It didn’t come easy, as Banjo Duke (right) battled Cameron Holloway (left) and Chris Shaw (background) in the super streets. At the end of the race, Duke won not only the super street feature but also the street stock race, too. The double occurred during the Frankie Frye Memorial Race at Sumter Speedway in South Carolina.
“I knew Frankie Frye well, and I watched him race here since I was just a little baby,” said Duke, of Sumter, South Carolina. “I watched him until the day he quit racing. My daddy raced alongside him. He was the local hero.”
Duke respects heroes from the past. He was named after Banjo Matthews, car builder for Cale Yarborough when he won the 1976–78 NASCAR Cup Series championships.
Like Mathews, Duke also builds cars, operating Wicked Fabrication. He started racing in 2001, and has three track championships to his credit. However, don’t mistake those credentials as a free pass to victory lane. The wins at Sumter Speedway don’t come easy.
“They don’t call it the ‘Toughest Lil’ Dirt Track in the South’ for nothing,” Duke said. “[At] Sumter Speedway you drive it like asphalt. You have to keep the car straight and under you, which is really hard to do when you are always turning.”
The way Sumter Speedway races doesn’t make it easy for visitors, according to Duke.
“If 10 drivers come from out of town, two of them could maybe get the track figured out,” said Duke. “The track gets so hard that if you slide the car, friction will wear out your tires.”
Frankie Frye passed away from cancer in 2018 at 51 years old, but his memory lives on.
“Winning his memorial races is indescribable and emotional,” Banjo Duke said. “To have my name with his in history is an honor for me and my family.”
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.
