ROSSBURG, Ohio – Wednesday night’s Eldora Dirt Derby at Eldora Speedway is shaping up to be the fiercest battle of dirt ringers versus Truck Series regulars in the six-year history of the event.
No less than 17 dirt-track specialists – drivers who have raced predominantly on the clay in the past – are entered for the sixth running of NASCAR’s lone national series event on the dirt.
Among them are two Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series stars in Ryan Newman and Ty Dillon – who both cut their teeth on dirt short tracks across the Eastern United States before moving to NASCAR – but neither Newman nor Dillon have a multitude of Truck Series starts and fall into the invaders class as a result.
The current USAC National Midget Series points leader (Logan Seavey) is entered; the current ARCA Racing Series points leader and a former off-road racing kingpin (Sheldon Creed) is entered; a former USAC National Sprint Car Series champion (Chris Windom) will take part; and even a past Super DIRTcar Series big block modified Rookie of the Year (Max McLaughlin) is on the entry list to compete.
Meanwhile, there are also the Truck Series championship regulars in the mix. That class includes drivers like Johnny Sauter, Noah Gragson, Brett Moffitt, Grant Enfinger and Cody Coughlin, who all race weekly on NASCAR’s third highest tour but have little to no dirt-racing experience to speak of in their careers.
And then there’s the drivers straddling the line between both of those worlds, the drivers who grew up racing on dirt or have added extensive dirt racing experience to their backgrounds in recent years who now call the Truck Series their full-time home.
That list features names like Stewart Friesen, Justin Haley and defending race winner Matt Crafton.
What began as a novelty in 2013 has grown into one of the ultimate clashes of power in NASCAR’s three national series: a fight for supremacy between the dirt and asphalt worlds where only one driver each year can reign supreme.
That’s what makes the race so important to win, according to Crafton.
“When you can beat all of those guys that come into Eldora and that race dirt on a weekly basis, it’s special because their accomplishments are pretty extensive, just as ours are,” said Crafton. “I did a little bit of dirt racing, just trying to learn the dirt a little bit, and it helped me last year. I ran in the top 10 in the majority of the races, but last year I just put my head down, bought my own dirt car and put a lot of focus on it, and I won at Eldora and won the golden shovel.
“That’s a trophy that will always be important to me for having come here and won it.”
Crafton pointed out that while the dirt ringers have an advantage in the track surface, the Truck Series regulars get some of that advantage back due to the heavy nature of their regular vehicles.
“The constant dirt racing the ringers do is definitely a plus for them, but what they don’t get to do is race a 3,400‑pound truck on dirt. All the dirt cars we get to race are 2,300 or 2,400 pounds … somewhere in that range, and they handle definitely different than the trucks,” noted Crafton. The trucks are a lot slower, but they’re a lot heavier and move around a lot more and just a lot slower reacting.
“At the end of the day, the ringers will definitely have a little bit of an advantage, but that’s why I got a dirt modified of my own and tried to prepare myself as much as I could by running as many dirt races as I could right before this race. I think that extra track time did help and will help again.”
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