Track Prep...By A World of Outlaws Winner

Columbus (Miss.) Speedway promoter Johnny Stokes will have a special connection with more than a dozen drivers participating in his track’s inaugural World of Outlaws Late Model Series ‘Cash Cow 100’ this weekend (March 18-19).

Columbus (Miss.) Speedway promoter Johnny Stokes

Like that group of racers, the 57-year-old Stokes has a World of Outlaws checkered flag on his resume.

A former dirt Late Model standout who has become well known for his track-preparation expertise since taking over operation of his hometown speedway 11 years ago, Stokes is the only promoter of a track on the current 2011 WoO LMS schedule who has won a tour A-Main.

The big WoO moment for Stokes came on July 8, 1988, at Enid (Okla.) Speedway, during the inaugural WoO LMS season organized by late WoO Sprint Car Series founder Ted Johnson. He won the 10th event in the history of the tour, which ran one more season under Johnson before going silent until its resumption in 2004 under the World Racing Group banner.

“I remember that race well,” said Stokes. “It ranks right up there as one of the biggest wins I ever had.”

Stokes had established himself as one of Mississippi’s top dirt Late Model racers when the WoO LMS was launched in 1988 as an extension of Johnson’s decade-old WoO Sprint Car Series. He spent the ’88 campaign driving the GRT house car and entered more than 60 events, including several WoO shows.

When Stokes took to the three-eighths-mile track in Enid, Okla., for WoO LMS competition, he was fast right out of the box, setting fast time in qualifying.

“I drew ‘4’ for the (feature) invert,” recalled Stokes. “I started alongside (Billy) Moyer (the eventual WoO LMS champion in ’88, ’89 and ’05) in the second row, and I passed him and got to second pretty quick.

“I battled with Willy Kraft for a little while before getting by him for the lead. Then we led the rest of the way (in the 30-lap event).”

Kraft finished second to Stokes, and taking third was Moyer, who won nine of the 17 features that comprised the first WoO LMS season. “It was a pretty big deal to outrun Moyer,” Stokes said of the Batesville, Ark., legend.

Almost 23 years after finishing in a tie for 12th place (with Virginia’s Rodney Franklin and Pennsylvania’s Gary Stuhler) in the 1988 WoO LMS point standings, Stokes will be the man who prepares the surface of the high-banked, one-third-mile Columbus oval this weekend. He was toiling hard at the track today, finishing up work on a new frontstretch wall and doing some preliminary speedway conditioning for the $20,000-to-win ‘Cash Cow 100’ activities.

POSTSCRIPT: Moyer, who owns a record 37 career WoO LMS wins (including 1988-89 and the ‘modern era’ of 2004-present), is one of at least 13 former Outlaw A-Main winners planning to compete in the ‘Cash Cow 100’ weekend. Others expected to join him are Josh Richards (28 wins), Steve Francis (28), Rick Eckert (21), Darrell Lanigan (19), Chub Frank (16), Tim McCreadie (16), Shane Clanton (14), Tim Fuller (12), Clint Smith (11), Earl Pearson Jr. (five), Austin Hubbard (two) and Dan Schlieper (1).