Centralia Based Racer Having Great Season at Lucas Oil Speedway

Centralia-based Dustin Hodges has raced at Lucas Oil Speedway sporadically throughout his career, but this season he committed to racing at Lucas Oil Speedway and it's paying him big dividends.

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Hodges told Lucas Oil Speedway's, Lyndal Scranton:

We finally came to a point and said, 'it’s time to learn that track.’ Man, that place is a little bit of a different animal to most any other track. The car needs a little something different there so … we tried to commit the time to make the laps and find out what it takes to make the car happy, to get around that place fast.

Hodges and his Vanderbuilt chassis number 22 car has performed really well in the Cedar Creek Beef Jerky USRA modified division this season. He picked up his first feature victory on July 9, has 10 top-five feature finishes, and is second in points with 49 entering Saturday's 25 lap, $1,000 to win main event on Fan Appreciation Night presented by Kix 105-7 and Awesome 92-3.

Hodges told Lucas Oil Speedway's Scranton that the feature win at the track "was pretty awesome." He also told Scranton that finally getting a win at the track was like getting a monkey off his team's back and meant a lot.

Hodges came to Modified racing 13 years ago after competing in motocross as a youngster and took the opportunity to race a Modified for a guy. When he bought his own car he raced as a B-Mod for four or five years and then moved up to the USRA Modified.

Hodge's goals the rest of the way include winning as many races as he can this season, he has six this year, including the one at Lucas Oil Speedway, and he'd like to go ahead and win the points championship at Callaway, the track near his home where he races Friday nights, and would like to finish top-10 in USRA national points.

As for winning the title at Lucas Oil Speedway, that's not realistically in the cards for Hodges this season because his team will miss a few races at the end of the season but he still has his eye on finishing in the top 10.

Hodges is a husband, and father to a two-year-old, and also works in addition to his racing on Friday and Saturday nights. Ultimately he'd like to find that one elusive sponsor that would let him race on the road and see what his team could do.

For now though, as Hodges told Lucas Oil Speedway's Scranton, “I’m just a local guy trying to make it work in a very expensive sport."

Lucas Oil Speedway's full spotlight profile on Dustin Hodges by Lyndal Scranton can be found on the Lucas Oil Speedway website. 

Hodges will be racing his #22 car Saturday during Fan Appreciation Night presented by Kix 105-7 and Awesome 92-3 at Lucas Oil Speedway. It's part of a big weekend of racing at Lucas Oil Speedway that includes drag boat racing at Lake Lucas during the morning and afternoon and racing on the dirt track in the evening. 

The track is offering a 3-for-1 ticket special for this weekend. Fans who purchase a drag boat ticket will be admitted free to that night's Big Adventure RV Weekly Racing Series program, plus the Kentucky Drag Boat Associations finale on Sunday. For more information on the special click here. To get tickets to races at Lucas Oil Speedway click here.