Who’s Your Favorite Driver?

"𝑇ℎ𝑒 𝑃𝑒𝑜𝑝𝑙𝑒 𝐾𝑒𝑒𝑝𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝐺𝑟𝑎𝑠𝑠𝑟𝑜𝑜𝑡𝑠 𝑅𝑎𝑐𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝐴𝑙𝑖𝑣𝑒"

It was a pretty simple question... Standing somewhere inside Eldora Speedway during the World 100, surrounded by some of the best Dirt Late Model racers in the country, Chad Conkel and a few friends got to talking.

Eventually somebody asked him, “Who’s your favorite driver?”

That should’ve been an easy one. Jonathan Davenport? One of the best Dirt Late Model racers walking the planet. Dennis Erb Jr? Another damn good choice. Cole Duncan? Somebody Chad’s known for years, and a hell of a Sprint Car driver.

There were plenty of answers he could’ve given. Chad was standing at the World 100... If there was ever a place to start rattling off some of the biggest names in dirt racing, that was it.

But Chad thought about it...

His answer wasn’t one of the superstars surrounding him... It was Kevin Wills.

If you’ve spent much time around Southern Ohio dirt racing, particularly places like Atomic Speedway, Jackson County Speedway, or 35 Raceway Park, there’s a decent chance you know exactly who Chad's talking about.

And if you don’t? Well... maybe that’s exactly why this story needs told.

𝐏𝐞𝐧 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐏𝐚𝐩𝐞𝐫

A little while after the World, Chad handed me something.

Not a Facebook post. Not a Messenger novel. Not something typed into the Notes app on his phone at two in the morning.

A piece of paper...

Chad had actually sat down, grabbed a pen and written this out by hand... Old school... That alone told me something, because this wasn’t Chad trying to become a writer. Chad’s not the type to write a feature or post an article on the website. Something had been sitting heavy enough on his mind throughout this season that eventually, after somebody asked that question at Eldora, it spilled out onto paper.

He wrote about the massive haulers and the stars of the sport. He wrote about how disconnected the highest levels of racing can feel from the Saturday night world he knows. He wrote about attitudes, accessibility and remembering where you came from. Some of it was raw. Some of it was frustrated.

But then he answered that question...

Why Kevin Wills?

Because Chad has watched Kevin race damn near anything somebody will let him climb into. He’s watched him work on other people’s cars. He’s watched him make changes, help competitors and spend his own time trying to make somebody else faster.

And at 35 Raceway Park, Chad keeps seeing that white four-wheeler...

Kevin riding around helping somebody, checking on something, doing whatever needs done. That’s what stuck with Chad. Not the size of the hauler. Not the number on a national points sheet. Not the amount written on the winner’s check...

The guy on the white four-wheeler.

𝐊𝐞𝐯𝐢𝐧 𝐖𝐢𝐥𝐥𝐬 𝐂𝐚𝐧 𝐖𝐡𝐞𝐞𝐥 𝐀𝐧𝐲 𝐃𝐚𝐦𝐧 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠

Now, don’t misunderstand Chad’s answer as some sentimental participation trophy. Kevin Wills can wheel a race car. Before Atomic Speedway’s troubles started pulling back its schedule, Kevin was a regular there in the 9K Sport Mod. He’s made appearances at Jackson County Speedway this season, too.

Just this year alone, I know of Kevin driving a Sport Mod, a dirt truck, and a compact throughout the season... pretty sure he even ran an autocross race or two when the county fairs rolled around.

Then there's the other people’s cars.

Kevin's climbed into other Sport Mods throughout the season, sometimes helping diagnose what a car's doing while getting some pretty damn valuable seat time in equipment somebody else set up.

Some racers can drive their car. Kevin's one of those dudes where you start wondering what would happen if you put him in damn near anything with four wheels and told him to figure it out.

Chad respects that, but again, that’s not really why Kevin's his favorite driver. It’s everything surrounding it. Kevin represents a type of racer Chad worries we’re losing. The racer who’ll compete against you and then help you make your car good enough to beat him. The guy who wants to win but understands that the race track is better when everybody gets their shit together and makes the show. The guy whose value to a Saturday night can’t be measured exclusively by where his name appears on the results sheet.

There's people scattered throughout grassroots racing just like him. You probably know one. Maybe you know ten. And chances are, most people outside your little corner of dirt racing have absolutely no idea who they are.

“𝐈’𝐦 𝐖𝐨𝐫𝐫𝐢𝐞𝐝 𝐀𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐖𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐈𝐬 𝐆𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐠”

Then Chad’s handwritten piece gets heavier. He talks about looking into grandstands and seeing empty seats. He talks about younger generations not seeming as excited about racing, and eventually he writes that, in his opinion, dirt track racing is dying quickly. He wonders what the sport looks like eight or ten years from now... if it even gets that far in the form we recognize today.

That eight-to-ten-year number isn’t a professional forecast... It’s a fear. There’s a big difference. It’s a guy who loves grassroots racing... who's wrenched on countless cars, stood in Victory Lane with the people he's stood beside at their lowest, and helped shape an entire series we all know and love today, looking around at something that's consumed a massive part of his life and wondering whether enough people are coming behind us to keep doing this.

And I understand why it bothers him... because Chad isn’t observing grassroots racing from a couch.

He’s in it.

𝐖𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐞 𝐈 𝐖𝐚𝐬 𝐚𝐭 𝐏𝐨𝐫𝐭𝐬𝐦𝐨𝐮𝐭𝐡...

The second half of our season has looked quite a bit different than the first. Earlier this year, if A Moment With Mengsk was traveling somewhere, there's a good chance Chad was along for the journey. Mansfield, Muskingum, Atomic, Portsmouth for The Revival. Hours in the car. Hours at the race track. Hours coming home afterward talking about what we’d seen, what worked, what didn’t, and what we were going to do next.

But lately we’ve spent quite a few Saturday nights doing our own things. My road increasingly led toward Portsmouth Raceway Park.

Chad’s road led toward 35 Raceway Park. His buddy’s son, Zach Fullen races a Modlite there. Chad started helping. Even on weekends when Chad was with me doing AMWM stuff, he’d spend time during the week in the shop helping work on Zach’s car.

And on September 19, while I was at Portsmouth Raceway Park calling the Ohio Valley SCDRA debut from the booth, Chad was at 35 Raceway Park with Zach and the rest of that team...

By the end of the night they were Modlite track champions. I’m so proud of them. Not because Chad needs a metaphorical trophy with his name on it, but because the dude who sat down and wrote to me about the importance of grassroots racers has spent his own season quietly doing the grassroots work with the next generation.

That's the work that matters.

𝐁𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐝 𝐖𝐚𝐬 𝐌𝐲 𝐁𝐮𝐝𝐝𝐲

Here’s where I need to rewind this thing a little bit, because Chad wasn’t always my 'media assistant'. He wasn’t always the other half of A Moment With Mengsk when we’re walking through a pit area, interacting with track staff and drivers alike.

Chad and I weren't even friends at the start of last season. I was just some dude sitting in Section E at Atomic Speedway. Chad worked the gate. Throughout those hot race days, I’d make sure he got a few cold bottles of water, nothing profound about it.

I was a fan, he was doing his part to keep the show I love so much going. I wanted to show my appreciation. We knew each other enough to talk a little here and there, but that was about it. Then one night we actually got to talking.

Somewhere in that conversation, Chad handed me my first pit pass.

"Go down there. Go experience it. Go meet Cole Duncan."

Neither of us knew what the that little wristband was going to do. Why would we? It was just a pit pass.

Except sometimes little things inside this sport don’t stay little.

𝐎𝐧𝐞 𝐏𝐢𝐭 𝐏𝐚𝐬𝐬

That night changed the way I experienced dirt racing. Eventually Chad and I became friends. Then, sitting in the lawn at the final Dirt Track World Championship at Eldora Speedway, I got the ridiculous idea to start a dirt racing media outlet...

A Moment With Mengsk was born, and Chad naturally became part of it. Not because I needed somebody standing beside me wearing matching stuff so AMWM looked bigger than it was. We've never been good at coordinating outfits anyway... Stupid Rednecks!

Chad knew people. More importantly, people knew Chad.

There's drivers I now consider friends who I probably would've awkwardly walked past for months if Chad hadn't said, “Hey, come here, I want you to meet somebody.”

He broke down walls without even trying to. He became the second core member of what I was building, even if most people scrolling Facebook never saw that side of it.

I handle the public-facing machine most of the time, sure, but Chad's the other half of the face of AMWM when we’re actually out there. During all those miles traveling to places like Mansfield and Muskingum earlier this season, we kept circling around one subject...

The youth of our sport...

How do we get more of them interested? How do we make the race track somewhere they actually want to be? How do we make sure this sport means something to the next generation instead of simply assuming they’ll love it because we do?

I couldn't give you some cinematic quote from one particular drive where lightning struck and everything suddenly made sense... That's not how it happened.

It's just something we kept talking about, but the idea stuck, and eventually those conversations became coloring pages. Then more ideas. Eventually, they became part of the reason The Moment With Mengsk Foundation was even formed.

A couple of dudes riding home from dirt tracks talking about how to engage the next generation in our sport. That’s it.

Again... little things don’t always stay little.

𝐁𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐖𝐚𝐬 𝐄𝐯𝐞𝐧 𝐀 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐧𝐠

Chad isn't the only person who's done that for me. Early this year, A Moment With Mengsk was barely a thing. I had published two pieces... two...

There was no long track record to point toward. No reason anybody established in racing needed to give a crap about what I was trying to build. Then came the opportunity to tell people about the Ohio Valley SCDRA, and with it came Jody Shannon.

Jody's the Owner and Series Director for the Ohio Valley SCDRA, a group of Sport Compacts that have built their own identity throughout our region. Beside him is his wife, Ashley and I say “beside him” very intentionally.

Ashley isn't just Jody's wife who happens to show up at races. She’s his right hand. The kind of person doing work that doesn't necessarily come with a microphone, a trophy, or somebody chanting your name from the grandstands. The kind of person without whom the whole machine starts getting a lot harder to operate.

Sound familiar yet?

Jody took this brand-new "media guy" with two stories under his belt and worked with me. He helped me understand what the Ohio Valley SCDRA actually was from the ground level. Not just what cars they raced. Who they were. What they were trying to build. Why it mattered.

He gave me the opportunity to do my first real series spotlight before there was any particularly good reason to believe A Moment With Mengsk would become anything. At the time, I simply appreciated the opportunity.

Knowing what I know now, I appreciate it differently... because Jody had already walked this road.

𝐁𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐒𝐡𝐢𝐭 𝐖𝐚𝐬 𝐂𝐨𝐨𝐥

Long before everybody had a media page... Long before dirt racing Facebook became an endless stream of videos, interviews, podcasts, reels, photographers, personalities and people trying to tell the story of the sport... Jody Shannon was doing it.

The Dirt Racing Connection.

YouTube. Race footage. Interviews. Grassroots dirt racing being documented and shared at a time when doing that wasn't the obvious thing to do. Jody's one of the true OGs, and I don't use that loosely.

What people like Derick with Dirt Behind The Scenes, Scott with Yada Yada's Dirt Track And Sports Talk, and what I'm trying to do with A Moment With Mengsk feels normal now because we exist in an era where anybody can pull a phone out of their pocket, hit record and instantly put dirt racing in front of thousands of people...

Jody was blazing that trail years before it became the cool thing to do.

Recently, Derick took some time to publicly give Jody and Ashley their flowers. His point was simple, and it's one worth repeating:

Racing has people who've given enormous portions of their lives to this sport without ever receiving recognition proportional to what they've contributed.

Jody and Ashley are two of them. They've spent years trying to make racing better, particularly for racers who aren't necessarily getting the giant spotlight. There's something beautifully circular about one of the pioneers of grassroots dirt media eventually sitting down with some nobody who'd written two stories and helping him learn how to tell one properly.

Jody didn't need to do that... but he did.

𝐍𝐨𝐛𝐨𝐝𝐲 𝐁𝐮𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐬 𝐓𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐀𝐥𝐨𝐧𝐞

Maybe that's what I've come to understand more than anything during my first season doing this. Nobody builds anything alone. Not really anyway.

A race car certainly isn't built alone. Neither is a track. Neither is a series, a media outlet, or a community.

Somebody teaches somebody. Somebody introduces somebody. Somebody gives somebody an opportunity, loans a part, jumps into another driver's car because they can't figure out what the hell it's doing, stays late at the shop. Somebody gets there early.

Somebody works registration. Somebody sells tickets. Somebody scores the race, rides around on a white four-wheeler asking who needs help, gives the guy in Section E a pit pass... and eventually that guy might turn around and do something for somebody else.

That's how this stuff works. At least, that's how it's supposed to work.

𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐏𝐞𝐨𝐩𝐥𝐞 𝐘𝐨𝐮 𝐃𝐨𝐧'𝐭 𝐒𝐞𝐞

We understandably celebrate winners. Hell, that's sports. The guy who takes the checkered flag gets his picture taken. The champion gets the trophy. The driver gets introduced. The crowd remembers the number on the side of the car...

But behind every one of those moments is an almost ridiculous number of people whose names probably aren't going into the record book.

Think about Zach Fullen's championship. His name belongs on it. He drove the damn car, but there were people in the shop. People making changes. People sacrificing evenings. People loading and unloading. People getting dirty. People giving up part of their week because they wanted to see that car succeed.

Chad was one of them. That's not unique to Zach's team. That's racing. Zoom out farther.

Who made sure there was a series for somebody to race? Who handled everything behind the scenes? Who talked to the tracks? Who dealt with the bullcrap nobody else wanted to? Who answered the phone? Who promoted the event? Who made sure somebody knew there was a race happening Saturday night? Who took the picture? Who wrote the story? Who brought their kid? Who bought the kid a shirt? Who gave that kid a coloring page? Who handed somebody their first pit pass? Who made them feel like they belonged here?

Those people matter... maybe more than we tell them.

𝐆𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐦 𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐢𝐫 𝐅𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐬

That's something Derick got exactly right.

We have a terrible habit in life, not just racing, of waiting until somebody's gone before we explain what they meant. Then everybody has a story. Everybody has a picture. Everybody remembers that one night. Everybody wishes they'd said something.

Tell them now. If there's a racer at your local track who has helped half the pit area at one point or another, tell them you notice. If there's someone sitting behind a registration table every Saturday night who somehow knows everybody's name, tell them they matter.

If there's a track worker who's been standing in the same dusty corner for twenty years, tell him. If there's somebody who helped you get into racing, tell them. If there's somebody who made your kid feel special, tell them. If there's somebody who's spent years quietly making your little corner of this sport better...

Give them their flowers while they're still standing in front of you to receive them, because that's how people learn all those nights mattered.

𝐁𝐮𝐭 𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐀𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐄𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐨𝐫 𝐓𝐞𝐧 𝐘𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐬 𝐅𝐫𝐨𝐦 𝐍𝐨𝐰?

I keep coming back to the end of Chad's handwritten piece. He's worried. I understand it.

There's nights you can look at a grandstand and wonder how'd it used to look when I was little? There's tracks fighting to survive. There's costs that continue climbing. There's countless other things competing for people's attention. And yes, there's kids who couldn't give two nickels about sitting at a dirt track on Saturday night.

So what's this sport going to look like in eight years? Ten?

I don't know. None of us do... but I'm increasingly convinced the future of grassroots dirt racing isn't just something that's going to happen to us. We're participating in deciding what it becomes. Every time somebody takes a kid to their first race, we're doing something. Every time a driver lets that kid sit behind the wheel, we're doing something. Every time somebody gives away a bicycle, hands out a coloring page, signs a hero card, or spends five minutes talking to a little fan who thinks their car is the coolest thing they've ever seen, we're doing something.

Every time somebody helps a competitor instead of watching them struggle, we're doing something. Every time somebody teaches another person how to work on a car, we're doing something. Every time somebody with decades in this sport takes somebody brand new seriously, we're doing something.

None of those things will single-handedly save dirt racing. That's not the point. The point is that grassroots racing has always been a collection of little things. Little tracks. Little teams. Little budgets. Little gestures. Every once in a while, one of those little gestures turns into something nobody saw coming.

I would know... Mine started with that pit pass.

𝐁𝐚𝐜𝐤 𝐭𝐨 𝐄𝐥𝐝𝐨𝐫𝐚...

So let's go back to where this whole conversation started. The World 100. Eldora Speedway. Some of the best Dirt Late Model racers in America gathered in one place.

Thousands of fans. Big haulers. Big names. Bigger money. And somebody turns to Chad Conkel and asks him a question.

“Who's your favorite driver?”

Chad thinks about it.

Jonathan Davenport? Dennis Erb Jr? Cole Duncan? All damn good racers. But no...

Kevin Wills.

The guy who can jump into damn near anything with wheels and figure out how to make it go and go fast. The guy who works on other people's race cars. The guy helping somebody else before worrying about himself. The guy riding around 35 Raceway Park on that white four-wheeler.

That's Chad's favorite driver.

And after everything I've watched this season, I think I finally understand why that answer meant enough to him that he went home, picked up a pen and put it on paper.

Maybe our favorite drivers don't always have to be the people with the most wins. Maybe they don't have to race on television. Maybe they don't have to be the person everybody recognizes walking through the pits.

Maybe your favorite driver's the local guy who helped you when you were broke. Maybe it's the driver who made your kid feel like the coolest person at the track. Maybe it's somebody like Jody or Ashley who isn't even answering the question from behind a steering wheel, but has given enough to this sport that they deserve to enter the conversation anyway.

Maybe it's the guy who taught you how to turn a wrench. Maybe it's the person who opened a gate for you. Maybe it's somebody whose name will never mean a damn thing outside your hometown track, but means everything inside it.

Because when you strip away the giant checks, the national tours, the merchandise trailers, the streaming broadcasts and everything else we've built around dirt racing, this sport still comes down to people...

People helping people. People teaching people. People giving somebody else a chance. People caring enough to keep showing up.

That's grassroots racing.

And if we're worried about whether it'll still be here for the next generation, maybe we should spend a little less time waiting for somebody else to save it, and a little more time becoming the kind of people worth inheriting it from.

So now I'll leave you with the same simple question somebody asked Chad at Eldora, but really think about it for a minute before you answer...

𝐖𝐡𝐨'𝐬 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐟𝐚𝐯𝐨𝐫𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐝𝐫𝐢𝐯𝐞𝐫?

Photo courtesy Nate’s Racin’ Photos.