FOURTEEN AND COUNTING: Hoffman Breaks Single-Season Wins Record with Thunderbird Checkers
When Nick Hoffman set out on the trail of the DIRTcar Summit Racing Equipment Modified Nationals this year, it wasn’t just to try and win his third-straight, fourth career championship – he was also aiming to break his own record of 13 wins in a single season.
After Thursday night’s dominating exhibit at Thunderbird Raceway, he can consider it done and history made, as he’s now the sole owner of 14 wins in one season. As if that weren’t impressive enough, he did it in exactly that many starts, too. And he’s not done yet.
“I don’t actually know how many races are left, but I’d like to get into the 20s,” Hoffman, of Mooresville, NC, said in Victory Lane. “Just take it one night at a time and go from there.”
Similar to Wednesday night at Circle City, Hoffman started third and did not lead the opening laps. Polesitter Curt Spalding jumped out to the early lead with Jacob Poel behind him. While Poel rolled the low-middle groove of the super slick, third-mile oval, Hoffman dug to his inside and took the spot away as they clicked off Lap 5.
It wasn’t five laps later before Hoffman did the same thing to Spalding for the lead.
“I was trying to roll Jacob through the middle and just couldn’t get by him, so I chose to get back to the bottom,” Hoffman said. “When I was riding behind Curt, I was like, ‘well this race is probably going to be won in lapped traffic,’ and then he slipped up in Turns 3-4.”
Now with the lead and a preferable glass-smooth track underneath him, Hoffman cruised to the checkers with a whopping 8-plus second gap to Spalding at the line. Jeffrey Erickson finished third, Hunt Gossum ran fourth while Poel slipped back to fifth.
UP NEXT
The Summit Modifieds are back in action Friday night at Hartford Raceway for another battle against Michigan’s finest UMP Modified talent. Catch all the action live on DIRTVision presented by Drydene.
Feature (25 Laps) 1. 2-Nick Hoffman[3]; 2. 5CS-Curt Spalding[1]; 3. 1E-Jeffery Erickson[5]; 4. 99-Hunt Gossum[4]; 5. 82-Jacob Poel[2]; 6. 38- Mitchell Hunt[6]; 7. 8C-Corey Bevard[8]; 8. 65-Todd Sherman[9]; 9. 92-Caleb Kill[12]; 10. 25-Josh Lolmaugh[11]; 11. 19- Chad Bauer[10]; 12. 4-Logan Beckwith[17]; 13. 1*-Wyatt Baker[18]; 14. 14-Mark Shook[15]; 15. 26P-Nathan Patrick[14]; 16. 21-Tom Sprague Jr[7]; 17. 81-Rick Swartout[22]; 18. 42-Bob Baldwin[16]; 19. 0-Darrick Guikema; 20. 9-Garrett Rons[20]; 21. 4M-Tim Monroe[19]; 22. 12M-John McClure[13]