“Just go racing,” that was strategy for Dan Hovden in 2025, and it paid off. He earned his first USRA B-modified national title. However, it didn’t mean Dan forgot about the basics that led him there.
“Commit to doing your homework,” Dan, of Decorah, Iowa, says. “Have all things together before you leave the shop. If you are working on fixing things at the races, you are not focused on going faster.”
Tires is one of those critical items on the weekly to-do list. Josh Hageman handled that.
“With a crew member dedicated to tires, it frees up a lot of time for me to focus on the race car,” Dan says. “Tires are at least five hours of work a week — washing, drying, grooving, mounting. Josh took all of that off of my hands. He kept our ducks in a row every week.”
Being prepared, though, just puts you in contention for a national championship. Dan came close to winning that title before. In 2024, Dan made a concerted effort in chasing the highest car counts to maximize points potential. That didn’t work.
“In my previous season, I was only good at getting thirds and fourths,” Dan says. “This year we just raced, and we wound up winning the title.”
Nevertheless, Dan still traveled a bit, racing at eight different USRA-sanctioned tracks among four states — Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota and Missouri. He knows the road well, as when the USRA had an Ironman Series for B-mods, he earned two championships (2019 and 2020).
At the end of 2025, Dan Hovden tallied 26 wins, with eight coming at his home track of Winneshiek Raceway and seven at Fayette County Speedway. He earned the B-mod championships at both tracks. Entering the final weekend of the season, Dan had a healthy 160 points lead.
“There was not a lot of pressure,” Dan says. “I had some room if I had a bad night, but we never had a terrible night. We were good all season.”
For 2026, the USRA Ironman Series for B-mods returns, and Dan will follow that schedule in addition to other races. He’ll maintain his same strategy as his championship-winning run, though.
“We’ll plan our season like we did this year,” Dan says. “Just go racing.”
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.
