At the urging of his wife, Jessie, Joey Young ended a successful 20-year career in figure 8 racing five years ago. Last Wednesday he won his first IMCA hobby stock race at Stuart International Speedway.
“I never had an intersection issue in nearly 20 years of figure 8 racing,” Young, of Carlisle, Iowa, said. “Then, five years ago, I got hit twice in six races. Jessie said, ‘You’re done racing.’ I said, ‘Can we compromise?’ We came to an agreement that I cloud keep racing as long as it was on oval tracks.”
Racing on an oval proved tougher than it looked for Young. He started in sport mods before transitioning to hobby stocks.
“I simply wanted to race on 8-inch tires,” Young said. “In figure 8 racing, if you mess up, the soft 8-inch tires we used would save you. I thought 7-inch tires used on hobby stocks would drive me bonkers. I first chose sport mods. However, I didn’t do all that great in the sport mod division.”
After one season in the sport mods, he reconsidered hobby stocks and switched classes.
“There were a lot of similarities between hobby stocks and figure 8 cars, despite the 7-inch tire size on hobby stocks,” Young said. “The suspension — and the lack of adjustments you could make — were the same. No weight jacks, no trailing arm adjustments, no brake bias. Springs and shocks were all you could change.”
Young found himself racing against 30 to 50 hobby stocks at tracks such as Boone and Stuart International speedways.
“That took a while to get used to,” Young said of the fields. “To win was not going to be easy. If I could make the feature, which I did about half the time, I would say I had a good night.”
Four winless seasons took a toll on Young, his wife and crew chief, Kristle Finck. They kept toiling away in the shop, trying things and they gained some speed.
“Yet, no wins,” Young said. “People kept telling me, ‘Drive harder. You back up in the corner too much.’”
Last Wednesday, Young decided to heed that advice.
“I drove harder into the turns,” Young said. “If I screwed up, so be it. The track was hammer down. I have a crate engine, and there were cars with open motors right behind me. I kept thinking they would take the win.”
Joey Young took the lead in the feature with six laps to go.
“I told myself, ‘I can’t let off,’” Young said. “I kept my foot on the gas and drove hard into the turns. After five years of trying, I finally won.”
He credited his wife, Jessie, for the win.
“Whenever I said, ‘I don’t think I’m good anymore,’ Jessie was there to say, ‘Yes you are — you’re still learning,’” Young said. “I didn’t give up because of her encouragement.”
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.
