Tim McCreadie
Tim McCreadie did not initially intend to enter the Southern Nationals Bonus Series portion of the Shamrock event at Boyd’s Speedway this past Saturday night. However, weather dictated that the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series races originally planned for Ohio and Indiana be postponed and thus freed up the Watertown, NY driver’s schedule for the weekend.
And not only did McCreadie enter the race on the Ringgold, GA track, but he took home the $4,000 first prize. Perhaps more importantly, however, is the fact that the 42-year-old driver got in what essentially amounted to a paid test session for the upcoming March 31st LOLMDS points-paying race at the same facility.
McCreadie was forced to race in one of the Lucas Oil B-main preliminaries last year at Boyd’s just to make his way into the feature. That was not the case on Saturday night when he started the 40-lap main event from the second row after posting a good qualifying lap on a clay surface that had been soaked earlier in the day by a downpour.
“For tonight, it was pretty amazing,” McCreadie declared in an interview with InsideDirtRacing.com. “I mean I wasn’t really any good here last year. I know these aren’t the conditions we’ll have in a couple of weeks. It was rough and had a big cushion, but still, we were real maneuverable and I can’t be any happier.”
Even more promising for the No. 39 Sweetners Plus Late Model team is the fact that the car used to get the win at Boyd’s had previously been unproven.
“It’s pretty cool because this car here is not the car we debuted at the end of the year last year,” the 2006 World of Outlaws Late Models champion explained. “It was a new one we built this winter. It was cool to get a win with this one and we’ve won with the other car four or five times since we’ve been racing it. In my opinion, it’s nice to have the ability to not worry about which car you’re taking out on the track because when the grind of the summer comes it’s nice to know that you’ve got two fresh cars that can balance the schedule out.”
Winning a feature on a track at which he struggled to a 20th place finish last season could provide this driver and crew with a shot of confidence when they return for the $10,000-to-win event at the end of the month.
“It gives me confidence to know that hopefully we won’t have to run a B-main and hopefully won’t have any issues like that,” the driver who finished third in the 2016 LOLMDS standings said. “We’re going to be on a different right rear tire and you can’t sipe or groove it and there’s some other things in play that we’ve got to tackle. But at the end of the day, I feel like we’re going to come in here and at least put a good show on instead of like last year when we took a provisional and got lapped. We just weren’t good here last year and that’s partly why I came here tonight because we needed to get this whole team some time to race together so we can mesh together a little more. And it shows because I feel like we get better every time we go out.”
McCreadie in his No. 39 Longhorn
The former winner of major Dirt Late Model races such as the Knoxville Nationals, the Topless 100 and the USA Nationals did not originally come from a background in this form of racing. The son of ‘Barefoot’ Bob McCreadie raced Modifieds in the early part of his career, which he believes causes him to think a bit differently than those who have always raced in the full bodied cars.
“Even though I’ve been doing this for most of my career now, I don’t come from Late Models,” McCreadie pointed out. “I come from a whole different type of racing so my mind sometimes wonders as to why are we doing it this one way when there might be another way.”
Throughout his career as a dirt racer, McCreadie has driven multiple types of chassis. He believes the arrangement he currently has with North Carolina-based Longhorn Chassis is one that is well suited to produce good results for himself and the manufacturer.
“I had a lot of support everywhere I’ve been,” he recalled. “I mean it’s never been that I haven’t had help from whichever chassis manufacturer that we’ve been with. They’re all doing the best they can. I think with this deal here, you can open your mind to anything because we have people here who are from different types of racing. Their experience and their know-how of thinking outside the box will hopefully keep building until so we can get even better. That’s why I did it. I’m happy because we’re all focused in one direction and that’s to make this car go fast and hopefully selling a bunch of Longhorns.”
