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ASA STARS

Ricky Turner Joins Matt Craig and JCR3 Racing

The 2002 Snowball Derby winner will oversee the Craig team

Matt Weaver

JCR3 Racing had a pretty awful World Series of Asphalt.

Well, half of it, anyway since they packed up and called it quits after the Southern Super Series race on the Tuesday halfway through the week. The former All-American 400, CARS Tour and Pro All Stars Series champions just couldn’t find anything — speed, feel or comfort.

To a certain degree, that is just the highs and lows of Super Late Model racing because Matt Craig has ridden positive waves of momentum to wins before this recent slump, and very well could again. But the Craigs aren’t waiting and have hired Ricky Turner to oversee their No. 54 for the foreseeable future.

Craig was visibly excited on Friday afternoon during practice day for the inaugural ASA STARS National Series race at Five Flags Speedway. As challenging as the last month was, knowing someone as capable as Turner is working on their cars is giving him a lot of confidence.

“It’s such a big relief because we got to the point at New Smyrna where we didn’t know what to do,” Craig said. “We threw the sink at it. It’s very nice to have someone with new ideas, new ways.”

Even though the Craigs and Turners have raced with each other for decades, they never really personally interacted with each other, with this deal coming together through engine builder Robbie White.

“I’ve said ‘hi’ to Ricky in passing but once we got him to the shop on Tuesday, he and my dad started swapping stories about racing in All Pro in the late 90s,” Craig said. “It’s crazy how full circle everything comes.”

Turner just won the Alabama 200 Pro Late Model race over the weekend at Montgomery Motor Speedway with Seth Christensen. With Jake Garcia full-time in the Truck Series this year, Turner didn’t have a lot of client work lined up this summer.

He was supposed to crew chief for Chase Elliott for five summer races, but with his broken leg and surgery, that’s suddenly an unknown too. It was just good timing for a proven winner in Turner to link up with a proven winner in the Craigs.

“Matt and Jake have got along over the past few years,” Turner said. “We’ve raced a lot against each other and seem like good people. Robbie knew I was a little slow this year and looking to fill in and I guess Jeff was talking to them, one thing led to the other, and I’m just here to help out.

“Hopefully things work out.”

Turner urged caution for an immediate turnaround, saying that results don’t happen overnight, because he’s learning too. He says he hoped they have a good weekend, but if they do at Pensacola, it’s not going to be because of anything he has immediately done.

This is the first time Turner has worked on a Hamke Race Cars chassis too.

“It’s going to be different, and that’s why I say what I say about how we run this weekend,” Turner said. “They know this car really well and I’m just learning it. It’s a race car and hopefully we can make those good adjustments and just meshing everything together — the tires, engine package to the setup of the car.

“Hopefully I can help a little bit but it will take some time to make a difference but they run good anyway. They have all the parts and pieces to do it so it’s just a matter of us getting together after this and seeing what we need to come up with together.”

The Craigs want to chase the full ASA STARS schedule, but they weren’t going to commit to it unless they were running better, and that’s why Turner made all the sense in the world.

“This is a hobby for us,” Craig said. “We’re not trying to make money on this or go NASCAR racing. If it’s not fun, it’s not worth doing. We’re all very competitive and it’s not fun when you’re not running well.”

And New Smyrna was not fun.

“No, it wasn’t.”

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Matt Weaver is the owner and founder of Short Track Scene. Weaver grew up in the sport, having raced himself before becoming a reporter in college at the University of South Alabama. He also has extensive experience covering NASCAR, IndyCar and Dirt Sprint Cars.

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