It had been 18 years since Dan Frederickson last won a World Series of Asphalt Super Late Model race at New Smyrna Speedway, and much has changed since 2002.
“I don’t know man,” Fredrickson said. “I’m 43 years old. I race three or four times a year. Winning anything is special at this point. When I won all the time, it didn’t mean anything.
Someone would ask me ‘what does this mean,’ and I would tell them it was just another trophy to put at the front of the trailer, but when you don’t race often and every Super Late Model team is a super team, it means a lot to me.”
The two-time ARCA Midwest Tour champion scored his first win since the Dick Trickle 99 at LaCrosse and just his third win dating back to 2017 on Race 5 of the Super Late Model World Series of Asphalt.
It was not a linear process after he crashed the car on Opening Night and suffered an engine expiration the next night. He finished 10th on Sunday and Tuesday, but finally put it back together with a pass on defending champion Derek Griffith with 10 laps to go on Wednesday.
It was not a particularly clean exchange between them.
“I just got ran over,” Griffith said. “Ran me up in the fourth groove. I crossed him up and he got underneath me and tore off the entire right side pretty good.”
A more philosophical Frederickson, showing every bit of the 18 years between World Series victories, had an answer for that assertion, too.
“That’s what the guy who doesn’t win the race says,” Frederickson said. “He’s a good guy, a good kid. It’s alright. He’s already won a couple. We have to make it challenging for him, right?”
The contact forced Griffith to fall to fourth over the final 10 laps, but he still holds a commanding 14-point lead over Jacob Goede for the World Series championship lead, with Goede and Ryan Moore both finishing in the back half of the top-10.
“We’ll maybe try to focus in on the championship now,” Griffth said. “But we’re here to win races. That’s why we do this. It’s expensive to do this and we want to win, but it is important to win championships when you have the opportunity, too. ”
Meanwhile, Goede salvaged a car that wasn’t to his liking at all, falling from the pole to eighth to keep the championship gap manageable.
“I don’t know if we had a bad shock or what’s going on,” Goede said. “We’re struggling bad getting into the corner. Everything we do to help the center makes it worse.
“So, we’re just in the way and got beat around a little bit.”
But again, he gave himself a punchers chance at the championship on Thursday and Saturday nights.
“I’ve been racing for points back home for quite a while now,” Goede said. “That’s the game, finishing every night. You can’t win them all. Obviously, we haven’t won one of them, but we’re working hard and just trying to survive … and we’ve got to regroup a little bit.”
POINTS
- Derek Griffith
- Jacob Goede -14
- Ryan Moore -22
- Justin Mondeik -26
- Connor Mosack -40
RESULTS
- Dan Fredrickson
- Connor Mosack
- Jesse Love
- Derek Griffith
- Daniel Dye
- Stephen Nasse
- Jett Noland
- Jacob Goede
- Bubba Pollard
- Ryan Moore
- Brad May
- Justin Mondeik
- RJ Braun
- Jake Garcia
- Kody Swanson
- Kelly Moore
- Kris Wright
- Patrick Thomas
- Sammy Smith
- Jake Finch
- Gus Dean
- Steve Weaver
- Michael Hinde
- Travis Wilson
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