Casey Roberts emerges from his car after last year’s Lucas Oil win at Smoky Mountain.
It’s certainly newsworthy whenever a regional driver steps up and beats out the more well known stars in a national touring series Dirt Late Model event. That’s exactly what Toccoa, Georgia native Casey Roberts did in 2014 when he won the Lucas Oil Dirt Late Model Series feature at the Smoky Mountain Speedway in Maryville, Tenn.
And now, Roberts is set to return to the scene of last season’s big victory this weekend for a pair of Ray Cook promoted Spring Nationals shows to be run on Friday and Saturday nights. Those races will pay $5,000 and $10,000-to-win respectively.
“We’ve got some good notes to build on for up there,” Roberts said in an exclusive interview with InsideDirtRacing.com. “I always like going up there. They’ve got a lot of good races this year so we’ll probably make a good many trips up to Maryville. They do a great job on the track and we just look forward to it.”
The typically tacky setup and big sweeping turns of SMS lend themselves to some very high speeds, and Roberts believes he has the right combination of engine and chassis to once again do well on the 4/10 mile layout.
Casey Roberts
“I think we do,” the Longhorn Chassis pilot proclaimed. “Custom Engines give us good power to run so we look forward to the fast speeds up there and hopefully we can get us another win.”
Roberts’ 2015 season got off to an interesting start in February when he looked to have a victory in hand but was bumped aside by Josh Richards at Georgia’s Screven Motor Speedway. Nonetheless, the No. 101 car has shown much the same strength early on that it demonstrated last year.
“We went down there to Screven and had a pretty good showing, I guess,” the 37-year-old driver said in an interview conducted at the North Georgia Speedway. “After that, we went to Florida and had a couple of rough nights, but all that’s behind us.
“Now we’re ready to go racing here with the Ultimate Series some and see how we can do this weekend,” he added. “Then we’re going to head up to Maryville next weekend for Ray’s races. Hopefully we can continue to run pretty strong this year and have everything go well. We hope the Lord will continue to bless us like He has in the past and we can have a good year.”
Roberts finished 3rd on Saturday night in a thrilling Ultimate Super Late Model Series race at North Georgia then went on to win the feature with that series on the following evening at the Lavonia Speedway in Lavonia, Georgia.
Roberts’ #101
With such success in the first two events on that tour, will the Jimmy and Ann Cushman owned team compete for the Ultimate SLM title?
“I haven’t talked to my car owner about what we’re going to do for sure but we’re definitely going to do the first few and see how things go,” Roberts explained. “We might do the whole deal. It’s just entirely up to them. They’ll make the decision and we’ll do whatever they want to do.”
