Tyler Tanner is ready to defend his Super Late Models points championship at Evergreen Speedway.
But he’ll be mounting his defense mostly in a different car.
The 2019 Evergreen Speedway season opens Saturday at the Monroe racetrack, and the reigning champ in the track’s premier classification is leaning on a new vehicle to try for the repeat.
“We’re bringing a different car than we raced last year,” Tanner said. “We bought it halfway through the season last year, and we never got a chance to work on it to finish it. We finished it during the offseason and we’re going to race it.”
Tanner, a 27-year-old from Auburn, won his first Super Late Models points championship at Evergreen last year by the narrowest of margins, as his 495 points barely held off the hard-charging Doni Wanat (491) and Trenton Moriarity (487).
But winning a championship hasn’t prevented Tanner from seeking more speed, even if it means shifting away from the car that won the title.
“It’s the same chassis, they’re really similar cars, and they’re not too far apart as far as when they were manufactured,” Tanner said. “A few of the parts are different. It just happens to work better for us on the three-eighths (of a mile) track (that many of Evergreen’s races take place on).
“The main reason was to have a backup car,” Tanner added. “In June or July every year the schedule ends up being three or four weekends back-to-back, and it’s tough to do all that with one car, even if you don’t wreck anything. Having a spare car will help alleviate some of the maintenance issues during the busy part of the season.”
While Tanner (one win, four podiums last season), Wanat (one win, four podiums) and Moriarity (three wins, five podiums) are back to battle it out for the title, a couple notable names from last season won’t be racing regularly at Evergreen this season. Molly Helmuth, voted the Most Popular Driver at Evergreen Speedway each of the past four years, moved to Mooresville, North Carolina, so she can race full-time on the East Coast. Brittney Zamora, who earned Rookie of the Year honors in the Super Late Models class after finishing fifth in points, is concentrating on the West Coast-based K&N Pro Series West. Evergreen Speedway president Doug Hobbs said Zamora will race a couple times at Evergreen this season, while he did not know whether Helmuth would get back to Monroe for any races in 2019.
Evergreen will feature all the same classifications and series it has in the past. The Super Late Models season will again include the six-race Bud Crown Series, which draws drivers from throughout the nation. Wanat, the only track regular to capture a Bud Crown Series race last season when he won on Championship Night, is the defending champ in that competition.
Evergreen added two new competitions this year in the form of the Granite Super Sprint Car Series and the Evergreen Legends division. The Granite Series will include five races for winged sprint cars, while the Evergreen Legends division will include seven races for replica cars from the 1930s and 40s.
Saturday’s season opener is a Bud Crown Series race for Super Late Models. Other classes racing Saturday include Street Stocks, Mini Stocks, Hornets, Stingers and V8 Extremes. Fireworks will take place following racing.
Saturday is also Seattle Sports Legends night at Evergreen. Former Seattle SuperSonics basketball star Slick Watts is serving as the grand marshal. Others scheduled to be on hand include former Seattle Seahawks and University of Washington football players Lawyer Milloy, Sam Adams, Nesby Glasgow, Michael Bumpus and Mario Bailey, as well as current Seahawks offensive lineman Jordan Simmons. Hobbs said the sports legends will be competing in a cart race.
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