LAKE CITY, Fla. — For the past four years, Kyle Strickler has made the trip south to the Sunshine State to kick off his racing season at the controls of a super late model. But for his 2024 Speedweeks campaign, he’s going back to his roots.
The veteran racer from Mooresville, N.C., returned to the seat of a DIRTcar UMP Modified and kicked off his season with a win Sunday afternoon at North Florida Speedway in the track’s annual Winternationals event.
“This modified is just a lot of fun,” Strickler said. “I feel like I can manhandle it a lot more than the late model stuff. I kinda wanted to come down here and have some stress-free racing and go back to the roots and have fun with this modified stuff.”
“Not a bad start to my Speedweeks. We’ll head over to East Bay and hopefully we can keep things rolling there.”
After rain postponed the remainder of Saturday’s program to Sunday, Strickler returned to the three-eighths-mile track, locked into the Feature sixth on the starting grid. A few caution flags flew in the opening laps and Strickler took the green from third on a restart with only leader Cole Czarneski and Brad DeYoung ahead.
“I saw DeYoung trying to roll around the outside of Cole (Czarneski) there, and it was starting to clean-up around the bottom, so he was doing a good job staying on the bottom,” Strickler said. “Then when he saw DeYoung on the outside, he kinda got in there a little too hard and I was able to sneak past both of them and go from third to the lead.”
By lap five, Strickler had taken the lead and quickly began to stretch a gap over the field. Though several caution periods dotted the rest of the race, Strickler stayed strong on all restarts and held the field off for the remainder of the race to bag the $2,500 grand prize.
Back at the trailer, Strickler was wrapping-up his post-race duties as a solo driver/crew team, which he’ll continue throughout his UMP Modified Speedweeks campaign.
“I don’t have any crew guys, so Austin Wayne Self’s guys and Buck Stevens and all of Cole’s [Czarneski] guys have been helping out, and Ryan [with Jerovetz Motorsports Shocks Service]” Strickler said. “I want to thank them guys.”
DeYoung and Czarneski were able to hold on strong to second and third, while Jimmy Lennex Jr. charged from 14th to finish fourth and Ray Bollinger completed the top five.
The finish:
Feature (35 laps) – 1. 8-Kyle Strickler [6]; 2. 7-Brad DeYoung [2]; 3. 21CZ-Cole Czarneski [1]; 4. 8JR-Jimmy Lennex Jr. [14]; 5. 77-Ray Bollinger [10]; 6. 24-Zeke McKenzie [13]; 7. 21B-Hunter Breland [18]; 8. 05-Dave Wietholder [12]; 9. 23W-Austin Wayne Self [21]; 10. 14M-Dave Markham [11]; 11. 4sale-Kevin DeYoung [19]; 12. 25W-Allen Weisser [8]; 13. 21-Scott Ladner [20]; 14. 12-Jeff Parsons [9]; 15. 27G Jason Garver [4]; 16. 27B-Beau DeYoung [17]; 17. 1W-Brian Wilburn [7]; 18. 14C-Rick Conoyer [23]; 19. M20-Mike Potosky [16] 20. 12L-Lucas Lee [3]; 21. K9-Will Krup [5]; 22. 15K-Chris Kittle [24] 23. 14L-Dalton Lane [15]; 24. 27T-Michael Turner [21]