Thursday’s Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series win marked just his third win at East Bay Raceway Park in 19 years.
Racing at East Bay Raceway Park has never been Jimmy Owens’s strong suit. He typically views the third-mile oval’s Wieland Winternationals as just a week of competition that will bring him mostly misery.
2024 Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series at East Bay Raceway Park
“We come down here and threaten to commit suicide every time before we leave and all that stuff,” Owens said, acknowledging his history of frustration at the track outside Tampa. “Just on our way down here somebody was like, ‘Ah, you’ll get it.’ I said, ‘I ain’t got it in 25 years. I don’t know why I’ll get it now.’”
But less than one week after celebrating his 52nd birthday, the future Hall of Famer from Newport, Tenn., did indeed figure out East Bay. In fact, he solved the tricky track in a way he never had before in his distinguished career, manhandling his car around a challenging, elbows-up surface to capture Thursday night’s regularly-scheduled 40-lap Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series feature.
It was just the third triumph in Owens’s 19 years of Winternationals competition and his first since Feb. 16, 2013 — a date nearly 11 years ago that he surprisingly remembered when asked about it after his $10,000 score.
Of course, Owens’s memory of that day was jogged by his perusal of a banner hung in East Bay’s pit area outside turn one that features photos of every winner in Lucas Oil Series-sanctioned action at East Bay over the past 20 years.
“I was looking at that big billboard earlier today,” Owens said. “I was like, ‘I wonder if that goes back far enough for my picture to be on there.’”
Upon finding the photo of himself standing in victory lane in front of the Mike Reece-owned car he drove at the time, Owens was reminded of the circumstances surrounding that outing.
“That was the day,” he said, noting that his win came in the opening afternoon half of a doubleheader set up by a weather postponement. “It just rubbered up, one lane. I just had to stay in front and not make a mistake.”
Coincidentally, Owens’s only other victory at East Bay, on Feb. 12, 2011, also was in the daytime portion of a rain-induced twinbill when he found himself up front and simply stayed smooth and true on a locked-down surface. Winning on a more unruly track like East Bay so often offers — and Thursday was one of those nights — proved elusive for Owens.
Until he did it on Thursday.
“I’ve never won one under these conditions here,” Owens said. “Maybe in Crate (Late Model) and a modified, but not a Super (Late Model). I don’t know, I just ain’t never been able to get it done. I just always struggled to get there and stay there when the track’s like this.”
Convincing himself to push the limits of his race car on East Bay’s demanding layout has been an obstacle for Owens, whose modest performance record at the track showed 19 top-five and 38 top-10 finishes in 72 career Winternationals feature starts prior to Thursday. His racer’s block at the track was evident early on when he qualified for two of six features in his first attempt at the Super Late Model Winternationals in 2003 and then failed to qualify for a single A-main in his next two tries in ’06 (five DNQs) and ’08 (three DNQs).
Owens has been a Winternationals participant every year since 2008 and has generally struggled more than shined. His longtime crewman, Jeff (Mullet) Strope, sees Owens’s preternaturally cool, calm and heady approach as contributing to his struggles at East Bay, which has always tended to require an aggressive, take-no-prisoners mindset but calls for it even more in today’s Dirt Late Model world.
“This isn’t our best track. It’s just not our cup of tea,” Strope said. “I think you have to run hard if you want to be competitive. He may not prefer that driving style, but he can do it. Just getting him to do it is another thing.
“Our owners never did care if we tore stuff up trying to win, but he treats everything like it’s his, and it’s his money. That’s why he’s still racing today, but he’s had to learn to run harder.
“Running Rocket (Chassis) stuff has really helped us, in the sense that (Rocket co-owner) Mark (Richards) can always get us back in the ballpark if we get way out in left field. It’s pretty easy to do when you’re used to a certain style of racing, but we showed signs even the first year we were in Rockets, I think it was ’16. A funny story (from that year) … when we went to pick (the cars) up, Josh (Richards) was still there (driving the house car), and he took us out to lunch and I’ll never forget it — he looked at me and he said, ‘It is not a fashion show no more. It’s the guy who gets the 50 laps done the fastest.’ And that’s true, that’s the way racing is.”
Owens certainly understands that truism of modern Dirt Late Model racing. It’s not always easy, though, for the older guard of veteran drivers to implement it. Wednesday night’s 40-lap feature at East Bay was one race that opened Owens’s eyes to how hard he needed to throttle up his Bobby Koehler-owned No. 20.
“I think I was just kind of taking it easy on my tires too much and that really slowed us down,” said Owens, who climbed as high as second before slipping to a sixth-place finish. “We probably had a good enough car to win it, but when I got to second I was like, ‘Top five at East Bay? No!’ I needed keep pushing it. Once you got after it and just started digging pretty hard, it got going pretty good.”
Such was the case in Thursday’s headliner. Owens, who started second, overtook polesitter Garrett Smith of Eatonton, Ga., to lead laps 5-6, ceded the spot back to the 20-year-old and then regained command for good on lap 13.
Owens felt like he was “a sitting duck” with the race winding down as he settled into the inside lane, but he didn’t go into a conservative mode. He stayed on gas and never relinquished the lead.
There were two anxious moments for Owens, however, in the final circuits. First, on lap 35, his car noticeably slowed between turns three and four, so much that second-running Garrett Alberson of Las Cruces, N.M., bumped into Owens’s rear bumper.
“I hit a bump and killed my engine,” Owens said, and then noted how the contact from Alberson helped, even saved, him: “It started me back up.”
Shortly thereafter, on lap 38, Jonathan Davenport of Blairsville, Ga., appeared primed to bid for the lead amid lapped traffic when a caution flag flew for Boom Briggs of Bear Lake, Pa., slowing on the homestretch with a flat tire. The reset gave Owens the breather he needed to control the green-white-checkered to win by 0.314 of a second over Davenport, who hated that the caution dive-bombed his hopes but was nonetheless happy to see Owens snap a long winless slump at East Bay.
“Man, that’s awesome,” the 40-year-old Davenport said. “Jimmy’s a great guy and he’s a great ambassador for our sport. If we couldn’t win, there’s definitely a few out there that I’d like to see win. He’s one of them.”
Owens’s victory was very well received by his fellow competitors and fans alike. It was a win that seemed to ratify his decision to join the Rocket Chassis house car team, among others, in switching to Fox Shocks this season (“I like the package they got for these cars,” he said) and gave him confidence that he’s hitting his stride in his second season with Koehler Motorsports.
“Usually, if we’re good down here (during Speedweeks), we carry on with it,” said Owens’s older brother, Kurt, who travels with his sibling and works on the crew. “In 2020 we got hot while we were here (ending Speedweeks with three straight wins at Volusia Speedway Park in Barberville, Fla.) and then it paid off all year after that (topped by a Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series championship).”
Owens plans to pursue another national title in 2024, this time, though, with the World of Outlaws Case Late Model Series. It will be his first attempt at the WoO tour, which he’ll rejoin for events Feb. 15-17 at Volusia while currently 15th in the points standings after last month’s season-opening Sunshine Nationals at the half-mile oval outside Daytona Beach.
Before heading to Volusia again, however, Owens will have two more shots to show his newfound stuff at East Bay. But he’s not going to be sentimental about Saturday’s $15,000-to-win show serving as the final Winternationals event at the track, which has been sold by promoter Al Varnadore and will close at the conclusion of the 2024 season.
“We’re gonna miss our friends here, because we don’t get to see Smoke (Gibsonton, Fla., local Jerry Briggs) very often, so we have to come down here and meet up with him,” Owens said. “But it’ll be all right. If I can win Saturday and win the last race here … close ‘er down.”
Then Owens was reminded that he can see East Bay one more time before it’s demolished when the Lucas Oil Series sanctions a $50,000-to-win show on Oct. 10-12.
“Well, we’ll take that one too,” he said with the smile of a driver who suddenly feels much better about East Bay.
