Story by: Corey Latham ~ [email protected]
Altamahaw, NC(January 8, 2013) — The 2012 Season is over for the Limited Late Model division at Ace Speedway and once again a familiar name sits with the championship trophy. Being of the toughest divisions around, the champion didn’t emerge until the last race of the season but it wasn’t without bumps and bruises. It’s Ace Speedway; there were a LOT of bumps and bruises. In the end, Ross “BooBoo” Dalton would take his second Limited Late model Championship.
By the stats, it looked as if Dalton dominated the season with nine wins, 15 top five’s and 17 top 10 finishes in 18 starts. That was not the case at all though as Dalton had to fight until the last night with veteran Limited drivers Ziggy Zimmerman and Jason Payne to secure his second championship. His first championship came in 2010.
This one came with a little less controversy as Dalton had been in some epic battles with Zimmerman and Coleman through the last three seasons. Of course, being Ace Speedway, cars are going to beat and bang more than at other tracks but it all ended with no punches thrown and everyone shaking hands; something that couldn’t be said of past years.
While Dalton, Zimmerman, Payne and Patrick Coleman were fighting for the title until late in the season, a new batch of drivers were showing what the future of Ace Speedway was shaping up to be. Trey Hutchens, the 14 year-old son of former Modified driver Bobby Hutchens proved that he belonged in his first year of full size stock cars coming home a respectable fourth in the points. He never got aggressive during the season and just “learned”, hitting his marks and watching the lines of others, something a lot of young drivers have quit doing resulting in their tearing up a lot of equipment.
Another driver that turned a few heads in 2012 was 16 year-old Calvin Meadows, another driver new to full size stock cars. While he had one more year more than Hutchens, Meadows was a fast learner and ended the season with 12 top-10 finishes in 18 starts, not bad for the youngsters second year in stock cars. Add in the fact that his car is a former Jimmy Rice winning ride and you can see good things on the horizon for the kid from Martinsville.
And of course we had some controversy at Ace this season, it would never be right if we didn’t. The night with the most action came on August 31st as the Limiteds ran twin features. Ryan Glenski, a front runner at various Late Model and Limited races across the region came in as an invader, and the Ace field of drivers treated him as such. Between getting turned around, his car destroyed by Dalton while leading the race to his crew fist fighting with the Patrick Coleman crew, I’m fairly certain you won’t see Glenski back there anytime soon. Of course this wasn’t the only scuffle, we all know with the action that goes on at Ace, we could nearly write a book every season.
All in all 35 different drivers competed in the Limiteds in 2012. It was a great mix of talent, along with the drivers mentioned above, we had the future and youth of Garrett Jones at only 12 years-old and Harrison Burton, son on Cup series driver Jeff Burton at a whopping 11 years-old. Then at the other end we had Late Model veteran RD Smith coming in a winning a race as Ace Speedway and Late Model legend Todd Massey competed in a few races and stirred the pot rather well. The drivers form other tracks included Kyle Barnes from Franklin County, who had more action in his few races than most season-long racers combined, Kyle Barnes from Motor Mile, Joey Throckmorton from Orange County and Noah Tripplett from Bowman Gray.
Of course the Ace regulars, they may have not won in 2012 but they are the heart and soul of the track. Jason Turner, Bethany Stovall, Randy Sampson, Dan Discepoli and David Sell look to improve in 2013 and pick up some hardware themselves. We can only wait and see what the future holds.
