Jimmy Owens
Things seem to be coming together nicely for Jimmy Owens as the calendar approaches this Memorial Day weekend. The Newport, Tenn. driver is coming off his first Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series victory of the season last Saturday night at the LaSalle Speedway in Illinois and is now headed toward a race in which this driver has had tremendous success in recent years.
“It was good to get that win,” Owens said. “Now if we could be a little more consistent it would help. We just need to keep working at it and build on that win.”
The Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series is set to run what will be its biggest race of the year to date this weekend at the Lucas Oil Speedway. Owens has won the $30,000-to-win ‘Show-me 100’ each of the past three seasons.
So what makes ‘The Newport Nightmare’ so good on the clay surface of the Wheatland, Missouri track?
“I don’t know,” he answered modestly. “We’ve just had a lot of things go our way there. Some tracks just suit your driving style and some don’t. I guess that one just suits my style and our setups.”
But even with momentum on his side and a favorable schedule in front of him, Owens maintained his typical humble nature during a recent telephone interview when asked if he might be about to string together a series of victories in the coming weeks. “No, we just take ’em one race at time and do our best,” he declared. “We just want to run good, be consistent, and see how things go from there.”
Just after the LOLMDS teams returned from their annual Georgia-Florida Speedweeks season opening races, Owens and his Mike Reece owned team made news by switching from Bloomquist Race Cars to the new Darrell Lanigan-designed Club 29 chassis. After several years of success in the Bloomquist cars, the No. 20 team has had to adjust to their new machine.
But those adjustments seem to be heading in the right direction. Prior to the win at LaSalle, Owens had run off a string of six consecutive top-4 finishes, including a $10,000 win in a non LOLMDS race at the Volunteer Speedway back in April.
“We’re pleased with the new car so far,” Owens explained. “We’ve had to start a whole new notebook, but it’s coming along. Sometimes you wonder how things are going to go after you make a change when you were still running good in your old stuff. We’re coming to tracks where we’ve had success before in the other cars and you just hope you can do as well in the new stuff.”
The Newport Nightmare in action
The LOLMDS schedule does indeed have some of Owens’ best tracks lined up in succession. After leaving Wheatland, the series will move to east Tennessee’s Tazewell Speedway on May 30th then to the Florence Speedway in Kentucky on May 31st.
“We have had good luck at all of them at one time or another, but we’ve struggled a little bit at Tazewell the last few times up there,” he said. “We have run good a few times at Lucas Oil and Florence so we feel pretty good about those places for sure.”
One thing that has hampered Owens and every other Lucas Oil competitor this season has been the weather. According the schedule on his website, nine races ‘The O Show’ had intended on running have been either postponed or canceled due to rain.
“It’s frustrating,” Owens admitted. “You look at the weather and you know it’s probably going to rain, but you have to go anyway. If there’s a 90% chance it will rain, there’s still a 10% chance that it won’t. We’re committed to the series and there are people who make plans to see you race and plan vacations around the schedule and all, so you go but you know you’re probably just going to sit around and watch it rain. And it’s expensive to have to do that.”
Friday night’s activities were rained out at LaSalle, but the weekend did not prove to be frustrating for Owens or his Club 29 counterpart Darrell Lanigan. Owens won his race while Lanigan won a World of Outlaws Late Models event at the Duck River Raceway Park in Wheel, Tenn. This weekend, both have big races. Owens will be in the Show-me 100 while Lanigan will compete in the Jackpot 100 at the Tyler County Raceway in West Virginia.
“That was a great weekend for us, and hopefully this next weekend will be even better for us both,” Owens said.
