This past Sunday, Dillon Raffurty became the first STARS mod lite champion under IMCA sanctioning. He achieved the feat by virtue of a win at IMCA’s largest event, the IMCA Speedway Motors Super Nationals at Boone Speedway in Iowa, on Sunday.
“The win is the biggest of my career by far,” Raffurty, 24, of Kansas City, Missouri, said. “It means so much to me personally and to the class of cars I have been involved with all of my life.”
Despite his youth, Raffurty has a wealth of experience under his belt. He started racing mod lites as a 12-year-old in 2009. Raffurty said the IMCA sanctioning and being a part of the IMCA Speedway Motors Super Nationals benefits the class immensely. A total of 49 drivers from nine states competed in the inaugural Super Nationals race for the class.
“Some people think mod lites are not serious race cars,” said Raffurty. “The drivers and cars are finally getting the recognition they deserve. The mod lites are just as much as, if not more, of a race car than other cars.”
Raffurty drove to victory lane in a chassis he had built himself. He started Raffurty Chassis last winter.
“My dad and I were talking and he said, ‘Anyone can buy a car — let’s build one,’” Raffurty said. “I got on CAD software and drew up a frame with my ideas.”
Those ideas seemed to work. At Boone Speedway, he battled the second chassis he built, driven by Garrett Stonum, of Lawson, Missouri, for the lead. A last-lap miscue dropped Stonum to a third-place finish. Dillon Raffurty admits his championship season wasn’t perfect, despite 21 feature wins.
“I struggled at some of the high-paying races this year,” said Raffurty. “I had only been to Boone Speedway once before the Super Nationals this year, and I won. That win taught me I had a shot at winning the Big Dance.”
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.
