It didn’t take long for Gavyn Krupp to get up to speed. In only his second race in a sportsman modified, he visited victory lane. The triumph occurred at Grandview Speedway in Bechtelsville, Pennsylvania.
Prior to racing sportsman modifieds, he competed in Stage One Modifieds. Smith Fabrications, of Lehighton, Pennsylvania, builds the 60″-wheelbase cars resembling scaled-down dirt modifieds. The chassis uses many micro sprint components. A 55-horsepower Briggs & Stratton Vanguard V-Twin, like those found in Bandoleros and slingshots, powers the vehicle, although Stage One Modifieds allows competitors to work on them. The cars must weigh a minimum of 825 lb. with driver.
In the Stage One Modifieds, Krupp won the championship at Hamlin Speedway in Pennsylvania. When Krupp’s sponsor, Cody Schantz, of Xtreme Mechanical, offered his modified chassis, they decided to move into sportsman modifieds.
“I had to get used to feeling a lot more stuff happening to the car on the track,” Krupp, of Barto, Pennsylvania, said. “Things were happening faster, too. We hit speeds of 50 to 60 [mph] in Stage One Modifieds. [We] were hitting speeds of 80 to 90 in the car on Saturday night.”
While the cars may be different, Krupp seemed to learn some things about how to race while in Stage One Modifieds. He led the first two laps of the feature before being passed by T.J. Mayberry on the high side.
“T.J. got me, so I ran the bottom, hit my marks, and waited to move to the top,” said Krupp. “When I saw an open spot when we were in lapped traffic, I went for it.”
From there, Gavyn Krupp went on to win his first sportsman modified feature. In victory lane, his girlfriend and competitor in Stage One Modifieds, Sam Maguire, greeted him.
“Sam will be here watching me when she is not racing,” Krupp said. “Hopefully, she will move up to the sportsman division. It would be nice to be racing together again.”
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.
