The late model of 2024 WISSOTA national champ Tyler Peterson almost never made it to the shop after he purchased it in 2023. The car formerly raced by Brandon Sheppard flew off the trailer as Peterson hauled it back home along I-80 in Iowa.
“The straps on the trailer broke, and we saw my newly purchased Rocket go flying down the interstate,” Peterson, of Hickson, North Dakota, said. “It helicoptered and rolled over. Luckily, no one was behind us. We had to go onto the highway and roll it over with cars speeding by just a few feet away.
“We thought it was junk after the way it rolled on the highway. When we got it home, we found it wasn’t as bad as we thought. Somehow, the damage amounted to the flopper on the nose piece, roof, hood, and one piece of the deck.”
Peterson wound up winning 40 features in 2023. He followed that up with 22 this past season in the late model. While he earned the WISSOTA national title for late models, he came up just six point short of the championship in the Peterson Structural Buildings Wissota Late Model Challenge Series.
“I don’t know what happened to that car when it flew off the trailer, but whatever it was, it was good,” said Peterson.”
Tyler Peterson is no stranger to winning WISSOTA national titles. In 2021 and 2022, he won the championships in a modified. Peterson raced the modified 17 times this past year, winning four features.
“It is my dream to win both divisions — modified and late model,” Peterson said. “Kent Arment is a legend in WISSOTA for doing that. I don’t have a stacker trailer so it will be difficult. I’ll be running the late model full-time next season, and yes, I’ll still be driving Brandon Sheppard’s old car.”
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.
