If anyone knows how to bring a national points battle down to the wire, it’s Cory Probst. At least this year, he only tied with one other driver.
Last season, he eked out a IMCA hobby stock national championship win in a three-way points tie.
“It was another year of counting points,” Cory says. “I knew what I had to do to beat [Dillon Richards] and he knew what he had to do to beat me. Just like last year, I needed more wins in the first 50 starts in my region. Both he and I won a lot of races. When it got tight, he came up here [to Minnesota] from Nebraska for the whole month of September just to try to take points away from me.”
Cory traveled, too. The week before the IMCA Super Nationals he hauled 7-plus hours from Brewster, Minnesota, to Gillette Thunder Speedway in Wyoming. There, he won, and got home 6:40 a.m.
“I slept three hours and worked in the shop to change gears for Arlington Raceway — I knew Dillon would be there,” Cory says. “He finished second to me in the feature. We hauled to a family cabin near Brainerd, Minnesota, and changed gears again in the middle of the night.”
After that Cory hauled to North Central Speedway, and won the Mighty Axe Nationals.
“Then it was 4 hours back to Boone Speedway for the Super Nationals,” Cory says. “Luckily, we use the same gears at Boone Speedway that we use at North Central Speedway.”
The battle didn’t end at the Super Nationals.
“It was crunch time — there were three races left,” Cory says. “I got my 40th win and 50th start at Redwood Speedway on September 28, the very last night for IMCA championship points.”
The IMCA national championships are based on the performance of a driver’s declared region. The tie-breaker comes down to the number of 40-point feature wins within that declared region. Cory had 40, Dillon had 36. Once again, Cory Probst ekes out a championship, his third in total (2020, 2024, 2025).
“My first championship was special because it was simply my first, but it was kind of a strange year — it was during the pandemic,” Cory says. “In 2024, I proved the first championship was no fluke. This year, the amount of wins both Dillon and I had were unheard of — it was an incredible challenge. I could not dream of a year that would be as good as this year was.”
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.
