The IMCA Super Nationals is one of the hardest races to win, let alone to do it more than once. Jake McBirnie had to beat 277 other stock cars, endure a week full of racing just to make the show and overcome two big wrecks along the way.
“Going to the Super Nationals, you never know what you are going to face,” Jake says. “You have to have nothing go wrong all week to be in contention for the championship.”
Things went flawlessly for Jake when he won the stock car portion of the Super Nationals in 2025. That wasn’t the case this year.
The week started off with the Prelude at Boone Speedway. Jake never got past the first lap of his heat race. Starting last by virtue of a pill draw, a car spun in front of him and collected his car. DNF.
Jake and crew tore apart of the front of the car. They found no frame damage, and repaired the fenders, nose and front bumper. Fortunately, his next on-track time came on Wednesday.
Once again, Jake started second to last, thanks to his pill draw abilities, and finished sixth out of 10 cars for his heat race. Top two transferred. For the B feature, he started 18th and finished 14th. Not a good night.
It didn’t get better on Thursday. While he made the night’s A feature, he once again started in back in 18th. He DNF-ed in 20th.
“I got spun out,” Jake says. “It wrecked mostly the body.”
While the week’s damage was mostly cosmetic, time is a precious commodity during the Super Nationals.
“We spent all week on fixing the body,” Jake says. “It takes our time away from working on all the stuff that matters — [such as] maintenance. My car was so beaten and banged up, it look a lot of time to repair.”
Entering into Friday, Jake’s chances of making the Big Dance looked slim. He finished second in his heat, but Jake started the A feature 16th. Somehow, he worked his way to third. As the checkers waved, the two leaders crashed, paving the way for a win and a qualifying spot into the Big Dance.
“That’s why you can’t give up,” Jake says. “You have to be there when an opportunity presents itself.”
Come time for the Big Dance, Jake started the race third. He thwarted off one of the best to step into a stock car, Kelly Shryock, for the win.
“It may have been more of a battle to get to the Big Dance this year, but that made the win that much better,” Jake says. “Having to work our tails off made the reward more meaningful.”
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.
