The World of Outlaws’ Number One Fan…From Ireland

Sean O’Donnell has no illusions about the first impression he presents when he’s at a dirt track. Wearing green shorts, green sneakers, a green cap, a sleeveless t-shirt and strands of green party beads around his neck, he knows he doesn’t look like the typical World of Outlaws Late Model Series fan.

Irish WoO LMS fan Sean O'Donnell.

“People always ask me, ‘Why are you dressed like this?’” O’Donnell said last month while getting ready for an evening of WoO LMS action during the UNOH DIRTcar Nationals Presented by Summit Racing Equipment at Volusia Speedway Park in Barberville, Fla. “I tell them, ‘This is the way I dress every day.’”

O’Donnell, of course, is a proud Irishman, so his penchant for sporting the color green is no surprise. It’s his habit of flashing his unique style at WoO LMS events that turns so many heads.

While O’Donnell, 62, is a native of West Belfast in Northern Ireland – not exactly a hotbed of dirt-track stock car racing – he’s become an unabashed fan of the WoO LMS. Currently a resident of Winter Garden, Fla., he attends World of Outlaws shows throughout the Southeast. This year he’s already taken in races at Volusia, Bubba Raceway Park in Ocala, Fla., and Screven Motor Speedway in Sylvania, Ga., and in recent years he’s seen the tour compete at such ovals as The Dirt Track at Charlotte in Concord, N.C., Swainsboro (Georgia) Raceway, Needmore Speedway in Norman Park, Ga., and Columbus (Miss.) Speedway.

The seeds of dirt-track racing were planted in O’Donnell when he was a youngster and spent time living outside Albany, N.Y. He remembers watching Big-Block Modified races at the nearby Lebanon Valley Speedway and other area tracks.

After an extended period away from the dirt-track scene, O’Donnell reconnected with the sport in 2005. Living in Florida at the time, he saw that the DIRTcar Big-Block Modifieds would be racing at Volusia during the DIRTcar Nationals and decided to check out a night of competition. He enjoyed the Modified action, but he fell in love with the full-fender division that shared the card.

“I saw them World of Outlaws Late Model boys out there and I was impressed,” said O’Donnell. “They really do some racing. I’ve been following them ever since.”

The 2005 DIRTcar Nationals happened to be the dirt Late Model coming-out party for Tim McCreadie, who that year at Volusia won his first-ever WoO LMS A-Main as well as two other DIRTcar UMP-sanctioned features. O’Donnell adopted the former DIRTcar Big-Block Modified regular from Watertown, N.Y., as his favorite driver.

“He’s one of the best guys that does the Outlaws right,” O’Donnell said of McCreadie. “He’s a good guy and I can remember watching his father ‘Barefoot’ Bob run a Big-Block back up in New York.”

O’Donnell proclaims his backing of McCreadie to the public as part of the distinctive parking-lot display he sets up behind his Toyota at each WoO LMS event he attends. He hangs a T-Mac shirt on a chair, puts a McCreadie hat on one of the three stuffed animals (Jerry, Connor and Seamus) he positions on another and shows off a Sweeteners Plus No. 39 license plate. O’Donnell also flies an Irish flag from his car, arranges a variety of Irish-themed items in the open hatch of his car, plays Irish music out of his vehicle's speakers and sits in a fold-out chair between two large coolers. His pre-race tail-gate party includes drinking pints of Guinness beer (“Guinness is not a drink,” he likes to say, “it’s a meal”), sipping some Paddy Old Irish Whiskey and chowing down on various delicacies (shrimp and cold cuts were on his menu the afternoon of Volusia’s WoO LMS finale).

While O’Donnell travels to the races alone (his wife and two kids – a 21-year-old son who attends the University of Florida and an 18-year-old daughter – aren’t into the sport), he’s never at a loss for conversation. He has a cheery, “Hi, Lads!” for all passersby and breezily makes new friends. He’s also easy to spot, either in the parking lot (he arrives hours before race time) or meandering through the pit area with his homemade shillelagh, a traditional Irish walking stick (he makes them in his spare time and has given one to McCreadie as a gift).

“We have fun,” said O’Donnell, who typically returns to Ireland for several months each year to work as a lobbyist. “I enjoy all the people at the racetrack. If anybody wants to stop by and talk racing or politics about Ireland, we’ll sit there and talk – and maybe have a pint too.”