Colton Flinner had won his first-ever ULMS Racing Series feature at Port Royal Speedway in Pennsylvania on Sunday, March 20. Flinner celebrated the triumph with his fiancée, Kasey, daughter, Letty, and his loyal dog, Sloan. Sloan sat as proud as anyone else in victory lane.
“[Sloan] just doesn’t like being left alone,” Flinner, 27, of Allison Park, Pennsylvania, said. “Kasey loves dogs, and raised her to be obedient. She gets anxiety when she’s not with us — everywhere we go, including victory lane.”
Sloan is a Cane Corso. In its breed standard, the American Kennel Club (AKC) describes Cane Corsi as “at a glance intimidating creatures.” After all, their name loosely translates from Latin for “bodyguard dog.” However, the standard adds that they’re “intensely loyal to their humans.”
“Sloan will sit in the grandstand or the infield to watch races,” said Flinner. “The noise of the race cars doesn’t faze her at all.”
She has certainly witnessed the ups and downs of Flinner’s season. Earlier this month, Flinner won at Port Royal in an unsanctioned event on March 6. Then, a week later, in another ULMS race at Williams Grove Speedway in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, Sloan saw her favorite driver nearly fly out of the ballpark.
“The wall stopped me from going over the fence,” Flinner said. “All the shocks on the car were bent, as well as the J-bar and the front crossmember.”
Colton Flinner has yet to repair that car. Instead, he used his backup machine to win at Port Royal Speedway. Sloan watched Flinner as he staged an exciting comeback from the accident at Williams Grove Speedway. He won his heat and drew pole position. Flinner led from green flag to checkers, beating second-place Gregg Satterlee by 6.923 seconds.
“[Sloan] knows what our excitement means,” said Flinner. “She is the family’s bodyguard and a member of the race team. She sits in pride in the photo.”
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.
