Ryan King
Ryan King continued his winning ways at the 411 Motor Speedway this past Saturday night when he won his seventh Crate Late Model feature of the 2014 season. The Seymour, Tenn. driver racing on his home track is very much in contention for the NeSmith Dirt Late Model national championship for weekly competition as he currently sits third in the overall standings.
And the young driver believes that knowing his surroundings is going a long way toward creating the success he has achieved so far this year.
“A lot of it is just being consistent with the race car,” King said. “When you’re running the same track on a weekly basis, you can get into a rhythm after a while and I just feel like that’s what we’ve done here lately. We’ve been making good adjustments and fine tuning the race car. With crate racing, the racing is so close that a tenth goes a long way.”
King is currently involved in a tight points battle with Rusty Ballenger for the Crate Late Model track championship at 411. While some other drivers may have turned more laps than he has, the former Seymour High and Maryville College quarterback believes he might actually have an edge in experience on the Mitch McCarter-owned track with this being the first season in which the crate cars have been featured as the track’s premier division.
“This is what I learned,” King explained. “That’s how I started was running crates here. At first, I had a crate running against limiteds and I had to figure out that style of driving. I’ve been doing it in this type of car for six years now where most of these other guys were running steelheads until last year and they’re still learning. I feel like I’m a few years up on them on this race track with this type of motor.”
And King says there is much to learn when it comes to racing the Crate Late Models compared to the more high powered machines.
Ryan King and wife Brittany have spent a lot of time in 411 Victory Lane this year.
“A lot of it just staying in the throttle a long time here,” he said. “It’s about having your car free enough that you can just barely crack it and then get right back in it and have the car still be able to rotate good through the corners. A lot of the limited and especially the super late model stuff is more about finessing the car through the corners where in the crates you’ve just got to have your car so perfect that you just crack the throttle and get right back in it. You’re on a fine edge.”
Perhaps King’s finest moment this season came in a race he did not win.
Ray Cook’s Southern Nationals mini-series came to 411 back in July and King held his own with two of the top Super Late Model drivers in the country on that night. After setting fast time in his qualifying group and then went on to beat out the red hot Randy Weaver in a dash race among the top-4 qualifiers. In the feature, the driver of car #52 held eventual Southern Nationals champion Chris Madden off for 25 laps until he finally had to give way and settle for a solid 3rd place result.
“I kind of surprised myself a little bit,” king admitted. “I had pretty high expectations for that race. I was hoping to get a top-5 out of it, but I didn’t really foresee myself starting on the pole by holding off Weaver in the dash. That was pretty cool.
“A lot of it was just me knowing the race track,” he added. “When I got here, I already knew where the groove was going to be, while in hot laps and qualifying, they were still learning it. A lot of these travelling series don’t come to this track and I run here every week so I kind of knew what to expect when I showed up and they had a little catching up to do.”
