Newswire

BROOKFIELD, Mo. – The motto for Hunter Marriott’s 2016 season was “Have race car, will travel.” The Brookfield, Mo., driver was champion of the Kupper Chevrolet Dakota Classic Tour during a season that saw him win Xtreme Motor Sports IMCA Modified series and special events, as well as weekly features in Arizona, Iowa, Wisconsin and North Dakota. “Winning the tour championship was pretty awesome. The more work we put into it, the better we got. We got a ton of races, we’ve got a good team and we learned a lot,” said Marriott, who traveled to a staggering 28 different tracks over the course of 46 starts. “I believe if you can unload at someplace you’ve never been and race well, you become a better driver. You’ve got to be a traveler.” Marriott prevailed in a record-setting tour that saw an average of better than 90 entries a night. He followed the main event win at Williston Basin Speedway with a runner-up showing at Southwest Speedway and wrapped up the title by finishing third at [Read More]

JACKSON, Wy. – The opportunity to travel helped Chris Clark decide the Xtreme Motor Sports IMCA Modified division was right for him. Following a stellar 2016 season, the Jackson, Wy., hotshoe traveled to the IMCA national banquet in Lincoln, Neb., to accept his first track and state awards in the class. “We did some things, especially the first half of the season, when everything I touched turned to gold,” said Clark, a seven-time feature winner as well as the top driver in track standings at Atomic Motor Raceway and Idaho Falls Raceway, as well as the Allstar Performance Idaho State champion. “I never expected to have a season like this.” His success came aboard a 2012 GRT Clark has driven for three years. He’d purchased the car from perennial top runner and former Wild West Tour foe Justen Yeager. “Justen really helped with the learning curve. Buying that car and stepping up in other areas of our program, from custom built shocks and other components and even a better seat from The Joie of Seating [Read More]

MONROETON, Pa. ­– Brad Sites got a championship and a lesson out of his 2016 race season. Sites didn’t have any wins to show for his efforts but was consistent enough to top the point race for the Atomicwraps.com Empire State Series, finishing in the top five in five of 12 Xtreme Motor Sports IMCA Modified tour outings. “I finished well but didn’t have any wins. Our goal is always to win races,” said Sites, from Monroeton, Pa., and younger brother of three-time series champion Eddie Sites. “I made some changes in setup that didn’t work and we didn’t realize the tire pressure gauge wasn’t working like it should until late in the season.” Sites brought four career tour wins into the season, including a pair in 2015. He had two second-place showings this year, both of them at Skyline Raceway Park. While he hit every series show, Sites wasn’t a weekly regular anywhere. He owns a seamless gutter business and spent a lot of time on a ladder after a tornado and accompanying hail storm that [Read More]

OCHEYEDAN, Iowa – Elijah Zevenbergen returned to familiar surroundings to win the Kupper Chevrolet Dakota Classic Stock Car Tour for the third time in four years. Then he made his first-ever visit to Boone Speedway and won on IMCA’s biggest stage. “The Dakota Tour is a nice little vacation. We have some friends out there,” said Zevenbergen, from Ocheyedan, Iowa. “Williston and Nodak are my favorite tracks on the tour and were two that got rained out, but nonetheless we won at Dickinson and Mandan, so it was a good tour.” His week at Boone was even better as Zevenbergen topped the Saturday night IMCA Speedway Motors Super Nationals fueled by Casey’s main event. “It was kind of a standing joke in the pits, people asking me why I was there because I’d never raced at Super Nationals before,” he said. “It was a pretty crazy deal, no doubt about it, but I had a lot of good people helping me.” “Super Nationals was the biggest win of my career. It was pretty surreal. To [Read More]

WACO, Texas – After cruising to 19 feature wins and his career second regional championship in 2015, Andy Roller made up his mind that it was time to move on from the IMCA Sunoco Hobby Stock division. “We made the main event at Super Nationals last year and felt we’d done everything we needed to prove ourselves,” said the Waco, Texas, pilot. “It was time to move on. I needed to challenge myself more.” After looking at a Scoggin-Dickey Parts Center Southern SportMod and an IMCA Sunoco Stock Car, Roller opted to stick with a full-bodied class. That decision ultimately rewarded Roller with rookie of the year honors in the EQ Cylinder Heads Southern Region. “I didn’t know for sure how this year was going to go but the people who help me all thought I’d be OK,” he said. “My goal was to win one time but it turned out we won twice, and we did it on the same weekend early in the season.” Those checkers came on May 13 at Heart O’ [Read More]

TEMPLE, Texas – Not even motor issues over the last half of the season could slow Larry Under­wood in his race to Charger Chassis Southern Region rookie of the year honors. The driver from Temple made the quick transition from the local Texas Twister class to the IMCA Sunoco Hobby Stock division, finishing second in the regional points race, fifth at Cotton Bowl Speedway – where he scored his first career win in the class – and sixth at Heart O’ Texas Speed­way. “My goal at the start of the year was to race for national rookie but with Mother Nature, we just couldn’t get in more starts (he had 34),” Underwood said. “But this year was still great. I had a lot of fun going to the Hobby Stock after two years in a 4-cylinder class.” “I mothered a half-blown engine the last half of the season,” he added, “but my season still could­n’t have been much better.” Largely self-funded, Underwood is a truck driver by occupation so there were Fridays when he got [Read More]