Nathan Crews made a huge jump this year at South Boston Speedway and it has resulted in a successful start of the season for the Long Island driver.

Granted you won’t see his name among the top five or even top 10 in the first five Late Model Stock races this season. But considering he made the quantum leap from Pure Stocks to Late Models this year, his average finish of about 15th out of an average starting field of 26 is impressive.

But don’t try to convince him of that, though.

“I guess we’ve been doing pretty good, but I’m really hard on myself,” Crews said from his Long Island shop Wednesday morning as he prepared his Chevy for Saturday night’s 100-lap Late Model race. “I want to do better for the team and the sponsors. We just need to get a little better. We don’t have money, but we throw a lot of hard work at it.”

Crews and his crew get a lot out of not very much. Their car is 16 years old. They do have a new body on the Chevy, or as he describes it: “new to us, but still kind of old.” It took some duct tape, sheet metal and elbow grease to get it to fit, he said.

That all makes two top 12 finishes in five starts even more impressive.

“We’re trying to make the best of what we’ve got. If not for South Boston doing what they did in the off-season we wouldn’t be able to do this full-time,” Crews said of the track’s move to limit teams to the purchase of only two tires a week and a guaranteed nightly pay-out of at least $500 to Late Model teams.

“That’s the only reason we can do it. The money we race off is what we win week-to-week. What it has done is leveled the playing field for us. When the bigger teams can only buy two tires, it really evens it up for us. It saves us money; that’s over $3,200 in 10 races.”

Crews, who gets sponsorship help from Foster Fuels, El Cerrito Mexican Restaurant, Taylor Racing Engines, Troy Cook, Puryear Race Parts, Marks Paint and Body, Estes Sign Company, Bruce Crews Hauling and his family’s racing business, CNC Racing, believes the season is going to get better and better for him.

“We’ve gotten faster every time we’ve been to the track in qualifying. We were just .21 off the outside pole the last race. We’ve just had some unfortunate luck in the races,” the 26-year-old Crews said.

“Hopefully the car will be a rocket this time.”