Ryan King
Sometimes it’s best to have a plan when going into a major project, but sometimes things can work out just fine when decisions are made on the fly. The latter was the case for driver Ryan King when he and his team made the trek to Bubba Raceway Park in Ocala, Fla. in late January. The Seymour, Tenn. racer scored two top-10 finishes in three points paying races to begin the 2015 NeSmith Dirt Late Model Series. Those results have placed him 7th in the early season standings.
“We didn’t decide to go down there until the very last minute,” King explained in an interview with InsideDirtRacing.com. “We went to the NeSmith banquet that Saturday night(January 24) and we had looked at their schedule a little bit. We had talked about it, but I kind of forgot about it because dad(Brian King) hadn’t said much else. On Sunday, dad called me and told me to come by the house because he wanted to talk about going to Florida to race that week and they were starting on Tuesday.
“We had one car that was almost ready so we sat down and did a cost analysis on going to Ocala,” he continued. “I called a few sponsors and wound up getting some pretty good money to go down and race, so we decided to do it. We did about a week’s worth of work in one day and got everything packed up and ready to go.”
King believes the NeSmith series sets up well for his team from a cost effectiveness standpoint. While there will be some travel expenses incurred, many races on the tour will be near his east Tennessee home.
“This year, it’s a little more oriented in our direction,” the former 411 Motor Speedway track champion explained of the NeSmith schedule. “At the first of the year and at the end of the year they’ve got further away trips, but through the heart of the season we’d be racing at 411, Tri-County and Duck River. Those are tracks I’ve been to and feel good about.”
But still, the Florida trip served as a bit of a feeling out process for the Brian King Roofing operation.
“We just wanted to go down there and see how we would do before we decided whether we might run the series or not,” King said. “Since we finished pretty good, now we’re looking at running the whole thing. We’re planning on going to Brunswick next week. I guess that as long as we’re running good in the series, we’ll keep running it.”
Ryan King will be hitting the NeSmith tour races at Golden Isles this weekend.
The 24-year-old declared that racing away from home helped him as a driver by providing him with a new set of conditions to negotiate.
“I’ve mostly just raced on tracks around here,” he pointed out. “Down there(Ocala) was totally different, the dirt and everything. I hadn’t been on a track like that, it’s a unique place. One of the turns is like turn one at Smoky Mountain, you go in and it’s a big wide sweeping turn and then the other end of it’s like turn one at 411 where you go in there and turn real sharp.”
King’s local fans will still have plenty of opportunities to see their favorite driver race in 2015. When he is not touring with NeSmith, he plans to hit a number of area events.
“At first we’d made us up a schedule before 411 and the other tracks decided to do this crate alliance deal(UCRA),” the former Seymour High School quarterback said. “We were actually looking at doing more Super Late Model racing because running Limited Late Models is about the same cost as running Supers. We thought that instead of running Limiteds every week for $1,000, there’s enough Super Late Model races in this area that we wouldn’t have to travel more than two hours to run Supers every week for a lot better money.
“Now things have flip-flopped,” he went on. “With 411 and the other tracks doing that crate alliance, we’re looking more at running some of those races when we aren’t running with the NeSmith tour. Anything that’s a good paying crate race, we’ll go to. We’re going to keep our other car set up for Super Late Models and may hit a few of those races in the area when we can.”
The NeSmith Dirt Late Model Series next races on February 14th and 15th at the Golden Isles Speedway in Waynesville, Georgia.
