IMCA stock car driver Tobie Talk was on the verge of selling everything related to his racing operation. He became increasingly frustrated with his lackluster performance. That trajectory changed when he started talking with IMCA Speedway Motors Super Nationals champion Dallon Murty.
“[Dallon] told me he could see how much I loved racing, and he urged me not to quit — ‘Don’t hang it up,’ he begged me,” Talk, a Texan who now lives in Malcom, Iowa, said. “We both raced Harris [Auto Racing’s] Terminator stock cars. He said, ‘Bring your car to me just one time. I’ll show you how to set it up so it is better for you.’ I never had someone offer to help me like that, so I brought my car to him.”
Murty guided Talk through the process of how he sets up a race car.
“Dallon checked out my shocks, pushed them in and watched how slow they bled out,” said Talk. “He explained to me how they work and what changes I needed to make.
“We ran a bigger gear in Texas [when I raced there], and we still had it in for racing in Iowa. Damon Murty [Dallon’s father] told me I needed to change to a different gear to help me get into the corner and out of the corner more efficiently.”
Talk tried his new setup at Iowa’s Marshalltown Speedway. He started 23rd, but finished 13th. Talk said that was the best he had ever run in a stock car.
He then took hs car to the IMCA Speedway Motors Super Nationals at Boone Speedway. Talk won his qualifier on Thursday.
“I was ecstatic just that I made it to the Big Dance,” Talk said. “It was a dream come true.”
In the Big Dance, he finished 22nd, but it still represented quite the turnaround, all thanks to the helping hand. Talk saw Murty in the inspection tent.
“I hugged him big time,” said Talk. “I told him it was because of him that I was still racing, and now I made the Dance.
“Dallon said, ‘It’s all you. You drove flawlessly.’
“That was the greatest compliment I was ever given.”
(For more on Dallon Murty, read “Dallon Murty: The Game Changer”.)
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.
