It had been 30-plus years since Skip Arp has raced a dirt car on pavement. However, he looked like he knew a thing or two last Friday. That’s when Arp won a Southern All Stars Series feature with a dirt late model on the pavement at Anderson Motor Speedway in Williamston, South Carolina.
“I’ve been a driver for 40 years and racing on asphalt is something I only did two or three times,” Arp, of Georgetown, Tennessee, said. “I didn’t know if it was something I wanted to do. It sounded like fun.”
Arp competed in a dirt late model owned by Joe Denby and set up by dirt late model driver Ray Cook.
“[Was the setup] different from [what’s typically run in] a dirt late model? Yes and no,” said Arp. “Shock- and spring-wise they are quite a bit different.”
Oddly enough, Arp didn’t find racing on pavement much different than on dirt.
“Driving the car [on pavement] felt like driving on a dirt late model on a rubbered-up racetrack,” Arp said. “On a rubbered-up track, you have to keep the car straight. I focused on driving really straight.”
As far as the event, it attracted just 8 cars.
“A lot of car owners and drivers were reluctant to change the cars and buy tires,” said Arp. “We practiced on a set of asphalt tires and put on a new set for racing. Also, some teams were racing at other tracks this week and did not want to change the cars.”
However, fans packed the grandstands at Anderson Motor Speedway to see something different.
“The crowd was one of the biggest I have seen all season long,” Arp said. ‘I hope that the show gets bigger and bigger. It needs to be scheduled when there aren’t other big races around.”
Skip Arp appreciated the event for what it was.
“It was kind of crazy to have this race — another generation of fans got to see dirt late models on asphalt,” said Arp. “The fans liked it. I liked it. There may have been bigger races with more money, but this was the most different race that I ever won in 48 years of racing.”
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.
