Chloie Jones (left), joins her father, Devan (right), and many others in her family as racers. The two spent some time bonding while swapping an engine during the Bristol Dirt Nationals at Bristol Motor Speedway in Tennessee.
“My great grandpa, my grandpa, my aunts and my uncles — all are part of the Johnson family that races in Bakersfield [California],” said Chloie, 17. “It was hard to leave my extended family behind, but I learned that dirt racing was big in West Virginia.”
In California, Devan won the 2009 hobby stock championship at Bakersfield Speedway. Chloie made her racing debut in mini dwarf cars in 2010. In 2016, she scored championships in the senior mini dwarf cars at both Bakersfield Speedway and The Dirt Track at Kern County Raceway Park.
In 2018, Devan moved to West Virginia after his job at a national trucking company transferred him there. Upon her arrival in the Mountain State, Chloie raced mod lites at Tyler County Speedway in Middlebourne, West Virginia. Last year, she moved into hobby stocks. She intends to race this season mostly at Pittsburgh’s Pennsylvania Motor Speedway.
“I like racing in the East,” Jones, now of Wellsburg, West Virginia, said. “People in general are a lot nicer than they were in California. Sure, there are a lot of characters here, but everyone wants to help any racer in need.”
Chloie hopes to race professionally. However, she’s likes to handle wrenches as much as turning steering wheels. Chloie particularly enjoys fabrication.
“I am an arts-and-crafts person,” said Jones. “When I put arts and crafts together with welding and fabrication, I think I can make a career out of it.”
In high school, Chloie Jones takes welding and auto mechanics classes.
“I feel that as a woman, I have to prove that I am capable,” Jones said. “I’ve met a lot of negative people along the way to this point, but at the end of the day I’ve proven them all wrong.”
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.
