Jimmy Owens, seen here after his recent win in Tazewell, also celebrated in Victory Lane in Wheatland, MO.
Jimmy Owens found himself in two familiar places on Saturday night. The Newport, Tenn. driver ended his evening in Victory Lane for the Diamond Nationals at the Lucas Oil Speedway, a place where he won three consecutive Show-me 100s between 2011 and 2013. And, the three time and defending Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series champion found himself in the lead of the series standings as he passed by Don O’Neal with the $10,000 win.
Owens got the 2014 season off to a bit of a slow start, but a recent surge that has seen him score three LOLMDS wins, two seconds and one third place result in his last six series starts has placed him back at the top of the series.
After that slow start, Owens and his Mike Reece owned team decided to make a switch from their Bloomquist Race Cars to the new Darrell Lanigan designed Club 29 brand of chassis. That change seems to have ignited the driver’s most recent explosion. Since unveiling the new car at the Volunteer Speedway in March, the ‘Newport Nightmare’ has taken it to Victory Lane ten times(six of those in LOLMDS competition).
But after so much success, the decision to change cars was not an easy one.
“It’s been pretty awesome,” Owens told LOLMDS announcer James Essex in regards to the switch to Club 29. “We’d had so much success in our other cars that we kind of hated to change, but you know, we just felt like it was time to do a little something different and it seems to be working out for us. But if not, we’ve got another good car sitting in the hauler.”
Owens now leads the LOLMDS standings by a scant 5 points over O’Neal going into a race at Lakeside Speedway in Kansas on Tuesday night.
The win was Owens’ 50th career LOLMDS triumph, which broke him out of a tie with Scott Bloomquist on the all time win list for that series.
