OXFORD – Oxford native Rusty Smith completed the most successful season of his near 20-year career, earlier this month with a top-10 finish at the prestigious John Blewett III Memorial North-South Shootout at Concord Motorsports Park in Concord, North Carolina.
“It’s probably the top modified race on the East Coast,” Smith said. “The teams that race there, money is no object. I bet there was at least 20 guys who all they do is race cars. And we ran with them all day. Tenth-place is not what we would consider our normal standard, but it was the most competition we’ve ever seen, and we proved we could run with those guys.”
Smith, sponsored by Blueox Energy Products, Al Smith Rigging, and Rainsoft Water Treatment of Binghamton, was coming off his second career track championship winning the Mountain Speedway title and the Pennsylvania Series Championship in October. In the 150-lap season finale, he grabbed the lead in the final 30 laps, and cruised to his eighth win. The $4,000 payday also matched the best of his career.
“It was a situation where we had expected to miss four or five races, but because of rainouts and cancellations at other tracks, we only missed one race at Mountain Speedway this year,” Smith said.
In taking the Pennsylvania Series – he was first in three of six races, and second in the other three – Smith earned a free trip to Orlando, Florida where he will spend a week in a condominium while enjoying complimentary passes to “Speed Week” in February, 2009.
To polish off the month of October, Smith partook in the 200-lap Race of Champions finale at Oswego Speedway. Out of 42 cars that started, Smith had his best-ever result taking fourth. “This was my 12th year at this race, and we’ve seemed to have bad luck every year,” Smith said. “I hope that is behind us now. We stayed out of trouble and came on at the end. A couple of things didn’t go our way, but we definitely had a car that was good enough to win.”
In addition to his eight wins, Smith also had 19 top-five finishes.