In local racing, the “off season” usually starts in November and runs through March. During this time, drivers and teams spend hours at night and on the weekends repairing their machines from the previous season, while some build brand new race cars for the upcoming season. That isn’t the case for Owensboro’s Tyler Nicely. Maybe because Nicely isn’t your average local racer.
Nicely has spent his winner chasing trophies at two of the biggest Open Wheel Modified shows of the year. Nicely took his racing talent indoors in December at the Gateway Dirt Nationals at the dome in St. Louis. In a competitive field of drivers from all over the nation, Nicely failed to make the final feature. Nicely and crew went back to work at their Owensboro shop to prepare their #2-5 machine for Florida Speedweeks that began in January. Nicely was victorious in the time spent in Florida capturing 5 feature events including a gator at the Volusia Speedway Park.
Throughout the busy winter racing season, Nicely has worked to negotiate a deal with Rockport Raceway to be the track promoter in 2023. Nicely will be leasing the track from the Estes family who owns the 1/10 mile dirt track, just over the blue bridge from Owensboro. When asked about promoting the track and running a highly competitive race team with a full schedule Nicely said “it’s definitely going to be a job, but it will be fun”. Nicely has experience promoting go-carts as he promoted Wednesday night shows at Golfland Speedway in 2021.
“Deep down in my heart, I like promoting races. After having Golfland, I felt like it was successful just for the season we got to do that. There are so many fun things you can do with the go-carts especially on Wednesday nights throughout the summer. For kids, we had the inflatables, the back-to-school bash, the Mickey Mouse Dash where Mickey Mouse made an appearance among other things.” As far as the decision to run on Wednesday night, Nicely said “there are so many racers in our area and just not a lot of things to do throughout the week. Maybe you’ll see some old race car drivers from the area come out and race go carts.”
Nicely said the Wednesday night shows will mirror his Golfland Speedway shows with the box-stock class but will run one other rotating class as a companion event. Nicely also plans to run twice a month on the weekends, with all of the classes than ran in 2022, preferably on dates that don’t interfere with other tracks in the area.
The schedule and additional information for Rockport Raceway will be announced in the coming weeks.
-Blake Smith, Host of Let’s Talk Racing
