Dillon Steuer still has a pavement modified, but his 40-race schedule consists of races only on dirt. His latest win on dirt came last Saturday night at Bridgeport Motorsports Park in New Jersey.
Steuer’s father, Chuck, has two pavement modified championships at Riverhead Raceway in New York. Dillon has three modified feature wins at Riverhead, too. Nevertheless, the Steuers make the long tow off Long Island to dirt tracks hours away.
“My dad always wanted to try dirt racing,” Dillon, of Bohemia, New York, said. “He did so for a couple of years at [New Jersey’s] New Egypt Speedway in the sportsman and 358 modified classes. When I started racing more, he raced less. Finally, I moved up to driving his dirt cars.”
The Steuers found the economics of dirt racing appealing.
“For us, dirt racing was definitely less expensive, and the purses were better than in pavement racing,” said Dillon. “We felt we could make some money back, where in asphalt racing it is tough to even break even.”
Dillon has wins at a trio of New York dirt tracks: Accord Speedway, Lebanon Valley Speedway, and Orange County Fair Speedway in Middletown.
“When Orange County Fair Speedway stopped racing weekly this season, we started to go to Bridgeport,” Dillon said. “To get that first win at Bridgeport is a great accomplishment.”
The Steuers also like the fields of competitive cars found in dirt.
“Both my dad and I like the challenges of dirt,” Dillon said. “It’s tough to win. The car counts are better than on asphalt. We always try to go to the tougher racetracks because we enjoy the competition.”
Dillon also enjoys the style of racing on dirt.
“Changing track conditions on dirt is the big thing,” said Dillon. “I like how I can move around on dirt — from way up on the top of the track to the inside — there are multiple grooves. You aren’t stuck in a freight train like you sometimes are on asphalt.
However, not much translates from pavement racing to dirt.
“In dirt, everything is opposite — like setup and style of driving,” Dillon said. “If you name it, you have to forget it if you learned it in asphalt racing. All of us are being retrained, and still learning all the time about dirt racing.”
Despite racing full-time on dirt, Dillon Steuer still keeps the door open for pavement racing.
“I will always have the pavement modified,” said Dillon. “Even though I will keep my focus on dirt, there may be a time when it would be nice to take out the pavement modified 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.
Photographers
The Outside Groove contributor from Macungie, Pennsylvania, has covered the sport since 2012. Sabo serves as the official track photographer of Grandview Speedway in Bechtelsville, Pennsylvania. Photography is a family ordeal for Sabo. He shoots with his daughter, Abby, at Shellhammer Dirt Track in Shoemakersville, Pennsylvania. At Grandview and other venues Sabo travels to, he and his father, Stephen “Poppa Pepper” Sabo Sr., capture the night’s action with their cameras.
