The average haul for Derick Quade to win a Steel Block Bandits championship? Five hours, one way, with the longest drive measuring eight and a half hours to Smoky Mountain Speedway in Tennessee.
“Not only did I enjoy traveling and racing different tracks every week, I learned a lot,” said Quade, who has three track championships at Potomac Speedway in Budds Creek, Maryland, and one at Winchester Speedway in Virginia. “Different style tracks, different dirt.”
Quade has followed the Steel Block Bandits for a couple of years, gaining experience that proved valuable in 2023.
“We returned to a lot of the same tracks we raced on the first two years,” Quade, of Mechanicsville, Maryland, said. “I built a notebook for those places, and I got better.”
While Quade only had one win in Steel Block Bandits competition, he entered nearly every race as a contender to run up front.
“We were always right there, finishing in second or third,” said Quade. “Consistency is important in winning a championship. We had only one race that we dropped out of. We only had to qualify for the feature through the B-main one time at Fayetteville Motor Speedway [in North Carolina].”
The race Quade did win came at Hagerstown Speedway in Maryland, which drew 53 cars.
“Sure, we wanted a championship in the series,” Quade said. “At first, we were not even worried about the points. We wanted to win first, and then think about points later.”
Quade’s team consisted his cousin Brandon Gass, who works primarily in the shop, Josh “Ham” Howe, and Tony Bowles.
“Some nights I had one or two crew members,” Quade said. “These guys have families, kids in sports, and other commitments that make it hard to travel 15 weekends a season.”
Derick Quade said he may elect to stay closer to home for 2024, unless he can find additional help. Regardless of his plans, his 2023 season will be remembered for winning the 2023 Steel Block Bandits championship.
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.
