Penny Horner greeted her fiancé Robby Dunn in victory lane after he won with her car. The victory came in the 4-cylinder class at New Egypt Speedway in New Jersey on June 20. It has now upped the ante as the betrothed will compete against each other for the first time this season, this weekend.
“We had been working on our house, so I did not have time to get my car ready,” Dunn, of Hamilton Township, New Jersey, said. “Then, Penny came down with pneumonia. I drove her car for four weeks. I won on June 13, but she wasn’t there to see it.”
Horner provided hand signals to Dunn at the fence, helping guide him to victory.
“She was screaming her head off, standing at the fence and flailing her arms like a maniac,” Dunn said. “I wasn’t the fastest car on the track — Rich Page’s Mustang was two tenths faster than me. He was coming, and he got his nose under me. He was on my back bumper and every lap Penny was signaling me he was coming for me. I could read her lips saying, ‘Go, go, go!’”
Horner couldn’t help herself, she said.
“How could I not be excited?” said Horner. “I had not yet won in my car — it is a new car for this season. I let Robby drive because I knew he could win and I could trust him that if he broke anything, he would fix it.”
With wins on Horner’s Chevrolet Cavalier, she knows it can win entering this weekend at New Egypt Speedway. Robby Dunn returns to his Saturn, and the both will race together for the first time this season.
“The pressure will definitely be on me,” Horner said. “Robby has driving experience. I have never been behind the wheel of a Cavalier. He built my Cavalier after I totaled my Saturn last season. I can’t wait to feel the power behind the Cavalier — it will definitely be a fast car.”
The Outside Groove Director of Photography 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.
