Showing posts with label Renegades. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Renegades. Show all posts

Sunday, May 13, 2018

Darby Crouch feature from 2012

(NOTE: Appeared in the Hickory (N.C.) Daily Record in 2012.)
College student found time to win a title
By Tom Gillispie
Darby Crouch was almost certainly one of the busier drivers this year at Hickory Motor Speedway.
Crouch, the track champion in the Renegades division, is taking design classes as a senior in mechanical engineering at UNC Charlotte. He also works a forklift for Southeastern Freight Lines, and he’s finishing up on his pilot’s license.
But there’s no rest for the weary. On Fridays, he drives home from the UNCC area to hang out with his family in Claremont and go racing.
“I’ve always wanted to drive and race,” he said when he was home over the weekend. “I’m very competitive, but I race people clean. Racing helps me work off stress. I’m kind of all over the place; I’ve gotta keep busy.”

 Crouch had three wins and nine top-five finishes in 10 races in 2012.
He scored 450 points this year to beat out Barney Arnette by 18 points. Eddie Russ (420), Gregory Austin (374), Carroll McKinney (368), Andrew Divanna (340), Brad Nelson (304), Steve Griffith (296), Kenneth Roberts (184) and Darren Dickinson (178) rounded out the top 10.
Crouch even finished 99th in NASCAR’s national Division V/Asphalt standings.
The Crouch brothers, Dillon and Darby, have been racing together for years, even when they had to build their own go-kart track.
“Racing and working on the cars allow us to share a passion for racing and spend quality time together,” Darby said. “Ever since we were little, my brother and I were building racetracks in the cow pasture at our house. We would run our go-karts until we ran out of gas, broke a chain, were stopped by our parents or it was too dark to see.
“Growing up, my brother was always teaching me a lot about mechanics, and still today it amazes me how much I am learning from him. I will admit, at times, I'm not the most mechanically inclined, but my brother has taught me enough to get by.”
Two years ago, Darby raced once at Tri-County Motor Speedway. This was his first full season anywhere.
On winning the track title in his first try, “Oh, yeah, it surprised me a lot,” he said. “But my brother (Dillon) helped me a lot.”
Darby, 23, raced a ’78 Chevy Nova that his brother Dillon, 27, had raced last year in Renegades.
Darby, who played football at Bandys High as a 5-9, 175-pound linebacker and long snapper, says that racing has been a good experience.
“I get to spend time with my brother, and I can race and have fun,” he said.
But circumstances forced a change in plans.
“We didn’t plan to run the full season with (Darby),” Dillon said. “But right out of the box, he was good. In the first race of the season, he ran second. He finished with three wins and was in the top three six times. It was a great year for him being rookie and me sitting on the sidelines, trying to help.”
Dillon raced the Street Stocks division this year and is actually listed twice in Street Stocks points, at 18th in the 5N car with 42 points and 19thin the 0 car with 40 points.
“Darby has basically the same car I had (last year),” Dillon said. “He had a good start. He started quick, adapted to it good. I just had to coach him a bit.”
He says his main coaching involved telling Darby to be patient.
“He caught on well. I just told him that, sometimes, you have to go slower to go faster,” Dillon said. “It didn’t take a lot.”
Dillon, like his brother, has been busy. He works as an automotive technician at Tech 3 Automotive in Hickory and is going to Catawba Valley Community College to get a business degree.
As far as his own racing career, “I’ve been racing since 2000 off and on, nothing full-time until I won the (Renegades) championship at Tri-County in 2009,” Dillon said. “Then I won the Renegade championship in 2011 at Hickory.”
Darby’s uncertain about next year, although he thinks Dillon might run Street Stocks full-time next year.
“I’m thinking of venturing out (in Street Stock),” Dillon said in verification. “(This year), I went to Ace Speedway and Kingsport (Tenn.), and I want to travel around, try different tracks. Hickory’s a good track, but I want to venture out a bit. I might run Kingsport and Hickory.”
Dillon says he enjoyed watching his brother persevere this year through work, school, his pilot’s license and racing.
“I won two championships, but I was happier to see my brother win,” he said. “To help him out and him do so well and win the championship, that made me proud.”

EMAIL: tgilli52@gmail.com  TWITTER: EDITORatWORK


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(a book of great stories about the Intimidator)
(the book of great NASCAR stories)

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Tuesday, February 6, 2018

2014 Hickory Motor Speedway article


(NOTE: This was written in March of 2014 for the Hickory (N.C.) Daily Record.)
Most HMS drivers will return for 2014
By Tom Gillispie
Most of the drivers will be back at Hickory Motor Speedway this season, but there may be a few changes heading into Saturday’s season opener.
Austin McDaniel, the two-time defending Late Model champion, says he’ll run the Big 10 Racing (formerly ZLOOP) Challenge, the 10-race Late Model series that features 100-lap races and more money for drivers. But McDaniel says he’ll try to run Late Model races at other tracks as well, perhaps Southern National in Kenly, the Motor Mile in Radford, Va., South Boston (Va.) Speedway and Myrtle Beach (S.C.) Speedway, or elsewhere.
“I think that’ll make us better as a team and me also,” said McDaniel, a 19-year-old engineering student at UNC Charlotte.
McDaniel, who won the inaugural ZLOOP Challenge in 2013, says he will race as many or more races as last year.
“That’s what we’d like to do,” McDaniel said. “We’ll see how it plays out.”
Shane Lee says he’ll concentrate on Late Model this year. Lee is the track’s two-time defending Limited Late Model champion, and he was McDaniel’s main competition in Late Model last season.
Landon Huffman, last year’s runner-up to Lee in Limiteds, has said he plans to run Late Models this season. He is the son of Robert Huffman, the former HMS track champion and five-time NASCAR Dash Series champion.
Track promoter Kevin Piercy doesn’t expect Christian Calvo to run Late Models again this year, but he says he expects most drivers to return. Among those are champions in other divisions, Kevin Eby in Street Stocks, Carroll McKinney in Renegades, Chase Pollard in 4-Cylinders, Jeremy Birch in Super Trucks and Don Fenn in Sportsman Racing Classics.
“It’ll be exciting, too, with Shane Lee (and Landon Huffman) moving up to Late Models,” Piercy said. “We’ll have a good crop of cars. The Gold King Limited division will be wide open with a new champion.”
McKinney says he’ll run for points in the Renegades division and run another “five to 10” races in Street Stocks.
Fenn practiced March 1 and said “the car ran real good.”
“We’re going to run the same class (4-Cylinders), but we really did our homework and did many changes to the car,” said Pollard, the son of former racer Larry Pollard. “We also hope to race at some different tracks while still competing for the championship at Hickory Motor Speedway.”
Piercy says that Taylor Stricklin, the son of former Cup driver Hut Stricklin, will race full-time in the Limited division after running Late Models part-time last year.
McDaniel knows that running a part-time schedule will mean that his championship streak will end this year. He was asked if that’ll bother him.
“It would a little bit,” he said, “but as long as we’re trying to travel and get more experience, it’ll be all right.”
He says it’s tough being a student, working part-time at a job and being a racer.
“Working at the dealership, it’s hard getting everything done, all my homework, during the week so I’ll have the weekend free to go racing,” McDaniel said.
He says he still hopes to have a racing career, then perhaps use his UNCC engineering degree to become an engineer for a Cup team.
“Eventually, I’d like to be a car owner,” he added. “It’s just something I’d like to do.”
For now, he’ll get down to work, as a student, a worker and a racer. Saturday, it’s time to go racing.
✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧✧

EMAIL: tgilli52@gmail.com   BLUESKY: PROFILE

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Sunday, October 5, 2014

Champions feature 2



KEVIN EBY CELEBRATES AS DAUGHTER KAYLA
WATCHES AT HICKORY MOTOR SPEEDWAY.
(SHERRI STEARNS PHOTO)
(NOTE: This story features three of Hickory Motor Speedway's seven division champions from 2014.)

Eby’s drive for five succeeds

By Tom Gillispie

Kevin Eby had won four straight Street Stock championships at Hickory Motor Speedway, and he went into 2014 on a mission to win his fifth in a row.

Mission accomplished.

“Not many other drivers have been to accomplish that,” Eby said. “Me and John Settlemyre (the track champion from 1977 to ’81). I’m kind of glad it’s over; this relieves a lot of pressure.”

Eby is one of Hickory’s seven division champions this year; the others are Josh Berry in Late Models and the Paramount Kia Big 10 Racing Challenge; Matt Elledge in 4-Cylinders; Bob Park in Classic Sportsman; Kenneth Roberts in Renegades; Spencer Boyd in Super Trucks, and Taylor Stricklin in Limited Late Models.
Eby says he was able to take the points lead on a night about five weeks ago when Kevin Townsend had engine troubles.
“He came back the next week with another motor, and something else happened to him,” Eby said. “That enabled me to pull further out front, and I was able to stay out front the remaining four or five weeks.”
Eby topped Townsend by 46 points.
Eby who works as a shipping supervisor for Shenandoah Furniture Valdes, says he’ll race again the night of the Fall Brawl and the night they’ll run the X1-R Pro Cup Series at Hickory.
“I also may go to Lonesome Pine (Speedway in Coeburn, Va.) or Myrtle Beach (S.C.) this fall,” he said. “We’ll see.”
Don’t expect Eby to go anywhere next year.
“I’ll definitely be back at Hickory next year to race again and defend my title again,” he said. “I’d love to race in a higher division, but it’s very costly.”

Kenneth Roberts, Renegades
Roberts, who finished fourth in Renegades last year, overcame a disqualification this season to beat his car owner, Darren Dickinson, by 14 points. He says Dickinson wasn’t upset with him.
“No, he took it pretty well,” said Roberts, 46.
He says the championship was no surprise.
“No, that was our goal,” he said. “We worked on it.”
Roberts, a 1986 graduate of Fred T. Foard High School, says he started racing at Hickory in the late ’80s.
“I ran the 4-Cylinder division, but I didn’t do too good,” he said.
He tried dirt for a while, and then returned to HMS five years ago.
Roberts plans to race his Renegade car in Saturday’s Fall Classic, but don’t expect him to win the 2015 Renegades title.
“Next year I’ll move up to Street Stock,” he said, adding that he’s already bought a Monte Carlo in preparation.

Bob Park, Classic Sportsman
Park said that car owner/engine builder John Betts asked him if he’d like to drive the car. Park said that, if he didn’t run well, they could park it.
“As we got into it, I hadn’t driven since 2004, but we were running good, and I told John, ‘We can win this thing,’ ” Park said.
The 73-year-old Park, one of the newer drivers in the Classic Sportsman division, wound up beating 78-year-old Bill Webb by 14 points. Driving his No. 74 car, he posted nothing but top-five finishes this season, with a win on May 3 and two second-place finishes in August.
Park, born June 30, 1941, is originally from East Northport, N.Y., but now lives in Concord. He is probably best known as the father of former NASCAR Winston (now Sprint) Cup driver Steve Park, but he was called ‘The Traveling Man’ for working a full-time job with a trucking company and still racing all over the country.
He ran six NASCAR Busch (now Nationwide Series) races from 1982 to ’84, plus 198 Whelen Modified Tour races from 1985 to ’97, with one win. He also ran four ARCA races from 1985 to ’87.
When his son was racing the Cup Series for Dale Earnhardt Inc., Park worked as a rear-end/transmission man for DEI from 1999 through 2001.
On his possible re-retirement, Park said, "I'll probably be back next year."

Contact: I can be reached at tgilli52@gmail.com or nc3022@yahoo.com. Also, my Twitter handle is EDITORatWORK.


More entries from TARJ
(a book of great stories about the Intimidator)
(the book of great NASCAR stories)

EDITOR@WORK blog entries 

Entries from The Dog Blog
More blog entries by Tom Gillispie

Anecdotes by Tom Gillispie
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