Since building a new team from scratch, Tanner English had been checking every box with the DIRTcar Summer Nationals to show it was worth it. But one box remained empty – a win.
That changed Wednesday night at Farmington Empire Speedway when English went uncontested to score his seventh career Summer Nationals victory, and first since 2024.
“It’s pretty cool to get this done finally,” English said. “I feel like we should’ve had five or six. Man, super grateful to be here.
“I know nobody wants to hear this story, but I started this deal from scratch with a lot of good people behind me. I can’t thank my family enough and everybody behind me. I appreciate them a ton. In March, I didn’t have nothing. Pretty cool to be here.”
English entered the night in a close point battle with reigning Series champion Jason Feger, and they brought that title fight to the front row of the 30-lap Feature with English on the pole and Feger to his outside.
The Kentucky driver moved ahead of Feger as they took the green and entered Turn 1. Feger pounded the cushion but was unable to find any momentum and backtracked through the field early on.
English maintained a healthy race lead as the race hit Lap 20, but a caution for a spinning Dean Carpenter stacked the field up and gave Sam Seawright, who worked his way to second, an opportunity to catch the No. 96.
English fired off on the bottom and pulled away, leading the final nine laps en route to the victory and extending his overall points lead.
“It feels really good just to get everyone to quit talking about it,” English said on his winless drought. “We’ve been really close and just made the wrong moves. It’s a big weight off my shoulders to get this done, just so I can just race and try to win more races and not worry about points. I get in my head a lot, and this is big.”
Seawright finished second, Clay Stuckey was third, Tyler Millwood was fourth, and Kyle Hardy finished fifth. Feger ended the night seventh.
UP NEXT
The DIRTcar Summer Nationals Late Models head back to the “Land of Lincoln” with a return to Illinois’ Lincoln Speedway on Thursday, July 2.
How can you watch every DIRTcar Summer Nationals race? Every race is streamed live on DIRTVision.
FEATURE RESULTS
Feature (30 Laps): 1. 96-Tanner English[1]; 2. 16S-Sam Seawright[3]; 3. 15-Clay Stuckey[4]; 4. 31M-Tyler Millwood[5]; 5. 99-Kyle Hardy[10]; 6. 91-Rusty Schlenk[7]; 7. 25-Jason Feger[2]; 8. LIL91-Carter Schlenk[11]; 9. 09-Michael Leach[9]; 10. 51B-Brandon Carpenter[17]; 11. 89-Mike Spatola[13]; 12. 49-Luke Morey[8]; 13. 25B-Chevy Boyer[15]; 14. 17SR-Brody Smith[18]; 15. 2-Charlie Cole[23]; 16. 16-Rusty Griffaw[20]; 17. 30-Mark Voigt[19]; 18. 147-Kyle Stolzer[21]; 19. 99JR-Frank Heckenast Jr[6]; 20. 74-Mitch McGrath[14]; 21. 21-Billy Moyer Sr[16]; 22. 10-Daryn Klein[12]; 23. 51-Dean Carpenter[22]
