Fans at Zanesville, Ohio’s Muskingum County Speedway saw John Schneider put on a show during time trials. Schneider drove off the embankment between turns one and two on the first lap. He then returned to the track to turn a time on the second lap good enough for a mid-pack start in his heat. With a performance like that, could that be the John Schneider. The John Schneider who played Bo Duke in “The Dukes of Hazzard.”
No, this John Schneider, 62, hails from Trinway, Ohio, and owns an auto repair shop. The modified rookie said when his car came up on the bars, it threw him sideways. Unaccustomed to the feeling, he overcorrected, which sent him off the track.
“I should’ve painted my car orange,” Schneider said, referencing a car the other John Schneider made famous. “I just started racing [modifieds]. I took 10 years off [from racing]. My last car was a street stock.”
Schneider placed fifth in his heat to qualify 12th for the 20-car field. He then came home with a 7th-place finish in the feature.
“By feature time, I had the car figured out,” Schneider said. “I changed some weight around and adjusted the tire pressures. [The setup changes weren’t] the most important changes, though. I had to adjust my driving style to work with the car instead of against it.”
John Schneider recently purchased his modified chassis from Swartz Race Cars in Minford, Ohio, and his 415-cid Chevrolet engine from Creason Racing Engines in Troy, Missouri.
“Everything is new on my car — new to me and newly purchased,” Schneider said. “I like [modifieds] so much that I’m going to pack in as many races as I can in the next few weeks. I’ll be heading to the [Dirt Track] World Championship at Portsmouth [Raceway Park in West Portsmouth, Ohio]. I’ll be running like Boss Hogg is chasing me.”
Note: We corrected the spelling of Muskingum County Speedway (2020-10-14).
Mike Adaskaveg has written hundreds of stories since the website’s inception. This year marks his 54th year of covering auto racing. Adaskaveg got his start working for track photographer Lloyd Burnham at Connecticut’s Stafford Motor Speedway in 1970. Since then, he’s been a columnist, writer, and photographer, in racing and in mainstream media, for several outlets, including the Journal Inquirer, Boston Herald, Stock Car Racing, and Speedway Illustrated. Among Adaskaveg’s many awards are the 1992 Eastern Motorsport Press Association (EMPA) Ace Lane Photographer of the Year and the 2019 National Motorsports Press Association (NMPA) George Cunningham Writer of the Year.
