When the season ended, Landon Capps figured his chances for a national championship evaporated. His last three races consisted of two DNFs. However, IMCA called him to inform him, indeed, he won the Southern Sport Mod national title.
Capps scored six straight wins this year at Grayson County Speedway. Entering those final three races, he needed a second-place or win to have anything for Trevor Cogburn, who led the points at the time.
“At the third race, I got caught up in a crash that knocked my toe out,” Capps, of Anna, Texas, said. “I kept on racing, hoping for the best.”
He crossed the line third, but another surprise occurred in tech — officials had disqualified one of the top two-finishing cars. That moved Capps into second.
“Then I found out that Trevor didn’t get the top-three finish he needed to win,” Capps said. “We ended the season tied.”
Capps’ mom, Krystal, counted and recounted the points and wins. They hoped for the best, and IMCA confirmed it. Capps earned 11 40-point wins, and Cogburn had just 10, breaking the tie and giving the championship to Capps.
“My dad, Casey, and I decided to race for the national championship at the beginning of the season,” Capps said. “We traveled two and a half hours to Heart O’ Texas in Waco to race heads up with Trevor. We hit the road to race at Kennedale Speedway Park and Southern Oklahoma Speedway. It was all worth it.”
Landon Capps raced a total of 32 features and his record earned him his first IMCA national title.
“We’re just a little family team,” Capps said. “Next season we’ll try to get into the bigger sport mod shows. I would like to race in the modified division in the future, but that’s a couple of years away.”
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.
