the outside pole and I think we run seventh. My dad called me and I was down, like I was like really down, and he’s like, ‘What's wrong with you?’ I’m like, ‘I don’t like going backwards,’ and I said, ‘Man, everything’s just so much different here.’
“He said, ‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘Like, you drive so much harder in the Midwest than what we do in the South I feel like.’ I told him I feel like if we race like you do out here at home, man, we’d be out of the ballpark half the night.
“It’s just weird. It’s just taking me some time to figure out how hard you can run all the time in the Midwest compared to what we do down here. I talked with (fellow Georgian Ashton) Winger a good bit about it. He kind of agreed with me and helped me a little bit on things to do out there compared to what we do here.”
Herrington was at his best on his home turf. After losing a shot at winning EAMS’s 40-lap National 100 opener last Friday because of an early scrape with eventual victor Cody Overton of Evans, Ga., that spun him out of the lead, he rebounded to lead the entire 60-lap distance of the finale. He was scarcely challenged, but he did have some anxious moments dealing with slower cars on a track surface that turned one-laned around the bottom.
Moving out of line to lap slower cars was out of the question for Herrington, who had to tell himself that if he couldn’t pass the lapped cars, then his pursuers couldn’t pass him. Korte, who watched from the grandstands, was just hoping Herrington realized he didn’t need to attempt any passes.
“He was down there in victory lane and he said, ‘I raced a lot in my life, but I don’t think I've ever been so nervous than during this race,’ ” Herrington said. “He was like, ‘Man, you done a perfect job. You couldn’t have done no better.’ And I was like, ‘Well, I done the best I could do.’ ”
Herrington was surprised that EAMS’s newly-applied, gray-colored clay surface took rubber in the finale. Friday had been anything but locked down with drivers utilizing multiple grooves around the icy-slick corners.
“Friday night, it was great,” Herrington said. “I mean, it was chaos. It was total chaos. It was really, really fun, but it was really odd too, because it was so much different.
“Last year they had them once-a-month Super shows that paid $10,000-to-win, and the second one, I’m pretty sure Clay Harris broke a track record that night. It was like a 13.6 or 13.5, somewhere in there … it was just so fast that that it was almost scary to a point. And Thursday night we practiced, I think the best lap of anybody was a 16.8, so they slowed it down three seconds pretty much.
“It did get one lane Saturday night. It pretty much rubbered. I just think with all the cars they start early Saturday morning and they run all day, and then they only have a couple hours to work it and get us back going so I think they had it a little too dry and they were scared to get it too wet because Thursday night it got a little bit rough.
“Do they have work to do? Yes. But is it better? I think it’s absolutely 100 percent better,” he continued. “To me, it's leaps and bounds better. I went to the State race (in September) and I burned up tires in an eight-lap heat race. This time I ran two days on the same set of tires. I think it’s just gonna take a little bit of them figuring out what to do with it.”
Saturday’s conditions didn’t dull Herrington’s triumphant joy. He soaked up everything about the richest win of his career, one that has him thinking about the future as he’s meshed so well with Korte and Lampley.
“Randy don’t show no emotion at all, but Saturday night … I don’t know if he did cry, but if he didn’t, it looked like he was about to,” Herrington said. “And Steve’s been great. He calls us, and he gets on our butt a little bit when we don't qualify good but I think sometimes he’s just trying to get us fired up a little bit.”
Herrington still has three events left on his ’26 schedule with Lampley Racing, including this Saturday’s Midwest LateModel Racing Association event at Pevely, Nov. 13-14’s FloRacing Night in America season finale at Senoia (Ga.) Raceway and Dec. 3-5’s Gateway Dirt Nationals. Then the focus turns to 2027.
“Me and Randy, we’ve both been kind of working on trying to get some sponsors to help Steve out a little bit,” said Herrington, who won two Super Late Model features this season — a Southern Thunder who on April 18 with his family’s No. 14 and an Ultimate Southeast event July 25 at Dublin, Ga., in Franklin’s car — before joining Lampley’s team. “I think Randy's got a few people coming on board. I think everything's looking pretty good for next year.
“We don’t really have a plan of what we’re going to try to do. We’re still kind of tossing that up. But everything that we need to go and run good, Steve’s got for us. We have what we need (including two Rocket cars and three Durham engines). A couple of these races we’ve been to it’s just been me and Randy so we’re trying to work on our help program a little bit, but I’m pretty pumped up about it. We showed that we can we can do it. We can run up front. We can win. We don’t have all the pieces of the puzzle put together, but we’re trying to get it all there.”
Racing with Lampley’s team — and winning a big-money event like the National 100 — has Herrington feeling like he just might be able to continue his quest to be a full-time racer. He left his job working on cargo planes at Robins Air Force Base in 2024 when when he went to drive for John Henderson’s ASD Motorsports and, despite the deal ending early in the season, he’s remained a full-timer in the sport.
“Before I took the ride with ASD in ’24, I went to PRI and JCM (Motorsports) was actually offering me a full-time ride then but I was scared to take it,” said Herrington, who runs a Crate Late Model often to keep himself busy and cash flowing into his account. “My wife (Harley), she was pregnant (wth their now 3-year-old daughter Everly), and I was like, ‘I just can’t see leaving a good job and try to get race for a living. I just don’t know about this.’
“I remember talking to Ryan Gustin at PRI about it. I talked to Brandon Overton. I talked to several people about it, and they were like, ‘Don’t leave that damn job. You’re crazy. Just keep doing what you’re doing.’ I was like, ‘All right,’ and then I finally just kind of got to the point where was like, if I’m ever gonna try to be a full-time racer, I gotta go. Like, I gotta try.
“And I told my wife, I said, ‘Look, I’m gonna do it for a year.’ So then I went and drove for Henderson and it fell through early and I come back to my own equipment, and everybody was like, ‘What you gonna do?’ I said, ‘I’m gonna try it for the rest of the year, and if it don’t work I’ll just get me a job.’
“Here we are three years later and I’m still trying to pull it off,” he added with a laugh. “I mean, it’s tough sometimes, but we’re making it work.”
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