Kelby Norwood turned heads when he turned a 9.74-second lap around a ¼-mile oval in a dirt late model. That’s an average speed of 92.403 mph. He made that lap in a limited late model during last Saturday’s Cheaters Race at Mountain View Raceway in Spring City, Tennessee.
(For more on these races, read “Cheaters Race: Relaxing the Rules Results in Wild Cars.”)
The fast lap occurred in qualifying. His first turn around the track was more than 10 seconds. The second lap, 9.8. The third, 9.7.
“If we had more than three laps, we may have been even faster,” Norwood, of Athens, Tennessee, said.
Prior to the Cheaters races, the Norwoods consulted with dirt late model legend Ronnie Johnson, their chassis builder Tony Ford, of TNT Race Cars, and Scott Pass, of B&B Performance Engines. For a race with loosened rules, Norwood and his team focused on aero, starting with a 6-foot side wing.
“We went to a metal yard to get a bunch of aluminum for the wing frame,” Norwood’s father, Shannon, said. “At The Home Depot, we bought 1-inch conduit for the bracing. I bought sheets of 1/8-inch Lexan.
“We tried a sprint [car] wing on October 19, it unloaded slow, but as the night went on got faster. We had to work to get the angles right to go even faster. It did not use the air as well as the sideboard would. Instead of testing another weekend, we built sideboard 16-feet long, 6-feet tall off of the deck. The sideboard gave us 200 square feet to create downforce for this week’s race.”
The Norwoods think they might have been able to get an even faster time.
“When we set the record, I feel we left a little on the table, but not that much,” said Shannon. “The sideboard was trying to tear the braces loose. We had to add extra support after the time trials and before the feature. The sideboard had so much leverage, it was trying to pull the race car apart. It was unreal — the bracing would have to be really strong.”
From the cockpit, Kelby felt the car handled well.
“The car stuck to the track,” Kelby said. “It was 100% hooked to the ground. I felt no slipping whatsoever.”
As Kelby Norwood headed out for the feature, the car’s right-rear tire went flat.
“We don’t know why — it was the same tire we hot lapped and set the record on,” said Kelby. “We changed the tire and made it back out to start at the rear of the field.”
Starting in the rear of the 12-car grid didn’t prevent the crème from rising to the top. Kelby Norwood won the race and now has eyes toward the next Cheaters race.
“I have some more ideas to make us faster,” Kelby said. “Unfortunately, we won’t get to test any of the ideas until the next race is scheduled.”
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.
