When flagger Tanner Hollis rushed to victory lane, he didn’t just bring the checkered flag to race winner Evan Dennis. He congratulated an old college friend.
“You did it! You did it!” Tanner shouted to Evan.
“I was ecstatic for Evan,” Tanner, of Greenwood, Delaware, said. “As a flagman your job is to stay unbiased. You really shouldn’t be rooting for any one driver. But in that moment, it was hard to separate the emotion.”
Evan had just won his first sportsman race, coming at Georgetown Speedway. Racing had connected him and Tanner while they attended University of Delaware.
“I was watching racing one night in the dorm, when someone said you should meet Tanner Hollis — he’s into racing, too,” Evan, of Laurel, Delaware, said.
Evan had raced go-karts and knew of Tanner from attending Georgetown Speedway. When they started watching races together at school, it bonded them.
“We became super-tight friends at school,” Evan said. “We even skipped out of school earlier than we should have to ride to Georgetown on race nights.”
Evan Dennis moved into modifieds after he bought his first car in 2023. He steadily improved while his buddy Tanner watched him from the flag stand. Last Friday, the two got to share a special moment.
“I was shaking — it was a true PSG [please stay green] moment,” Evan said. “In that final moment when Tanner threw the checkered flag, he and I got to share something we only dreamed to share four years earlier, when we were in college.”
And Tanner had the best seat in the house to watch his friend win.
“Being the one waving the checkered flag as Evan crossed the finish line is a memory that will stay with me forever,” Tanner said. “For me, it was not just a flagman congratulating a winning driver, but [celebrating the accomplishment] of a longtime friend.”
The two will share another special moment later this year. Evan’s getting married on November 21, and Tanner will be one of his groomsmen.
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.
