RPW Exclusive: Who Knows! If Jimmy Phelps Had Redrawn Better Wednesday, He Might Be A ’25 DIRTcar Nationals Winner

Column By: BOBBY CHALMERS / RPW – BARBERVILLE, FL – Who knows.

If Jimmy Phelps had been a little luckier during the Super DIRTcar Series redraw Wednesday night at Volusia, the HBR no. 98H may have been standing on the podium after the feature, if not as the winner.

Unfortunately, he drew the worst number (eight) and never really got a shot to show how good of a car he had.

Even with a rash of cautions throughout the main event, Phelps was able to march forward and came away with a fifth place finish, and was nipping at the heels of fourth place finisher Billy Pauch Jr. at the checkered flag.

Phelps knows he’s got a good car for this week and showed it all night on Wednesday.  He was quick in hot laps, was very nearly the quickest in his group during time trials and then went on to win his heat, beating guys like Sheppard and Friesen in the process.

However, Wednesday night has him wondering ‘what if.’

“It was tough sledding tonight,” Phelps said.  “We had a good car all night long.  The track just carried so much speed that it was hard not to run a line where you could sort of run wide open.  A couple of laps after a restart, it just made it really hard to make any kind of run on anybody.”

Phelps made a lot of ground up running the lower line on those in front of him, but there wasn’t enough of a groove down there for the HBR driver to make quick moves.

“We had to slow down way too much running the bottom to make it work,” he said.  “You could maybe catch a break on a restart and draw even with a guy, but they almost had to screw up for you to clear them.”

As the race went on, Phelps was able to really make up ground by running the middle groove of the track.  He wasn’t hugging the bottom or ripping the lip on the top.  The veteran did what a veteran does by searching for the best possible line for his setup and driving style.

“I think there was enough grip on the exit of the corners,” he said.  “My car was just turning better if I cut down through the middle so we were just aiming the car at that point.”

The 30-lap feature was unfortunately caution-plagued which never really gave the drivers time to get into a rhythm, but it did give some a chance to make up spots in a quick manner if they got a good enough restart.  Phelps was no exception.

“The restarts were really hairy tonight,” he said.  “It seemed like everybody was getting crossed up and it was a lot of bumper tag.  You hit the guy in front of you and you were getting hit in the back at the same time.  A couple of times it got a little dicey but it seemed like the bottom didn’t restart overly well.”

Even though he didn’t like restarting there, Phelps did use the lower groove on multiple occasions.

“You could run the bottom for a lap but you couldn’t restart there,” he said.  “That was kind of tough to do and make any forward moves.”

Does Wednesday’s strong run set the HBR driver and his team up well for the rest of the week at Volusia?

“I don’t know really,” he said.  “The good news is that we unloaded really, really well.  We’ve got a really good qualifying baseline that we know we can go back to tomorrow (Thursday) and then we’ll watch the track and see how similar it looks to what we had tonight.  Then we can make changes to be better for the feature.

Jimmy knows how important being quick from first lap on track is.

“The big part of it is just trying to fast enough to get yourself into the redraw,” he said.  “Right now, I think we’ve got a really good car for the qualifying part of it so that takes the edge off a little bit.  We’ll keep working on it.”