Five-time Franklin County Speedway track champion Kyle Dudley will attempt to become the sixth different winner in the 2020 Solid Rock Carriers CARS LMSC Tour season on Saturday when he makes his series debut at his home track on Saturday.
Dudley expects his first CARS LMSC Tour race to present its own fair share of challenges, but he is confident that his twelve years of experience competing at Franklin County will give him an advantage over the series regulars this weekend.
“The surface is old and worn out, but the track is still fast,” Dudley said. “The corners have a lot of banking, but they’re really tight, which makes for good, hard racing, You can run two lanes at Franklin County as well, so the track is definitely its own animal.”
Dudley is no stranger to showcasing his talents against strong Late Model fields, as he scored Top 10 finishes in both of his successful appearances in the ValleyStar Credit Union 300 at Martinsville Speedway in 2014 and 2019.
Despite having a home-track advantage on Saturday, Dudley knows that he will have to show consistency in practice on Saturday morning if he wants to hold his own with drivers such as CARS LMSC Tour points leader Jared Fryar and two-time series champion Bobby McCarty.
With much of his competition having never raced at Franklin County prior to this weekend, Dudley anticipates the AutosByNelson.com 250 to be filled with attrition, which will put more of an emphasis on track position and taking care of his equipment.
“I’m going to have to get the car right,” Dudley said. “Having a good car and keeping the nose clean are going to be the two biggest factors to win. We’re going to have to hit it hard in practice and hope we get everything dialed in there.”
Dudley is not the only driver carrying experience into the AutosByNelson.com 250, as he will have to hold off other track regulars in Ricky Gillespie and Mike Looney, who famously held off Lee Pulliam to win the ValleyStar Credit Union 300 back in 2016.
Although Dudley has heavy competition surrounding him, he has no doubts in the ability of his equipment to run inside the Top 5 and believes that he can put together a strong performance in front of what is expected to be an exuberant home crowd.
Dudley added that he wants to run in more CARS LMSC Tour races in the near future after observing the series’ on-track product over the past few years, but he said that circumstances will have to work out for him and his crew in order to make that idea a reality.
“We’ll see how this one goes,” Dudley said. “It’s hard for me to travel because we have a volunteer crew and we work all the time during the week, so we would need enough people to get off from work on Fridays and Saturdays, but we might be able to make it happen.”
Dudley will begin his quest for a CARS LMSC Tour victory following the 125-lap SLM feature, which is set to get underway at approximately 7:00 p.m.
