It didn’t come easy, but perhaps that made this win for Bobby Daniels even more satisfying. He raced side by side to the finish with Nathan Kilwine. The hard-fought victory came on Wednesday in Outlaw Mini Mod Series competition at Stuart International Speedway in Iowa.
Daniels went winless in tour competition in 2023. The last time he won at Stuart was six years ago. Back then, they just had four cars. On Wednesday, they had 23.
“Prior to Wednesday night’s win I was frustrated, just a little bit,” Daniels, of Des Moines, Iowa, said. “We towed to 37 racetracks last year. We saw more tracks in one season than my dad had seen in 20 years of stock car racing. Yet, I could not get a win.”
Earlier this month, it didn’t seem like a win would be near, let alone racing at all. Daniels cracked an engine block during a wreck on April 4 at Stuart. He thought his season was done.
“The Rice family, whose 13-year-old son Kaden races in our division, offered me one of their Suzuki 600cc GSXR engines,” Daniels said. “Logan Rice, Kaden’s sister, was a classmate of mine a few years back. We’ve remained close friends. I wouldn’t have this win if it weren’t for the Rice family’s generosity.”
The patriarch of the Daniels family, Bob, got his son Bobby into racing when he was 14. Bobby’s brother, Lucas, and cousin Chase, followed him. The Daniels family all hop into a truck and haul the three cars together in one trailer. The Outlaw Mini Mod Series visits tracks in Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.
“Oh yeah, we saw a lot, made many new friends and had tons of fun cramming three cars into the trailer and checking out new tracks,” Daniels said. “Now, I’m getting into adult life. Will it be harder to travel in the future? I’m just going to enjoy this season.”
And what better way to enjoy the season with a victory.
“To feel the excitement of a win in the beginning of my sixth season made me forget about crashing two weeks earlier,” Bobby Daniels said. “We’re off to a good start to the season.”
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.
