SOUTH BOSTON, Va. (September 18, 2019) – On his way to his second South Boston Speedway track championship, Kevin Currin continued to build on a track record that can never be broken.
Currin wrapped up the Budweiser Hornets Division championship two weeks ago. And while he’s mightily proud of that accomplishment, he’s equally gratified by his other major achievement – participating in every Hornets Division race since the class debuted in 2014.
“We are the only ones to start every Hornets race since the series started,” said Currin. “We work hard to make sure everything is together every week. There have been times my dad has had to bring the car to the track, and I met them there, but we’ve made every one of them.”
Currin finished second in the points race in 2017 and 2018 and the Chase City driver decided he needed to step up his game. “I was tired of being the bridesmaid,” he said.
He and crew chief Jason Decarlo figured the best way to get better was to make changes, as many changes as often as needed.
“In the past, I think the biggest thing was we had kind of gotten in a groove of doing the same thing every week,” said Currin. “We decided we had to make changes. We’d go to practice this year and we’d change things. Every time we were trying something. Jason said we have to make changes to get better.”
Change obviously was a good thing for Currin.
Currin finished in the top five in each of the division’s 12 races in 2019 and wound up with three victories to claim the championship by 21 points over Steven Layne.
“We had an unbelievable season, a remarkable season,” said the 35-year-old Currin. He gave massive amounts of credit to wife Jessica and their eight-year-old son Scott, his mom and dad Stanley and Mona Currin along with team members Decarlo, Clark Mathews, Logan Champion and Dan Bailey,
The constant changes brought more speed, but they also brought a little more work for Currin.
“These cars, every time you change something, you have to relearn how to drive it,” said Currin, who is sponsored by Matthews Towing and Recovery, Billy’s Paint and Body, Total Image Solutions, Hardee Ford, A and A Service Center and J and R Auto Works.
“You have to change going in or change coming off. It took me a while to get used to it every time. If you made the wrong swing at it, you just had to ride it out.”
Currin, a rural mail carrier, took an oddly different route to stock cars, one that prepared him for the occasional on-track crash.
“I had piddled around a little with some go karts, but then a local fair in town had a demolition derby. I got into that pretty heavy just to fill that need for racing,” explained Currin. “The older I got the aches and pains got worse and my wife said I needed to give demo derbies up. About that time the Hornets Division began, and I moved to that.”
The Hornets have been a perfect fit for Currin.
“The Hornets are a division that I can afford and be competitive in,” said Currin. “It’s hard work, but it’s fun. And I think this year any given person could have won a race. The competition was really close. The last race of the season was almost a photo finish.”
South Boston Speedway has one race weekend remaining in the 2019 season and it’s a big one, the AutosbyNelson.com 250 CARS Tour Series championship on Saturday afternoon, November 2.
There will be 125-lap races in both the CARS Late Model Stock division and the CARS Super Late Model division to determine the championship in both classes.
Advance tickets for the AutosbyNelson.com 250 are $10 through Friday, Nov. 1. Adult general admission tickets on race day will be $15. Youth ages 12 and under will be admitted free when accompanied by a paying adult.
