Jimmy Owens earned two wins during his time in Arizona.
Comments by Jimmy Owens taken from DirtonDirt.com video.
Jimmy Owens may not have gotten off to a great start in the Wild West Shootout at the USA Raceway in Tucson, Ariz., but by the time the checkered flag waved over the field for the final time in the six race mini-series, the Newport, Tenn. native was the hottest driver in the desert. In the end, the three time Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series champion scored two victories in the annual mid-winter event, including the $10,000 finale.
Driving for the first time with his new Rowland Racing team, Owens posted somewhat lackluster results in the first four races of the week, scoring only one top-5 finish. However, the ‘Newport Nightmare’ gave the competition bad dreams after he won the $3,000 feature on Saturday night then the lucrative final race on Sunday evening.
“It’s been a struggle this whole week,” Owens remarked to DirtonDirt.com reporter Ben Shelton just after his Saturday night win. “We’ve not been running as good as we wanted to. We’ve had missed opportunities to have good starting spots and stuff but we’ve just missed it a little bit. We’re just trying some things here and there. But tonight, we hit on something that worked pretty good and we just didn’t mess with it anymore.”
The car Owens drove this past week was not one of his usual rides. While it was the same Club 29 brand of chassis he will employ in 2015, this particular car came out of the Oklahoma shop of his new team owner rather than his home garage in Newport. Even so, the winner of just about every crown jewel event the sport has to offer was happy to get the first wins for his new employer out of the way early in the season.
“It’s great,” Owens said of his initial victory for Rowland Racing. “I told some guys this week we’d just race and do the best we can do. This is actually Brian Rowland’s car. He was going to run some this week, but he had to do some other stuff so we got to wheel this thing all week long. We finally got it rolling pretty good. Team Widow Wax and Rowland Motorsports, he’s given us good equipment. It should be a fun year.”
The #20 Jimmy Owens drove in Arizona came out of the Oklahoma shop of Rowland Racing.
Once the LOLMDS season gets underway in February, Owens will continue to use the same equipment he had last season. The #20 team will race out of their usual garage in Newport.
Owens grabbed the lead away from Chris Simpson on lap 17 of Sunday night’s main event then held back challenges from both Simpson and Jimmy Mars to claim the win.
“I started out a little rusty as you can tell by the new door we had to put on the right side,” Owens quipped when asked about getting off to such an early start to the season. “It’s good to go off to Brunswick(opening of the LOLMDS schedule in February) with a few races under our belt. I’m definitely looking forward to Florida.”
And getting of to such a good start with Rowland Racing is satisfying as well.
“It’s awesome,” Owens told DirtonDirt.com. “Brian has given us a great opportunity with the Widow Wax car here. Hopefully it’s a sign of things to come.”
