Jesse Landis had raced more than 100 sportsman modified events in eight years. Of those races, he won just one. That is until last Saturday, where he won the vaunted Firecracker 40 at Grandview Speedway.
“To be honest, I never thought I was going to win this race,” Landis, of Gilbertsville, Pennsylvania, said. “With more than 40 cars competing, just making the feature was a major accomplishment. Even though I started 13th on Saturday the 13th, the stars aligned for me.”
By lap 8 of the 40-lap feature he dropped to 15th in the 31-car field. Then, he found a path toward the front, passing 14 cars in 10 laps.
“I could see that the outside groove was coming in and no one else was out there,” said Landis. “Everyone stuck to the bottom of the track. I moved to the outside and pushed it hard. I moved up to sixth in five laps. It was weird no one else was up there. I was the guinea pig and once I got around them, they moved up to the outside to chase me.”
Once in the lead, Landis had to manage racing three wide while maneuvering through lapped traffic. When the white flag waved, the red flag quickly brought the race to a halt.
“The red came out for Mark Kemmerer’s fire when I was 100 yards from the finish line,” Landis said. “I was nervous that I would lose this race on the last lap.
“With just one lap, I knew I would look real bad if I didn’t win. I could see on the scoreboard that there were all the good cars behind me. I just made a mad dash to the checkered flag and I won!”
His wife, Anna, and son, Owen, joined him in victory lane to celebrate. The win earned Jesse Landis $2,000 for the win, plus more than $1,300 in sponsorship money and contingencies. That extra cash came from several sources, including $400 from contributing Outside Groove photographer Steve D. Sabo.
“I can’t thank everyone enough for taking money out of their pockets to make this race even better,” said Landis. “I lost an engine and a rear end so far this season. Financially, winning this money really helps out.”
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.
