Story by: Corey Latham ~ [email protected]
Winston-Salem, NC(January 22, 2011) — The 45th edition of the “World Series of Asphalt Stock Car Racing” at New Smyrna is right around the corner, an event that signals the beginning of the racing season.
After a long winter, teams and fans alike start to get their juices flowing, life to many starts to get back to normal if you will and while the usual focus is always on the Northern drivers on the Modified side of things, this years festivities will have a new flare not seen in many years. The Southern boys are coming to play, and Burt and Jason Myers look to make their presence felt.
As most tracks start the season off with a regular weekly show, New Smyrna goes all out with an action-packed nine full nights of racing. Six of those nights will feature the tour-type modifieds, the same cars that run on the NASCAR Whelen Southern and Northern Modified tours and the famed Bowman Gray Stadium. Always loaded with drivers from far above the Mason-Dixon line, it has been some time since anyone from the Bowman Gray Stadium or the Southern division has made the trek to sunny Florida to do battle. The last regulars to do so were Jay Hedgecock and Gary Myers in the early 90’s, Myers will be going back once more but it will to be to watch his sons Jason and Burt for the first time there.
The brothers have wanted to do this for a long time, but as it is in most racers careers, the pieces just never fit together.
“Everything finally just fell in place this year,” said Jason Myers. “It has just been especially hard for me, we have never had the resources to do it and the time off work was the kicker. Now with testing at Bristol, the race there on Wednesday, some other dates where we need a Friday, by the end of the year for the big Northern races and the first of the year for New Smyrna, my vacation days are used up. Then of course you have to bring a crew with you and all those guys have full-time jobs too. It looks like this year we have it all figured out and we are going to have some fun.”
Burt, teetering on saying for sure that he was going, was equally excited.
“I love going to different places to run, it seems that I figure out the tracks rather quickly,” said Burt. “It’s a great challenge to be somewhere new, I love that. I have never ran there, but I remember going there with daddy when we were little so this will be a whole new deal for us.”
Jason added, “We won’t be there all nine days, we will probably miss the first night and the last night, hopefully we can make it through the whole week. We don’t have the extra cars like most these guys have and with the quick turnaround from racing almost every night we’ll have to be on our toes. We’ll have three cars between the two of us and racing at Bowman Gray could actually help us if the situation arises that we need to make repairs.”
“Running twin races in one night at the stadium, if you get wrecked in the first you have to make repairs to get going again in about 40 minutes. We have some great guys on our crew that get the job done, I have five guys coming with me so we should be fine.”
With the addition of Frank Fleming added to the mix with the Myers, the Southern Modified tour will finally be represented at an event usually owned by drivers from the Northern states. That had been the case across the board for many years when the Southern and Northern cars raced each other in limited events, but strong showings in the recent years topped by Burt Myers’ two wins in the prestigious North-South Shootout show that the Southern cars are beating on the door.
Considering that New Smyrna can get a little physical, look for the Myers to do very well, after all, they race at the most physical track in the country from April to August every year.
