Dirt Cup winner Barnes ready for Speed Week

This year has already been a good one for Everett, Wash. racer Jayme Barnes.

How good? The 30-year-old became a dad for the first time.

Less than a month later won one of the biggest Sprint car races in the country, the Jim Raper Memorial Dirt Cup at Skagit Speedway in Alger, Wash. on June 21

So what can Barnes do to top that?

For one thing, he wouldn’t mind winning the Northwest Speed Week.

“I enjoy it,” said Barnes, who has run the whole week several times before. “There’s nothing better than waking up and going to a race track every day.”

The ASCS Northwest Region’s Northwest Speed Week kicks off Monday, July 14 and concludes Saturday, July 19. There are six nights of racing, capped off by the two-night Evergreen State Sprint Challenge at Grays Harbor Raceway in Elma, Wash.

Top 360 Sprint car pilots from around the West Coast kick off the week Monday at Southern Oregon Speedway in Medford, the first of four nights of racing at four different Oregon tracks.

The series then races at Cottage Grove Speedway in Cottage Grove on Tuesday, Willamette Speedway in Lebanon on Wednesday and Sunset Speedway in Banks on Thursday before heading up to Elma.

“We are going to race as much as our parts allow us to race,” Barnes said. “We’ll do what we can. We have the stuff we need.”

Especially after pocketing a cool $25,000 last month at Skagit.

“Winning Dirt Cup gave us some extra expenses to run more races,” said Barnes, who hopes to race at the famed Knoxville Raceway in Iowa at the 360 Knoxville Nationals later this summer if he doesn’t tear up equipment during Speed Week.

For Barnes, the first Skagit regular to win Dirt Cup in 16 years, the night of June 21 will forever be etched into his memory, just as it will be in the minds of those who witnessed the masterful move by Barnes.

On lap 13 of 40, Barnes looked high on Tyler Walker for the lead going into turn three. The only problem: his path seemed to be blocked by two lapped cars.

“We ran the top there,” said the driver of the Here 2 Wire machine. “We had so much more momentum than the lapped cars and Tyler. I was going to shoot between that gap between the lapped cars. It didn’t look that tight from the seat. I knew it was going to be close, but not close.”

It wasn’t until later, when he saw video of the pass, that Barnes understood why the move was considered breathtaking.

“Now I see what everyone was talking about,” Barnes said with a laugh. “But from where I sat, the hole looked good enough.”

While some felt the race was over by that point, Barnes had another issue to deal with.

“We were more worried halfway through when the car had no water in it, and was running more than 300 degrees,” he said. “I was more worried about making it to the end of the 40 laps.”

The third-generation driver did just that, claiming a wildly popular win, one that has only sunk in a little bit.

“It’s still weird to say that we won Dirt Cup,” Barnes said. “With the equipment that’s up there for that race, we had beat them before on the preliminary night (Thursday), and it was the same guys on the final night. But winning Dirt Cup is not something that everyone can say.”

It’s a story Barnes will one day be able to share with his youngest fan: his baby daughter.

“She was at Dirt Cup,” Barnes said. “She’s been at races already. I was nine days old the first time I went to the track, and she was two weeks old for her first race.”

Barnes has enjoyed the new chapter of his life.

“It’s been real fun,” he said of being a father. “She sleeps real well. Mom gets up at night and takes care of her, since I work. It’s definitely different. Packing up to go somewhere is the biggest adjustment.”

Barnes, a dump truck driver by day, began racing Sprint cars at age 16. He readily admits he didn’t put in the necessary effort for a while.

“The first seven years or so I never paid attention to figure out how to make the car go fast,” Barnes said. “I figured you just jumped in and had fun. We didn’t do any of the stuff like we do now. We never took it seriously. We would just do whatever.”

Barnes credits people like Roger Crockett, one of the top Sprint car hotshoes on the West Coast, for helping set him straight.

“Then I started taking it more serious,” Barnes said. “I never realized how much there was to do before.”

The new father is satisfied with how things are going, though being a full-time racer wouldn’t be a bad thing.

“It would be nice to race and not have to go to work,” Barnes said. “But I’m 30 now and I don’t have a million dollar paycheck. You’ve got to be young now days. Owners want the 16- or 17-year-old kids, not the 30-year-old guys.”

Then again, the 30-year-old guy just might be adding to his already storied year by the end of Speed Week.

For more information on the ASCS Northwest Region, visit www.ascsnorthwest.com.