Matt Henderson
As the 2014 racing season neared its end, east Tennessee driver Matt Henderson made the decision to break away from competing solely in local shows around this area in favor travelling with the NeSmith Dirt Late Model Series during the current campaign. As a result, the Loudon, Tenn. native currently holds the 4th position in the overall standings of that series with one feature victory at Golden Isles Speedway in Georgia to his credit.
So with almost half a season completed, is Henderson satisfied with the decision to travel more in 2015?
“I’m happy with doing it, but our results have not been where I would have liked for them to be,” the driver said in an interview with InsideDirtRacing.com. “I don’t regret that decision. We’ve adapted pretty good at some places and we’ve missed the boat at others. It’s just a big learning curve going out on the road like that.”
Much of that learning curve involves racing his Brucebilt Rocket Chassis on tracks at which Henderson has little or no experience. And for a driver who has spent much of his racing life in east Tennessee, there is much to learn on the road. And the NeSmith tour takes drivers and teams to locales such in Florida, Mississippi, Georgia, North Carolina, Alabama and Tennessee as part of the racing adventure.
“Every track has unique characteristics to where you’ve got to pick up on something quickly,” Henderson explained. “They’ve all got their little niche that to get around them good you’ve got to know. Some of them I feel like I’ve picked up on right off the bat and some of them are just hard to get a handle on. We went to Waycross and I wasn’t fast there until the feature but by then I had already dug such a hole by qualifying in the back that I couldn’t really make any forward progress. Everywhere is different and you’ve got to learn them to the best of your ability, and sometimes we don’t catch on quick enough.”
Further, many of the drivers he competes against on those new venues are regulars of that particular track who race there on a weekly basis. Regulars who travel with Super Late Model series more often than not have an advantage on tracks they visit because of superior equipment and the fact that most tracks do not run SLMs on a weekly basis. Conversely, the touring teams with NeSmith often go up against drivers who are on their home tracks in very similar equipment to that of the visitors.
“Going to Magnolia Motor Speedway in Columbus, Miss. -that’s a place that draws forty to fifty cars for a $1,200-to-win show- you know that when our series comes in and they’re paying more money, there’s twenty different local guys who could win that race,” Henderson pointed out. “When you put the ten or fifteen touring guys that we bring, it’s a challenge to just get in the show. You have to know going into that that you have to learn quick and you have to be on your game right out of the box.”
So does Henderson feel like he will have the advantage over his touring series counterparts when they visit tracks in his home area this weekend?
Matt Henderson’s #H2 Brucebilt Rocket
“Those guys have so much talent that I never really feel like I’ve got an advantage over them,” the driver of the No. H2 Duayne Hommel tribute car said. “They’ve all got a lot of laps around a lot of places and about any of them can hit it on any given night and be hard to handle. I’m more confident in my ability around 411 than I am anywhere else, but I’m not naive enough to think that they can’t come in here and school me on my home turf. It’s going to be real interesting to see how the travelling guys do against the local guys up here.”
This weekend, the NeSmith Dirt Late Model Series will visit Ray Cook’s Tri-County Race Track in Brasstown, NC on Friday night then Mitch and Tanya McCarter’s 411 Motor Speedway in Seymour, Tenn. on Saturday evening. The Tri-County event will pay $2,000 to the winner while the 411 victor will receive a payout of $4,000.
“I’ve only raced at Tri-County once so I’m not an expert on it, but I did run pretty good there,” Henderson recalled. “I really liked Tri-County. It’s very racy, you could go to the top or the bottom the time I was there. You don’t have to rub on somebody to get around them so there’s a lot of opportunities to race somebody hard and clean.”
Unlike Tri-County, Henderson has raced many times on 411’s clay surface and feels as if he has a good idea what to expect at that facility.
“411 changes every week,” he declared. “It just depends on how they prep the track that week. I feel like you’ve got to stay free and rotate getting off of turn two real good because you run up the hill. A lot of people don’t know that when you come out of two you’re actually running up hill and then in three and four you’re going down hill. It actually requires different things on each end of the track because running up hill you get a little tight and running down hill you get a little free. You have to know how to adjust your driving to make it go through both corners.”
Henderson is very much hoping a racing weekend close to home will provide him and the Matt Henderson Racing team a boost as they prepare for the second half of the 2015 campaign.
“We’ve had so much bad luck that any win we could snag would be a huge payday for us. But it being a $4,000-to-win and it being at home, it would be huge to win at 411. It would be bigger than I can describe.”
