By T.J. Buffenbarger
(August 15, 2025) — I-96 Speedway held their next to last sprint car event of the 2025 season with the final appearances of the Great Lakes Super Sprints and Great Lakes Traditional Sprints on Friday night. Here are my takeaways from an action packed sprint car double headers.
• Jared Horstman’s remarkable 2025 season continued Friday night at I-96 Speedway. One year ago, if Horstman had been faced with one car flying and another one spinning in front of him, there is a high probability his car would have resulted in a yard sale of strewn parts. Instead Horstman took a glancing blow and was able to overcome a missing front bumper and nose wing knocked askew to win the feature event.
Horstman’s horrific 2024 season had him pondering if it was time for him to step away from driving sprint cars. Nobody would blame Horstman if he had chosen to do so with a successful 360 sprint car driving career, a family with three young daughters, and a busy career.
Instead Horstman, his family, and crew looked for answers. Horstman’s father went to the Fremont Speedway Sprint Car Education classes to look at things from another perspective. They went through their car and decided to try some different things for 2025.
That work during the off season and not giving up after a trying 2024 season has paid dividends in 2025. Horstman looks to be at the top of his game, scoring seven feature wins to date and stretched his lead for the GLSS Michigan region point standings to 50 markers over Max Stambaugh.
There is a lesson here for a lot of young racers about perseverance that is worth paying attention to.
• Much like the Knoxville Nationals on Saturday, there will be several drivers looking at Friday’s outcome at I-96 Speedway wondering, “What if?”
Dustin Daggett appeared to be in position to pick up his first feature victory of the 2025 season, which seems odd to type in the later part of August, when a rare mistake being held up in lapped traffic was all Horstman needed to snatch the victory away.
Long before Daggett’s issue in lapped traffic, it appeared Scotty Thiel was going to be on a Friday cruise in route to winning the 25-lap feature wire to wire. I didn’t see Thiel go to the work area when his care would not go back into gear during the red flag and was confused when I saw him go to the tail.
Thiel’s charge from the back of the field to third position was inspired and entertaining to watch. Unfortunately for Thiel the remainder of the race went green to checkered and never offered him the late race restart opportunity to complete the incredible comeback.
• Steve Irwin’s incredible accomplishment of winning a 12th point championship following his main event victory with the Great Lakes Traditional Sprints may fly under the radar regionally and nationally, but when you consider how diverse those titles all are we may never see anything like it again in our lifetime.
Irwin managed to win championships with and without wings, on both dirt and paved surfaces. The only championship missing from Irwin’s resume is a winged pavement sprint car title.
Being a first ballot inductee into the Michigan Motorsports Hall of Fame should be a foregone conclusion for Irwin. He has done more than enough to deserve to go in on the first try, and hopefully once he hits the eligible age we will see that happen.