The Dirt Track at Charlotte
Educational season has Murty primed for future
By Kyle McFadden
DirtonDirt staff reporter
Dallon Murty (13) races with Chris Madden (44) at Charlotte. (joshjamesartwork.com)
CONCORD, N.C. (Nov. 6) — Dallon Murty has learned that progress at dirt racing's highest level is rarely linear.
One weekend, the 21-year-old can see why Skyline Motorsports has invested so much in him. The next, he can feel like he’s starting over. | RaceWire
“I tried to stay open-minded coming into it, and I found out very quickly how tough this whole deal is,” Murty said of his first full Super Late Model season. “Just the waves is the toughest part. You’ll have one weekend we have really good runs, and then you show up next weekend, looks like we never drove before.”
This week’s Dave Smith Motors World Finals at The Dirt Track at Charlotte has offered a snapshot of that education. Murty started seventh Thursday but pulled off and finished 26th. On Friday, he started fourth, climbed to third and finished sixth, completing his first feature at the track with another lesson to carry into Saturday’s 50-lap World of Outlaws Late Model Series finale in which he'll start second in the third heat.
“I just struggled when a car was right in front of me,” Murty said Friday. “When we got spread out, I felt really good and could keep pace, but the dirty air was definitely challenging.”
As his first full Super Late Model season winds down, Murty is finding more than occasional reassurance. With veteran teammate Tyler Bruening scaling back — a crash earlier this February at Ocala (Fla.) Speedway and growing responsibilities with his family’s business, Bruening Rock Products, are reasons why — he’s becoming Skyline’s cornerstone driver as an expanding crew helps turn a year of discovery into a foundation for a planned national touring campaign in 2027.
Murty arrived at Skyline with a substantial winning résumé, though little of it came in Late Models. From 2020-25, he won 145 of 489 features across multiple divisions, establishing himself primarily in stock cars and modifieds throughout Iowa’s IMCA territory — a route similar to the one Ricky Thornton Jr. took before becoming a national Dirt Late Model star.
Even more noteworthy: Murty didn’t make Late Models a significant part of his schedule until last year. Of his 36 Late Model feature starts entering this season, 31 came in 2025, when he collected eight victories in lower-division Late Model classes.
Veteran crew chief Zeb Holkesvik, who has worked with Bruening since 2009, has taken a more hands-on role with Murty over the past two months, helping him work toward the kind of winning potential he enjoyed in stock cars and modifieds.
General mechanic J.D. Morfeld, previously assigned to Bruening’s No. 16, and Murty’s longtime friend Jonah Bearden provide familiar hands. This week, tire specialist Austin Hemmen joined full time after helping Bobby Pierce’s team win last year’s World of Outlaws championship.
That gives Murty experience and support as he prepares for a bigger undertaking. For Holkesvik, it creates space to concentrate on the development of one of the top prospects in dirt racing.
“We’ve got such a good crew where all of our bases are covered, and it gives me and Dallon a little bit more time to get in depth on things that matter,” Holkesvik said. “As far as consistency and being able to really dive into our tuneups and our setups, because all of that other stuff, we’ve got a good crew to take care of that.”
Murty’s strongest performances have come during the season’s second half. He finished sixth in Aug. 6's North-South 100 and collected a pair of top-10 finishes in August’s three World of Outlaws races in Iowa. September brought finishes of 11th and fourth with the Outlaws at I-55 Federated Raceway Park in Pevely, Mo. He placed second and third during Oct. 9-10's MARS Championship weekend at Lucas Oil Speedway in Wheatland, Mo., before earning his first Super Late Model victory Oct. 24 in West Liberty (Iowa) Raceway’s Liberty 100.
“It wasn’t a national race by any means, but it just kind of meant a lot to me,” he said of his West Liberty victory. “To do it with Skyline, and to finally get something for them, you know, to put a night together.
“As of late, we’ve kind of weeded things out with our program, and I feel like we’ve gotten a lot stronger and a lot better with our equipment and just everything that goes into it,” Murty added. “And it’s definitely made a big difference here on the back end.”
Friday supplied both evidence of that progress and a specific area to improve.
Murty felt competitive in open track — running third the opening 18 laps — but negotiating traffic required positioning of his car he hasn’t yet mastered. Trying to pass beneath slower cars cost him momentum, while moving above them left his car loose. Watching experienced drivers handle the same circumstances — Jonathan Davenport, Ricky Thornton Jr. and Chris Madden drove around him — showed how much he’s yet to learn.
“It’s definitely trickier than most places,” Murty said of Charlotte. “Eldora’s pretty tough, but you can kind of disperse yourself and be in better positions” at the Rossburg, Ohio, half-mile as opposed to Charlotte’s 4/10-mile layout.
At Charlotte, his instinct to search for grip lower on the track hasn’t always worked.
“I’ve always tried going under and chasing the brown, but here it’s kind of slower to do that,” he said. “So I’ve got to figure out how I can roll the middle with a car in front of me. … I just need to watch the film and kind of see what they (the more experienced drivers like Davenport, Thornton and Madden), were thinking.”
Those are the kinds of experiences Skyline wanted him to collect this season.
With Bruening seeking to race less and no longer interested in following a national schedule, the team approached Murty’s first year as preparation for a larger commitment: travel, encounter unfamiliar tracks and rack up experience.
“He’s nowhere near being done racing, but definitely wants to step back a little bit, not race as much,” Holkesvik said of Bruening. “So that’s given me the opportunity to work a little closer with Dallon. … At Skyline Motorsports, we want to have a car running a tour. So our plan with Dallon the first year was to get out there and travel and hit as many new tracks as we could.”
Murty has learned quickly that natural instincts and willpower alone won’t carry him to victory as often as they did in IMCA stock cars and modifieds. National Super Late Model racing demands a level of technical understanding and precision he’s still developing, with few shortcuts through the learning process.
“For me to have a good night, the car’s got to be about perfect, and I’ve got to not mess up as much,” Murty said. “But these guys, a lot of these guys, your top guys, can be off a little bit here and there and still make it into a good night.”
Some lessons have come with damaged equipment, including hard hits into the outside wall during a Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series practice night at All-Tech Raceway and on consecutive nights at Eldora.
Eldora was especially humbling. On his first visit to the Big E, he hit the turn-two wall while battling for a B-main transfer spot in June 3’s FloRacing Night in America event, an abrupt introduction to racing in dirty air at the track. The following evening, on his Dream prelim night, he smacked the wall again during time trials, forcing his team to replace the right-front suspension and install new headers.
Murty is quick to help repair the damage, however, and his willingness to work through the consequences of those mistakes hasn’t gone unnoticed. Asked what most validates the team’s investment in the young driver, Holkesvik pointed to that kind of work ethic in the shop.
“To be successful in this, you have to want it,” Holkesvik said. “To say he wants it is an understatement. We’ve worked hard to get to where we’re at as a team. I feel like we’ve got some momentum rolling into next year, and it’s just cool to be a part of.”
After Saturday’s finale, only the Gateway Dirt Nationals remain on Murty’s schedule. Then comes preparation for a national touring campaign, with the team choosing between the World of Outlaws and Lucas Oil circuits once schedules are released.
Whichever direction Skyline takes, Murty will head into 2027 with a robust support system and a clearer understanding of what awaits.
“I’m ready for it mentally, I think, for sure,” Murty said. “This is about the time I started last year, so I’m kind of creeping into the same window to prepare, but I feel way more prepared this time around.”
