Story By: SPENCE SMITHBACK / ASCS – CONCORD, NC – In the three weeks since the last American Sprint Car Series National Tour event at Tulsa Speedway, several drivers have stayed busy at a variety of regional and local Sprint Car races. But only one visited Victory Lane: Matt Covington.
The Glenpool, OK native attended the ASCS Western Plains Region event at Dodge City Raceway Park on July 6 and dominated the night, leading all 20 laps of the Feature from the pole for his first Sprint Car triumph of 2024. While getting laps ahead of the National Tour stop at Dodge City on Aug. 16 was one reason why Covington made the trip, it wasn’t the only factor.
“Kyler Fetters [Dodge City promoter] is always pretty good to me,” Covington said. “So if I can go there or somewhere else, even if it costs me another hour or something, I might still go to Dodge City just because Kyler takes care of me. And it’s a nice racetrack, I don’t mind racing there.”
The friendly staff and pristine facilities aren’t the only aspects of Dodge City that make it one of Covington’s favorite stops on tour, as his recent success rate there is quite high. He took the win on the second night of a National Tour doubleheader last season after finishing fourth on night one, and was on his way to a second-straight win in June until a collision with a slower car relegated him to 20th.
“It’s a perfect oval, 3/8-mile, semi-banked, it’s what I like racing on the most,” Covington said.
One week after the win, Covington made the trip north to Knoxville Raceway to partake in a weekly event ahead of the Xtream powered by Mediacom 360 Knoxville Nationals presented by Great Southern Bank. While the rundown shows a Feature finish of 14th, that doesn’t tell the whole story of Covington’s night.
“We had some good speed,” Covington said. “We were second on the charts after Hot Laps, qualified in the top 10, made the Feature out of the Heat. We were having a pretty good night for us at Knoxville. I just didn’t know about their one-tire rule and I got busted going out there with a different tire on.
“They made me go back and throw another right rear on, and it was a couple inches smaller than what we were planning on going out there with. So we missed it a little bit in the Feature. We were running two inches less stagger than what we were anticipating, and the track was just too good for that.”
While Covington feels confident about his pace at the Sprint Car Capital of the World, he still has one more tune-up planned before the season’s marquee event.
“I’m going to go back up there after this weekend [for the weekly event on July 27] and try to get one more test session in before the Nationals,” Covington said. “Nationals is tough, got a lot of tough cars there, and they’ve got a lot of tough cars there that get to run there every weekend. A guy like me, I’ve got to get up there a couple times to get some practice to try to compete with them.”
Before teams roll into Knoxville, a pair of Kansas tracks await the National Tour this weekend. The doubleheader kicks off Friday at Lakeside Speedway in Kansas City, where Covington took the checkers last August in the most recent Series appearance at the track. That win was also Covington’s last National Tour win, something he plans on changing this weekend.
“Lakeside’s probably one of our best tracks,” Covington said. “I’ve been there before when the surface was not good at all and you could hardly race at all, but the last handful of times we raced there, I thought it’s been really good.
“The track will slick off pretty quick, but it keeps a top and a little bit on the bottom. So a guy can try to be brave and get real close to the wall, or a guy can be more technical and run the bottom. It really seems to be a nice racy racetrack.”
Once things wrap up at Lakeside, the tour will travel to Wichita for a Saturday showdown at 81 Speedway, another track that has suited Covington well as of late. He was victorious with the National Tour in 2022, and finished second in both Series visits last season.
“I’ve been racing at Wichita since 2009,” Covington said. “The track’s actually a lot different now the last handful of years since they put the wall up around it. Used to, you didn’t really have that, it was pretty much always an around the bottom type of track come Feature time for sure.
“The way they’ve got it now, it’s kind of like Lakeside. The track’s not quite as big and not quite as fast as Lakeside, but it’s still got a concrete wall around it and two pretty decent lines of racing the last handful of times we’ve been there.”