Austen Becerra Wins in Fla. Dirt Racing’s NeverEnding Story

Dirt Racing’s Dramatic Moment: While Becerra made the modified feature academic, the fourth modified heat race at Northwest Florida came down to a literal wire, with Pace, Fla.’s Jason Barnhill besting Drew Janssen by 0.037 seconds (screenshot taken from IMCA TV).

What Dirt Racing Fans’ll Be Group Chatting About This Morning

I’m not going to lie, watching the street stock feature that preceded the modified main event at Northwest Florida and hearing constant tire squeal as the cars squabbled over the bottom groove had me worried we were in for a parade feature. Fortunately, that wasn’t even close to being the case, as the modifieds had two distinct grooves to race on for nearly the entirety of their feature. This was the first race I’ve ever watched in any capacity from Northwest Florida Speedway and after Monday, it won’t be the last.

IMCA TV’s business model is different from a lot of others in that it relies on PPV revenue and the back gate (i.e. pit passes) as the means to make money, but if it works, it works. And drawing 58 modifieds and a field of drivers from more than a dozen states on a Monday that falls outside the traditional Speedweeks is making it work. If IMCA racing wants to be the MAC football of dirt and give us stuff to watch on the weeknights, bring it on. Though a monthly live subscription instead of individual PPVs would be nice.

Speaking of those traditional Speedweeks calendar dates, I joked in the weekend summary column that it’s like Florida/Georgia Speedweeks never ended. Well, after seeing this as the first Tweet on my thread when I logged on for the evening’s races, maybe it’s not a joke after all.