With a makeshift crew, Tim Fuller picked up a Super DIRTcar Series victory at The Dirt Track at Charlotte Motor Speedway last Friday.
“The majority of people in racing — drivers and crew members — have jobs,” Fuller said. “Come November, they’ve burned through all their vacation time. That’s what happened to my crewman, Zach Eckert. This season we raced all over the place. Now, he had to go to work.”
Fuller arrived alone at Charlotte on Tuesday. On Wednesday, he ran time trials for both Thursday’s and Friday’s features. Fuller was third and fourth quickest in his group for those respective races.
“Two hot laps; two, two-lap qualifying sessions — I knew I could handle six laps total on my own,” said Fuller. “I went down to Charlotte the way I needed to be — I had my setup and tires ready to go. I changed one shock between the time trial events. Everything else on the car was minor adjustments.”
Fellow racer RJ Tresidder, of Edwards, New York, flew down Thursday to help Fuller.
“It got even better because RJ had a college friend from Virginia who just showed up out of the blue to help,” Fuller said. “I never got his name. I just called him, ‘The kid from Virginia.’ He washed and cleaned the car. RJ took care of the tires.”
Fuller finished eighth on Thursday. On Friday, he relied on his experience to pass Anthony Perrego for the lead.
“I wasn’t going to pass [Perrego] until we got into traffic,” said Fuller. “Once we got into traffic, my [right-rear] tire was a little better than his and that was it.”
Luck may have been on Fuller’s side, too.
“I’m in victory lane, and Mat Williamson, who finished second, comes up to me and taps me on the shoulder,” Fuller said. “He said, ‘I hear air coming from your right-rear tire.’ I thought he was joking. After victory lane, … the tire went flat by time we made it to the trailer.”
Fuller used to follow national touring series, such as the Super DIRTcar Series and World of Outlaws Late Models. Now, he races regularly on Fridays at Can-Am Speedway in La Fargeville, New York, and picks and chooses the rest of the events he runs.
“I have to let people I know I am still alive,” said Fuller. “I’m not lost in upstate New York.”
Tim Fuller certainly didn’t make it easy to forget him this year. He competed in 52 features. He won 11 of them, including three in the Super DIRTcar Series.
“I quit my job in 1995,” Fuller said. “I remember looking back at the building where I used to work and said to myself, ‘You only live once.’ I didn’t know if I would make it being in racing full-time, but I did.”
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.
