For most of his career, Jeffrey Larson had raced stock cars. He’s amassed more than 200 wins and a few track championships but was burned out.
“I raced stock cars so many years — won a lot of big races, won a lot of weekly shows,” Larson, of Lakefield, Minnesota, said. “It got to the point that I was bored when racing a stock car. I needed to make a decision: Hang it up or do something different.”
Larson decided to give late models a try, purchasing a Rocket XR1 off friend Troy Nothdurft.
“It’s a whole new world,” said Larson of the late model. “I’m getting direction from the Troy and Blair [Nothdurft, Troy’s son]. I’m on the phone getting help from the guys from Rocket.”
After a test and tune, Larson debuted the late model at Brown County Speedway on June 6. He finished fourth in the B-main, one spot short of making the feature.
“At the test and tune, I thought, ‘This is not so bad,’ and ‘This is not so hard,’” Larson said. “Then the first race at Brown County Speedway was an eye-opener. I could not believe how fast everyone was. I had to use everything the car could give me on every lap — I was on the wheel all of the time.”
The setup for the dirt late model challenge Larson as much as the driving.
“Learning the spring smasher is the most important thing in late model racing,” said Larson. “You have the correct numbers, and know what to adjust to get the car to be where you want it to be.”
Then on June 27, he won the Tri-State Late Model Series race at Park Jefferson International Speedway. The move to late models seeming reinvigorated Jeffrey Larson.
“My goal was to love racing again, and so far it is happening,” Larson 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.
