Championship Off-Road Race Preview: Dirt City

The start of the second half of the 2021 Championship Off-Road season takes drivers to Dirt City Motorplex, one of the newest additions to the professional-level tour, for two days of action-packed racing on Saturday and Sunday. With the first six rounds in the books for the sport’s top racers, the championship chases have begun to take shape—but Friday qualifying has proven that the points leaders will have some motivated drivers nipping at their heels all weekend.

For starters, while the Pro 4 championship battle seems destined to come down to whichever driver between CJ Greaves and Kyle LeDuc can win more races, it was Doug Mittag whose blistering 50.147 second lap time was fastest in class. Currently seventh in points with one podium, Mittag will be pushing hard to return to the box and to be the first driver to break the stranglehold that Greaves and LeDuc have shared on the top step of the podium.

In both Pro 2 and Pro Stock SXS, the poles came down to quick drivers who are coming off of disappointing weekends at ERX Motor Park earlier this month. Jerett Brooks dropped from second to Keegan Kincaid in Pro 2 points to fourth after a pair of finishes outside of the top 10, while Brock Heger gave up the lead to Greaves in the Pro Stock SXS chase despite having won more races this season. That class remains the rubber match for the duo, who each lead their respective Pro truck divisions; Heger, who leads the Pro Lite class by 22 points, also qualified fastest there.

In Pro Mod SXS, the father-son duo of Rodney and Owen VanEperen took both wins at the Crandon Brush Run, but ERX’s hometown hero Andrew Carlson responded by sweeping that event and cruising out to a sizable points lead. Rodney, a winner here last year, struck first this weekend by posting the fastest qualifying time in hopes of making up some of that ground.

Last year’s action at Dirt City saw seven different drivers take checkered flags across the pro classes. Greaves and LeDuc split the Pro 4 wins, while Kyle Kleiman and Mickey Thomas took the Pro 2 checkered flags and Rodney VanEperen and Kyle Chaney split the Pro Mod SXS wins. Only Greaves in Pro Stock SXS, and Kyle Greaves in Pro Lite, managed weekend sweeps. A handful of others, including Johnny Greaves in Pro 4 and Kincaid in Pro 2, managed two podium finishes without scoring a victory.

Live streaming from the Championship Off-Road event at Dirt City Motorplex will kick off on Saturday at 11:30AM ET on champoffroad.com/livestream, with full coverage of both days of racing. In addition to more live streaming coverage on Sunday, TV coverage of the previous two events from Crandon and ERX will air on the CBS Sports Network on Sunday night beginning at 7PM ET. Following Dirt City, the season continues at Bark River International Raceway on August 14-15, as the track hosts its first COR event after last year’s date was shifted to ERX due to COVID-19 restrictions in the state of Michigan.