Rusty Ballenger
Rusty Ballenger scored his fourth win of the 2014 season at the 411 Motor Speedway this past Saturday night. The defending Limited Late Model track champion is now involved in a tight points battle with Ryan King for this year’s NeSmith Late Model championship for the current season.
At the beginning of 2014, Ballenger wasn’t sure he would find himself in this position so late in the season. At the end of last year, 411 track owner Mitch McCarter announced that his facility would drop Limited Late Models as a regular weekly class in favor of the Crate Late Models and Ballenger wasn’t entirely sold on the idea.
“I’ll admit it, I didn’t like it at first,” Ballenger stated. “I still wanted to run my steelhead stuff, but it was getting so expensive with motors costing $20,000 or more. Now we’ve got this crate and it took us a while to figure it out. But about halfway through the year we feel like we’re getting it figured out. It’s a lot cheaper and it’s a lot more fun. The competition between me, Adam(Beeler) and Ryan is close. You can roll the dice each week on who wins. I like it so far.”
Ballenger says there is a big difference in the driving style needed to get a Limited Late Model around the track compared to the NeSmith sanctioned cars. It took time for him to adjust to the new engine package, but some help came from a competitor to speed up that transition.
Ballenger’s #29
“The biggest thing is to keep these cars free,” Ballenger said. “That was what we learned earlier in the year in those big NeSmith races. But they’ve actually got a lot more power off the corner than I would have imagined. That’s the biggest thing, getting the car to turn. And Ryan helped me a lot in getting it to turn. Once we got it turning, it’s not as bad as it seems.”
King has piled up six wins on the Seymour, Tenn. track this season compared to Ballenger’s four while Beeler has amassed three victories in 2014. However, Beeler suffered a season ending leg injury a few weeks ago which will leave his two rivals to settle the issue among themselves.
Further, both King and Ballenger are well placed in the NeSmith Dirt Late Model Series weekly standings. King currently ranks 2nd in those national standings with Ballenger sits 7th.
“Earlier in the year, I was just wanting to race and get as many wins as I can,” the Seymour native said. “I’d still like more wins. We definitely want to stay up there in points and we’re looking to get a top-5 in the nation in the NeSmith national points. We’ve still got some bad races to get rid of here.”
