Daryn Pittman’s career has changed considerably since Little Rock’s I-30 Speedway was a regular stop on his racing schedule.
However, I-30 remains the same.
Pittman, of Owasso, Okla., often raced at the quarter-mile, highbanked oval early in his career, both at weekly events and as a touring member of the American Sprint Car Series. But he returns to the track for tonight’s World of Outlaws event as one of the sport’s brightest stars.
“Nice place, nice track,” said Pittman, the 2013 World of Outlaws champion. “They always had really good car counts and great fan support. I enjoyed it, but it was a track I would have liked to be better at.”
Pittman’s I-30 highlight was probably a preliminary feature victory at the Short Track Nationals in 2005. He has emerged as one of the Outlaws’ top drivers. He has 55 career series victories, including three this season. The Outlaws’ most recent visit to I-30 was in 1994.
There are no Arkansans on the list of Outlaws regulars, but Pittman is one of several WoO drivers who spent parts of their careers fighting I-30’s tricky clay oval:
Jason Johnson of Eunice, La., has five career ASCS victories at I-30, including the 2006 Short Track Nationals title.
Shane Stewart of Bixby, Okla., has three career victories at I-30, including a STN preliminary victory in 2007, and he was the STN runner-up in 2002 and 2007.
Other Outlaws regulars who have taken STN titles include Brad Sweet (2010) of Grass Valley, Calif., Paul Mc-Mahan (2012, 2002) of Nashville, Tenn., Sammy Swindell (2013, 2011, 1990) of Cordova, Tenn., and Jason Sides (2001) of Bartlett, Tenn.
Johnson said his chief memory of I-30 was that he never knew what the track was going to throw at him.
“Sometimes you got there and you had to be pretty aggressive and up on the wheel and running around on the top,” said Johnson, a five-time ASCS champion before joining the Outlaws circuit. “I’ve also been done there when you had to have a lot of patience and hit your marks on the very bottom. It’s that kind of place.”
Johnson was the Outlaws rookie of the year last season, despite missing nearly three months after breaking his back in crash at Placerville, Calif. He returned to Placerville last month and earned his third career Outlaws victory.
Pittman said he spent much of the formative period of his career trying to solve I-30.
“When we first started racing sprint cars, we made a lot of weekend trips over to [West] Memphis on Friday night and Little Rock on Saturdays, so we could get two races in for the weekend,” said Pittman, whose team owner is NASCAR star Kasey Kahne. “Made a lot of miles back and forth from Tulsa to over there. I raced there a lot, but I don’t know if I ever really figured it out.”
He also said what makes the track difficult is also makes it popular with fans.
“It’s kind of got tight corners and fairly long straightaways for the size of it, and the configuration makes it tough,” he said. “As for the surface, I’ve seen it super wet and rough, slick to a big curve and also I’ve seen it dead on the bottom. I haven’t ever figured out any sort of consistency with it, so that makes it tough to figure out. But that can generally result in good racing.”
Tonight’s race is the 20th of 93 on the Outlaws’ series schedule, which will send the teams to 52 tracks in 24 states and 1 Canadian province.
“We see so many different sizes and shapes of tracks,” Pittman said, “and the guys we race with are so good at figuring out race tracks in a short amount of time.”
“These guys are definitely the best in the business, for sure,” Johnson said. “It doesn’t take them very long to adapt to any race track. There’s no doubt, these guys will catch on right where they need to be right at the beginning of the night. That’s why they race with the World of Outlaws.”