With no crew Dusty Waters won the Rush late model feature at McKean County Raceway in Smethport, Pennsylvania. It was his first win in three years.
“I usually have one guy helping me — Dylan Shaw,” Waters, of Portville, New York, said. “He has a young family. He called and said he couldn’t make it. I sat there outside of the pit booth — I almost turned around. I asked myself, ‘What am I doing?’ Then, I told myself, ‘I think I can do it.’”
That night at the track, Waters did everything on his car.
“I have new appreciation for the help I get,” said Waters. “I had no time to socialize with other racers. It was nonstop doing my own thing … just to make sure everything was tight and good to go for the feature.”
Don’t mistake Waters as not understanding what it takes to make a late model go around on a race night. Before Waters started racing, he helped his father, Dan Waters, prepare his street stock. After that, he worked on the late model his older brother, John Waters, raced.
“I got sick of helping everyone, and I wanted to drive,” Waters said. “Racing was in my blood. I bought my brother’s old car and started racing.”
While the work in the pits was tiresome on the night of his win, the work on the track was just as hard.
“Jeremy Wonderling usually wins every night that he shows up, but not this past Friday night,” said Waters. “He had a rivalry with my brother — and he was right there behind me for the whole feature. He had to settle for second, but he still wound up winning the track championship.”
The win by his lonesome created much attention from the family and friends of Dusty Waters.
“Now, there is a running joke that no one should go with me to the races anymore if they want me to win,” Waters said.
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.
