By Zach Hiser
Merrill, MI – In 2018, Dustin Daggett dominated the Great Lakes Super Sprints Presented by PERFIT & ARP season with six wins, 13 top fives, and 14 top 10s in 14 feature starts en route to a nearly 300-point advantage over Gregg Dalman for the championship. Seven seasons later, the intensity of the Great Lakes Super Sprints has increased, and the proof is in the pictures. Daggett captured his second GLSS Sanctioned Championship in 2024 by a mere three points over Max Stambaugh but dropped the Tour Championship to the Smith Motorsports driver by 172 points after a season with two wins, 13 top fives, and 27 top 10s in 31 starts.
Daggett is a historical leader for the Great Lakes Super Sprints. Not only did the Portland, Michigan native win the first ever event on June 17th, 2016, but he holds the statistical lead in several categories as the series prepares for the 10th season of racing. Daggett is the all-time leader in Fast Time Awards with 24, the next closest is Phil Gressman with 16; Daggett holds a 20 marker advantage in Heat Race Wins with 61, Chase Ridenour is the next closest; and thanks to his August win at Crystal last season, he pulls two wins further away in the all-time feature winner stat as well. Since the first win in 2016, Daggett has pulled together 25 other featuring winning performances, just two better than fellow two-time GLSS Champion Jared Horstman. Max Stambaugh, Phil Gressman, Randy Hannagan, and Ryan Ruhl are the only other drivers with double-digit wins out of 40 different winners all-time.
As the legitimacy of the Great Lakes Super Sprints has blossomed in 10 years of racing, so too has the competition. To win a feature with GLSS requires near perfection from the first time the car sees the race track until the car rolls across the scale and is officially declared a winner. The challenge to win is what makes earning a championship so special.
“I’d kind of like to have seen the young me against these guys,” Daggett said with a laugh. “I’d have to say the competition has gotten better; of course, there’s more serious people involved in it. The drive in the other racers to win is much more intense than it was even five seasons ago.”
Despite Daggett becoming the veteran on the Great Lakes Super Sprints, he says the mentality and ability to win is still very much in tact. The difference now versus what he refers to as his “younger days” is that two-time GLSS Champion Dustin Daggett doesn’t make as many radical and reckless decisions as he used to.
“We’re still going there to win,” Daggett said. “We’ve still got the ability to win, we showed it last year – inn more cases than just the two features we did win. There are multiple events I look back at that I probably should have won. It’s still the goal; to go for the championship.”
To earn another Championship, Daggett is eyeing a strong start at I-75 Raceway in Sweetwater, TN April 11th and 12th. Last season, a second and eighth place finish started the season for the No.85. For more information on the Great Lakes Super Sprints Presented by PERFIT & ARP, log onto GreatLakesSuperSprints.com. Find Great Lakes Super Sprints on Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok, and YouTube.