Since 2019, the Super DIRTcar Series championship has come down to Matt Sheppard and Mat Williamson — but this season Anthony Perrego inserted his name into that battle. He finished 115 points behind Sheppard and 148 points behind champion Williamson.
Perrego earned two feature victories, more than Sheppard’s one, but far behind the eight of Williamson’s. Nevertheless, consistency wins titles, and Perrego has one glaring mark on his record.
“If I didn’t go to Canada to race in July, the championship results might have been different,” Perrego, of Walden, New York, said. “That trip lost us 100 points at least.”
Williamson and Sheppard both had 17 top-10s. Perrego had 15. In July’s King of the North doubleheader weekend at Autodrome Drummond in Quebec, He finished 20th on both nights. When competing against two of the best, just one bad night can end your championship chances.
“I am capable of winning the DIRTcar championship — hopefully next season,” said Perrego. “Drivers like the Mat Williamson and Matt Sheppard have been to different tracks more than we have, but we are catching up. Next year, it should be a lot closer. The goal is to [always] run in the top 10, and then we could be sniffing at the championship late in the season. Vinny [Salerno, car owner] has great equipment. There should be nothing holding us back.”
Perrego’s stock may be rising. He scored the unsanctioned $12,000-to-win Gary Simpson Memorial feature victory at Delaware’s Georgetown Speedway in October. Last week, Perrego won the Super DIRTcar Series season finale at The Dirt Track at Charlotte Motor Speedway (pictured). It earned him $15,000.
“Charlotte Motor Speedway is a big stage — one of the bigger races of the year — and we got it done,” Perrego said. “Finishing third in the championship points was my best season finish to date.”
Anthony Perrego seeks to finish the year and start 2025 off with success in a different form of racing he’s grown to love — 600 sprints. Last February he won the East Coast Dirt Nationals in Trenton, New Jersey’s Cure Insurance Arena. Perrego now sets his sights on the famed Tulsa Shootout in Oklahoma.
“I really enjoyed driving the 600cc micro,” said Perrego. “Did it help me in driving my modified? Seat time is seat time — of course you pick up skills every time you drive a race car.”
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.
Photographers
The Outside Groove contributor from Macungie, Pennsylvania, has covered the sport since 2012. Sabo serves as the official track photographer of Grandview Speedway in Bechtelsville, Pennsylvania. Photography is a family ordeal for Sabo. He shoots with his daughter, Abby, at Shellhammer Dirt Track in Shoemakersville, Pennsylvania. At Grandview and other venues Sabo travels to, he and his father, Stephen “Poppa Pepper” Sabo Sr., capture the night’s action with their cameras.
