RPW Exclusive: Lots Of Positives From Justin Stone’s Super DIRTcar Run At Volusia Wednesday

Column By: BOBBY CHALMERS / RPW – BARBERVILLE, FL – If you believe every Modified is the same, either a Super DIRTcar Series Big Block, a 358 or even a DIRTcar UMP, you haven’t talked to Justin Stone lately.

Well, if you thought that, you may be partially right.

Last week, Stone became the first driver from the state of Vermont to win a feature during the DIRTcar Nationals at Volusia Speedway Park, taking home a victory on Thursday in DIRTcar UMP Modified competition in just his first handful of starts in that type of car.

This week, he’s back in what he feels the most comfortable, his G. Stone Motors Big Block Modified competing with the Super DIRTcar Series.

Wednesday night, Stone ran strong from the time he hit the track, and in the feature event, ran around the top 10 all night before having to settle for 11th at the completion of the 30-lap feature.

Was the Middlebury, VT driver able to use his time at Volusia last week to his advantage on Wednesday night?

“The hardest thing I’ve found here, even with the UMP Modified, is turning into the corner,” Stone said. “You lose the nose of the car wicked just going into the corner. You try to steer in and it just pushes hard.”

That issue played a factor in how Justin tackled the track as well as his competition in the feature.

“It was hard to predict what to do because this is so unpredictable,” he said. “Sometimes, it turned and sometimes it didn’t. Especially with restarts, I just couldn’t turn the car going into turn one and I’d lose spots there. It’d push me up into no man’s land in the center of the corner and I’d have to fight back.”

After that, once things would get going for racing, Stone was able to get in a rhythm and began to fight back forward.

“We had some green flag laps and it looked like it started to take a little bit rubber in (turns) three and for in the middle of the track,” he said. “I found that a couple of times but then it’d go away after a caution when everyone went back through it.”

The DIRTcar Late Models were split into three different features for Wednesday night and the third one ran right before the Super DIRTcar Series main. Did all of those laps on the track help or hurt Stone with his set-up decision?

“Obviously, everybody had to run on the same track,” he said. “However, I wish they had watered it and run it in a little bit. I think that bottom groove may have been a little better early and maybe stayed through the feature. It was slippery down there for the first half of the race and you could get down in it after people started running through it.”

Justin just missed making the redraw by once spot which put him ninth in the feature starting line-up. Was track position key on Wednesday and would starting higher have helped him?

“Track position here is very, very important,” he said. “Going back to the UMP Mod. If you have clean air and you’re out front, you can go pretty much where you want to, especially if you’re not racing door-to-door with somebody. Time trial is everything and getting into the redraw. I missed it by one tonight but was happy where we started. We just didn’t get the result we wanted but starting higher could definitely been even more beneficial.”

Even with struggling with set-up and such, the third-generation standout likes how Volusia makes each driver work hard to find speed.

“It’s a challenging race track,” he said. “There wasn’t one lane tonight that was dominant. You didn’t really know where to be. You just had to search around to find something and then the next lap, it wasn’t there and you had to find it somewhere else. Tonight was a handful for sure.”

At one point in the feature, Stone was flirting with a top five position before sliding back to 11th at the finish. Did running the UMP Mod last week actually help him or did he have to ‘unlearn’ what he figured out before strapping back into his Big Block no. 15?

“It was definitely different getting back in the Northeast Modified,” he said. “I had to teach myself how to drive the UMP last week which was a lot of on-throttle to turn and keep the car turning.”

Stone could sure tell the difference between the two types of cars.

“These cars just feel so different,” he said. “Tonight with the Big Block, early on it was pretty hammer down and it was even in the feature for a bit. You need to slow up to roll the bottom and with these, if you kick the ass end out, it’ll just hang.”

It takes a completely different discipline to drive each type of Modified and Stone is experiencing that first-hand this week.

“With the UMP, as soon as you got on the throttle, that four-link and the pull bar take over,” he said. “There’s a lot of drive in those cars. However, once you get sideways with these Big Blocks, you have to wait for it and you lose all your time so you need to keep it as straight as you can.”

Now the focus turns to Thursday night and getting the big red no. 15x better.

“We’ve got to get my car so it turns into the corners,” he said. “If we get that figured out, I think we’ll be okay.”