Kevin Kovac's Take Five
Take Five: Hoffman's victory lane situation
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: When Nick Hoffman stopped his Tye Twarog-owned car in victory lane after winning Friday’s 35-lap Dave Smith Motors World Finals at The Dirt Track at Charlotte in Concord, N.C., he was greeted by his crew and, of course, his two sons, Maddox, 7, and Roxzen, 5, who always join their dear old dad on the roof of his car for a post-race celebration. But when Roxzen was put on the roof, he was crying his eyes out. What caused the younger boy’s consternation? “He doesn’t want NOS sprayed on him,” Hoffman said, referring to the energy drink that sponsors him. Hoffman, who typically cracks open cans of NOS when he’s atop his car, slickly handled the situation to brighten Roxzen’s mood. “I put my helmet on him and he was OK,” Hoffman said with a smile.
No. 2: Friday’s third World Finals heat was a rough one for Jason Riggs of College Grove, Tenn. He spent several minutes hanging upside down in the seat of his car after enduring a slow rollover in turn two following contact with New York’s Demetrious Drellos. “We kind of just both went into the corner and he was already hooked into me, got me sideways, and then as I tried to steer off of him he stayed in the gas and turned me over,” said Riggs, who flipped a Dirt Late Model for the first time since rolling during time trials in a 2014 DIRTcar Summer Nationals event at Kankakee (Ill.) County Speedway. Riggs was uninjured — and with damage to the car light, he’d be back racing on Saturday as long as no problem was found with the motor — so he allowed the track crew to right his machine before he climbed out. “I didn’t want to get out (with upside down) because if I undid my belts I’d fall down on my head,” he quipped.
No. 3: I’ve been going to races for 44 years, and on Friday I’m pretty sure I saw something at a racetrack for the very first time. As I walked between two trailers in Charlotte’s pit area, I brushed by veteran driver Chris Madden, who standing near his pit box doing some … pre-race prep? He was cutting his fingernails with some nail clippers. That’s a new one for me.
No. 4: Before the start of Friday’s B-mains at Charlotte, I was standing in the pit area and glanced toward the other end and saw a group of kids tossing around a football. One of them was wearing a driver’s uniform: Callan Hill, a 13-year-old from Lawton, Okla., making his World Finals debut in his family-owned Super Late Model. Moments later the kids stopped playing, he climbed into his car and headed out for his consolation race. It reminded me of a few years ago when I saw a similarly-aged Trey Mills throwing a football with Chris Simpson’s son in the pit area at Florida’s Volusia Speedway Park before hitting the track in his Super Late Model. Perhaps five years from now, when Hill is 18 like Mills, he’ll be running up front in World Finals action like Mills was on Friday before a flat left-front tire forced him to the pits while sitting third with four laps to go in the feature.
No. 5: Hill, by the way, didn’t qualify for the first two features of the World Finals weekend, but his first year of Super Late Model competition has been notable. He won a Ross Foundation Sooner Late Model Series feature on Aug. 15 at Enid (Okla.) Speedway when he was still 12 years old.
