Among the short-track greats across America, the name of Jeff Aikey will assuredly come up. He has more than 600 feature wins, eight Deery Brothers Summer Series titles and eight IMCA Super Nationals championships (one in a modified, seven in a late model). Yet, in 45 years of racing, he had never won multiple features in one night — that is, until last Saturday.
At Independence Motor Speedway, he visited victory lane three times — twice with a modified (one was a make-up feature) and once with a late model in the Karl Chevrolet Pro Late Model Tour. In fact, no one has ever won three features at the track, either.
“It wasn’t easy to win three — it was exhausting,” said Aikey, of Cedar Falls, Iowa. “The temperature was hotter than hell — in the 90s.”
Switching back and forth between the two classes can be equally grueling.
“Driving the late model, you have to be up on the wheel a little harder than you do with a modified,” Aikey said. “A modified has such narrow tires, it ain’t got side bite like a late model. The late model results in a lot of driver fatigue. At 62, I was a worn-out old dog at the end of the night.”
Jeff Aikey remembers when he started in 1980, when other racers helped him get pointed in the right direction.
“Fuzzy Liddell was the driver to beat in the 1970s at Tunis Speedway in Waterloo [Iowa],” said Aikey. “As a kid, I went to his shop and said I wanted to build a street stock. He immediately offered to help me.”
Since then, the veteran racer has paid it forward, mentoring young drivers, with the latest being Kollin Hibdon and Troy Morris III. Aikey offered them space at his shop when they were starting out in Iowa.
“They are pretty good on their own now,” Aikey said. “They don’t need my help anymore. They are starting to whip my ass.”
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.
