By BILL FOLEY
Loudon Reimert is another new face at this year’s DIRTcar Nationals. He’s a driver who finds his racing home based in the Tri-State area and he has found his way to the fastest half-mile that the DIRTcar Modifieds will compete on.
First impressions according to Loudon were “It’s fast. Obviously, stuff happens quick.”
On opening night he found himself behind the eight ball from the very beginning, saying, “We really didn’t start the night off the way we wanted to and just pretty much caused our own downfall by not starting the night off good.”
That poor time trial put him in a position of playing catch up throughout the night. Something that isn’t exactly easy on the heavy track that the hand dealt him.
Reimert explained, “The car wasn’t running right in warmups, time trials and the heat race. I finished dead last in all of those. I started seventh in the B-Main and the car was actually good for not getting any laps on the track beforehand. We were able to make it through the B-Main pretty good and then got caught up on a lap two accident in the feature in turn two and wrecked the car up pretty bad.”
That damage was considerable, but it didn’t dampen the enthusiasm of the team.
Loudon said, “It wrecked everything. Someone hit the wall or spun and came down the track. Something happened. I didn’t see what happened, but when cars in front of me kind of split. There was really no time for me to react. Basically, I hit him broadside. It wrecked the right rear, flattened the right side tires, broke three or four shocks on the car, destroyed the entire body that was brand new, destroyed all the rub rails and the rear bumper, front axle, and bent the frame in the back. Pretty much anything you could destroy on a race car we did.”
Teams rallied around the effort as Reimert said, “We had to borrow a welder from C.G. Morey. Danny Creeden helped us out with some stuff using his spring smasher. But as far as spares we brought pretty much everything we needed. We knew we didn’t want to travel 900 miles without any spare parts, so we actually have another 16 foot trailer with a spare motor and enough parts to build another race car.”
However, the desire to come back was there as he said, “We got done working on the car at two o’clock this morning and started up around seven this morning. We just finished up about an hour and a half ago (4:30 p.m.). We’ve been working hard all last night and all this morning. Hopefully it will work out and we’ll have a smoother night tonight.”
On Thursday night he finished third in the Last Chance Showdown and just had to get ready for the final two nights, but he is gaining as more track time should have positive results.
This upcoming season will be a hectic one for Loudon.
The multi-faceted driver talked about how he got involved in the big-block competition, saying, “Really, I didn’t know the car owner until like a Tuesday in August last year. I was at work on my lunch break and I got a Facebook message from a guy named Don Grebe and I had no idea who the guy was, but he said, ‘I need a driver for my big-block Thursday at Georgetown.’ So, I went down there and ran the car. We got along good and everything went really well. We just clicked ever since.”
Looking ahead, he explained, “We are going to run small-block on Friday at Big Diamond, Saturday at New Egypt, Wednesdays this year at Kutztown in a Speedster, Thursday at Bloomsburg in a Speedster and try to hit some big shows with the big-block and anything else we can fit in the schedule with the big-block. We’ll probably run the SDS show at Bridgeport, but it’s tough working full-time and trying to make some of these series shows during the week. We are going to pick and choose what we want to do.”
So add another surprising name to the driver roster for Volusia and if Louden Reimert can catch a break, things should improve considerably on the final two nights.
