By Spence Smithback
CONCORD, NC (October 2, 2024) – At the dawn of the 2024 season, more than half a dozen drivers were signed up to run the full American Sprint Car Series National Tour for the first time.
The quantity and quality of first-timers meant that the Rookie of the Year battle was shaping up to be equally as intriguing as the championship fight. But with six months and 24 races in the rearview mirror, the freshman standings are topped by someone who wasn’t even on the list of contenders until the end of May: Hank Davis.
After TwoC Racing and Seth Bergman parted ways two races into the season, Davis was tabbed as the new driver of the No. 2C for the remainder of the year. He didn’t take long to find his footing, finishing on the podium at Dodge City Raceway Park on June 1 to cap off his first weekend with the team.
That run was the second of nine top fives through Davis’s first 10 races behind the wheel of the Todd Carlile-owned, Wayne Johnson-tuned car. The Sand Springs, OK native’s expectations were high entering the next chapter of his Sprint Car career – but not quite that high.
“I didn’t know we would be this good,” Davis said. “I didn’t know if [Rookie of the Year] would be attainable really, but once we started rolling, I thought it would be attainable. We just had to do our job and be there at the end every night.”
After a summer filled with strong runs and close encounters with Victory Lane, Davis finally broke through on Labor Day weekend at Electric City Speedway with not one, but two victories. The wins weren’t just the first and second of his career with the National Tour, they also vaulted him into the lead of the Rookie of the Year race.
However, that isn’t the only points battle Davis has to think about, as TwoC Racing sits 34 points behind the Hill’s Racing Team No. 15H of Sam Hafertepe Jr. in the owners championship standings with 10 races to go in the season. Going for two separate titles while learning the ropes of full-time Sprint Car racing might seem like a lot to balance, but Davis’s solution is simple – don’t think about any of it.
“I really try not to think about any of the titles honestly,” Davis said. “I would love to get [the owner’s championship], just because that would help Wayne out, it’s on his side. We’re just out here to try and win as many races as possible, and wherever we end up is where we end up.”
Up until Electric City, the Rookie of the Year chase had been commanded by Caney, KS’s Andrew Deal. Racing a full season with a national Sprint Car series had always been a dream of his, and that dream came true in 2024.
“I was just going to have fun,” Deal said of his goals entering the season. “I mean, I wanted to do good, I thought we could do good. I thought [the Rookie of the Year Award] was a possibility.”
The best way to have fun racing Sprint Cars is to finish towards the front, and Deal did that on a regular basis early in the season. A runner-up finish in the season opener at Super Bee Speedway kicked off a string of seven top 10s through the first eight races, placing the No. 15D team at the top of the Rookie leaderboard and firmly on the list of nightly contenders with the Series.
It’s been an up-and-down season in the months since, as top-five runs at Lincoln County Raceway and Clay County Fair Speedway have gone along with a handful of finishes in the bottom half of the field. Deal admitted that he’s still in the learning phase of racing with the National Tour but said the box score doesn’t tell the full story of what he’s capable of.
“These guys, they drive so hard. They’re on it the whole time and they’re willing to wreck,” Deal said. “There’s a lot of times where I do lift. I’m not quite willing to just chance everything and tear my stuff up and get hurt. The right conditions, there’s no doubt in my mind we can win.
“I’m just not going to go 150% like some of these guys out here. It’s out of my pocket, I’ve got some good sponsors, but at the end of the day I’m paying for it.”
The level of competition on the National Tour isn’t the only thing Deal has had to adjust to this season, as many of the tracks on the schedule have been brand new for him. Getting up to speed at new facilities is a major hurdle for anyone taking on a new series for the first time, particularly for drivers like Deal who did little traveling prior to taking on the National Tour.
“Try to watch some videos, just try to study up on how the race goes and where I need to be at,” Deal said. “The hardest part is Qualifying. Kind of sets your night up, so you get basically three to five laps to see the track and then you’ve got to qualify on it. Wayne [Priddy, Deal’s brother-in-law and longtime Sprint Car crew chief] helps me a lot, he’s raced at a lot of these tracks. I’ll visit with him about tendencies of the track, of the dirt, try to get an idea of what to do. But once we get there, I’m pretty much just flying blind.”
Two places where Deal won’t be flying blind are the final two tracks on the schedule – Tulsa Speedway and Creek County Speedway – where he has plenty of laps in both winged and Non-Wing competition. If Deal can chip away at Davis’s 134-point lead in the six-race October slate, he could be in position to retake the lead during championship weekend in November and put an exclamation point on what he said has already been a rewarding year.
“In my mind, this has been nothing but a success,” Deal said. “There’s some nights where we should have been better and we weren’t, and there were some nights where we were pretty good and we probably shouldn’t have been any good at all. I would call it a success.”
The next chapter in the Rookie of the Year duel will be written next weekend at Benton Speedway (Friday, Oct. 11) and Paducah International Raceway (Saturday, Oct. 12). Tickets will be available at the track on race day, but if you can’t make it, watch every lap live on DIRTVision.
ARTICLE: https://ascsracing.com/news/national-tour-rookie-of-the-year-award-comes-down-to-davis-vs-deal/
EVENT INFO: Benton Speedway (Oct. 11), Paducah International Raceway (Oct. 12)
TRACK INFO: Benton Speedway, Paducah International Raceway
FAN 101: https://about.dirtcar.com/
The American Sprint Car Series was founded in 1992, comprised of regional races primarily in the Southwest region. It then went national in 1993 and has become the premier 360 Sprint Car Series in the country, while still sanctioning nine regional series that include 360 Sprint Cars, 410 Sprint Cars and Non-Wing Sprint Cars. ASCS is supported by DIRTVision, Hoosier Racing Tire, Racing Electronics and VP Racing.