CONCORD, NC – January 8, 2008 – Josh Richards has been hard at work all winter getting ready for a busy early-season schedule, including the dirt Late Model portion of the 37th annual Florida DIRTcar Nationals from Feb. 11-16 at Volusia Speedway Park in Barberville, Fla.
The defending Florida DIRTcar Nationals champion will take a break from prepping his equipment, however, to represent the full-fender set in this week’s 22nd annual Dodge Chili Bowl Midget Nationals at the Tulsa (Okla.) Expo Center.
Competing as a member of the four-car Tony Stewart Racing effort, Richards will enter the famed Chili Bowl indoor dirt-track event for the third consecutive year. The week-long program, which features a record 285 entries, begins on Tuesday (Jan. 8) and runs through Saturday (Jan. 12).
“I’m pumped. I’m ready,” said Richards, a regular for the past three seasons on the World of Outlaws Late Model Series. “I haven’t had too much time to think about (the Chili Bowl) this winter because we’ve been so busy working on our (dirt Late Model) stuff (for the 2008 campaign), but now that it’s here I can’t wait to get out there and race.”
Richards, 19, of Shinnston, W.Va., will have plenty of open-wheel experience to draw from among his TSR teammates: two-time NASCAR Sprint Cup champ and defending Chili Bowl winner Tony Stewart and USAC stars Levi Jones and Tracy Hines. This will be the second straight Chili Bowl outing in a TSR/Chevrolet/Bass Pro Shops/Armor All Midget for Richards, who made his Chili Bowl debut in 2005 with Venture Racing.
The Chili Bowl ride continues Stewart’s interest in the budding career of Richards, whom Stewart calls “one of the brightest young stars, if not the brightest young star, in the World of Outlaws Late Model Series.” TSR is a sponsor of Richards’s Rocket Chassis house car Late Model and Richards made his ARCA stock car debut in a TSR machine last September on the mile dirt track in DuQuoin, Ill.; Richards also prepares a dirt Late Model that Stewart drives in selected events.
“I’m really excited about competing as part of TSR again,” said Richards. “Competing with a team that has several talented drivers and great cars is really a great opportunity for me.
“I’m very thankful that Tony (Stewart, team owner) asked me to be a part of his team again this year. I really enjoyed working with everyone from Chevrolet and TSR last year and I’m looking forward to this week’s race.”
Richards is hoping to make his first start in the 50-lap Chili Bowl A-Main, which headlines Saturday night’s sold-out finale. He missed transferring to the 2006 A-Main by one spot in a B-Main, while last year he struggled to get comfortable on the quarter-mile clay oval and saw his qualification bid come to an end with a 10th-place finish in Saturday night’s first G-Main.
A practice session on Tuesday night will be Richards’s lone tuneup in TSR’s Spike Midget before he races in Friday night’s preliminary program. With a strong performance, he’ll set himself up to qualify for Saturday night’s big show.
“Running a Midget is nothing like a Late Model, so it definitely takes some getting used to,” described Richards. “Compared to a Late Model, it feels a little awkward how you sit straight up-and-down in the (Midget), like you’re gonna tip over in the corners.
“And a Midget doesn’t steer at all like a Late Model. You kind of slide the back end all around, where in a Late Model you drive more with the front wheels.”
Richards, who flew to Tulsa, Okla., on Monday with fellow dirt Late Model driver and West Virginia resident Jared Hawkins, is excited to be part of the Chili Bowl mega-event.
“The Chili Bowl event as a whole is just really cool,” said Richards. “When you step back and look at what takes place inside the building in the middle of winter, it’s really an awesome event. Over 250 race cars, transporters lined up the length of the building, a racetrack that they build specifically for this event – it’s just a huge event that really takes on a life of its own.”
Richards is joined on the Chili Bowl entry list by 2006 WoO LMS champion Tim McCreadie, who won the event in 2006. Also among the entrants are Advance Auto Parts World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series stars Joey Saldana, Danny Lasoski, Jason Meyers, Terry McCarl, Randy Hannagan, Justin Henderson, Chad Kemenah, Sam Hafertepe Jr., Shane Stewart and Sammy Swindell, as well as World of Outlaws Industry Relations head Shane Carson and World Racing Group CEO/CFO Brian Carter.
Upon completion of the Chili Bowl, Richards will go back to work at his team’s shop at Rocket Chassis in Shinnston, W.Va., where he’s been holed up since the 2007 WoO LMS season ended with the ‘Outlaws World Finals’ the first weekend of November. He’s put in long hours to ready three new Rocket No. 1 mounts for 2008 action, along with a brand-new Ernie Davis-owned No. 25 that the young star will drive in selected events that fit his schedule.
“We have a lot more stuff put together than we did at this point last year,” said Richards. “Last year (during the off-season) I had time to work out (at a gym) five or six nights a week, but I haven’t been able to do that this year because we’ve been doing so much at the shop.
“We’ve been trying to look at things that we need to do better this year, and I think we’ve found a few things with our setups, especially for the smaller tracks where we struggled a little bit.”
A winner of a personal-best four WoO LMS events in 2007 en route to a sixth-place finish in the points standings, Richards will head to Volusia Speedway Park next month in hopes of defending his ’07 Florida DIRTcar Nationals title. His performance record in last year’s four-race meet at the half-mile oval (two of the six nights were rained out) showed a victory in the WoO LMS season opener plus finishes of second, fifth and seventh in the UMP DIRTcar Racing-sanctioned shows.
The 2008 Florida DIRTcar Nationals for the Late Models will include action under the UMP DIRTcar Racing banner on Feb. 11, 12, 13 and 15 and 50-lap, $10,000-to-win WoO LMS events on Feb. 14 and 16.
If all goes according to plan, Richards could already be making his 20th start of 2008 when the WoO LMS campaign kicks off on Feb. 14 at Volusia. His ambitious early-season schedule also includes the 10-night ‘Super Bowl of Racing’ program from Jan. 23-Feb. 2 at Golden Isles Speedway in Brunswick, Ga., and the Dirt Late Model Winternationals from Feb. 4-9 at East Bay Raceway in Gibsonton, Fla.
Richards will run his familiar Mark Richards Racing No. 1 in the Golden Isles events, which include seven nights of competition sanctioned by UMP DIRTcar Racing (Jan. 23, Jan. 24, Jan. 25, Jan. 26, Jan. 28, Jan. 29 and Feb. 2). He’ll drive Davis’s black No. 25 at East Bay before returning to the seat of the Rocket house car for duty at Volusia.
For more information on the Florida DIRTcar Nationals, visit www.volusiaspeedwaypark.com.
Additional on the info on the WoO LMS is available by logging on to www.worldofoutlaws.com.
