How did sportsman modified driver Payton Talbot connect with his championship-winning ride this year? Someone picked up the phone.
When crew chief Mike Walton found out that car owner Andy Belmont and his driver Joe Toth gone their separate ways, he let Talbot know.
“Mike asked me to text Andy and see if I could drive his car in the Short Track Super Series South,” Talbot, of South New Berlin, New York, said. “I said, ‘How can I do that? I don’t even know him.’ [Sponsor Andy] Travis volunteered to make the call.”
Travis spoke with Belmont about Talbot. Talbot had a racing résumé that included two track championships in 2023 at a pair of New York dirt ovals — Fonda Speedway and Utica-Rome Speedway in Vernon.
“The next morning, I got a call,” said Talbot. “Andy [Belmont] said ‘Yes,’ and the next thing I knew we went down and got a 2024 Bicknell from Andy. We put our shocks on and went racing.”
The new pairing debuted in March at the Short Track Super Series race held at Delaware’s Georgetown Speedway. They started off with a second-place finish.
“We wound up running his stuff all [the] time,” Talbot said. “After he few races, he asked me to go 100% with his two cars. We started with one car [and] picked up another car in June from him.”
By the end the year, Talbot’s stats grew to 13 wins, 33 top fives, and 39 top 10s. And, yes, once again track championships at Fonda and Utica-Rome, as well as Thunder on the Thruway sportsman and Short Track Super Series North Region crate 602 sportsman titles.
“We had a real good sportsman team before 2024 with our own stuff,” said Talbot. “Andy also had a good team, too. With both of us paired, we felt we could be real good because we combined two of the top teams.”
As the season winds down, Payton Talbot looks toward 2025.
“I don’t know about the future,” Talbot said. “I obviously want to move up from sportsman, eventually. Not sure what the future holds, but currently I can say I will be back in sportsman racing for 2025.”
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.
