By Bill Foley
There are Volusia Big Block Rookies and then there are rookies.
Well, Justin Stone made a surprise entry at the DIRTcar Nationals and arrived with a pair of beautiful 15x race cars parked next to the Halmar-Friesen Modified the team ready to take on the tough, high speed Volusia facility.
Stone talked to Dirt Track Digest after a very unfortunate situation on Thursday night.
He was in his first qualifying spot for the 30-lap main event when suddenly he disappeared from the race track. When the race was over the car was towed and the crew took a look at it, pushed it across the road in front of the concession stand and rolled out a second car.
Justin was looking at the new piece and talked about his situation.
“The motor simply let go,” he said.
He then continued, “This week is the first time ever driving a Big Block and I’m looking just to get laps and trying to get comfortable. I think I was making progress, but this sucks.”
As the crew started prepping the second car, he said, “This is the first time I’ve done this. My dad did let me drive one on to the trailer one night, but we are here prepared to go racing. I’m running here while my dad is running a Super Late Model over at New Smyrna. So, we decided to do this.”
Todd Stone provided the Super Late Model for Friesen to drive at Smyrna earlier this week.
Justin is in a learning mode and said, “I really have to thank Dale and Brandon Planck for their help. DIG has helped me so much. They had me run a couple thousand laps in iRacing on this track even before I got here. It doesn’t give you the sense of speed but gives you the concept of the track. DIG has really helped set me up to get ready for this.”
After taking to the track for the first B main on Thursday night and finishing sixth after starting 11th Stone appears to be gaining.
On Friday, in a surprising move, he was added to the modified starting field.
Dean Reynolds, Super DIRTcar Series Director, explained, “We usually have two provisionals, but when Darren Smith lost his engine we added the highest point car and it was Stone.”
So, he was getting his desired laps as he completed 29 of the 30 to finish 22nd.
