HAYS, Kan. — Clay Money put many of the demons of 2024 behind him Saturday night at Hays.
After going winless in 14 sanctioned starts during the IMCA Speedway Motors Weekly Racing point season, Money motored to a career-best $5,000 payday in topping the Friesen Performance IMCA Modified main event at RPM Speedway’s Fall Nationals.
He passed Jeremy Frenier for the lead midway through the 30-lapper, earning Fast Shafts All-Star Invitational qualifying eligibility in addition to the big check.
“Hays is my home track and we’ve run this event since at least 2012,” said Money, who had started at the back of Saturday night ‘B’ SportMod qualifiers after playing high school football on Friday night early in his career. “We been running a Modified here since 2016 (he was fourth in 2020 after starting 16th) but were just never able to get it done until this year.”
Tanner Black, Clay Sellard, Frenier and John Hansen rounded out the top five.
“They did track prep right before the feature and that probably helped us,” Money said. “We were able to get up to second right away, had a pretty good race with Jeremy for the lead and found the fast lane.”
“Luckily, everything worked out in our favor and we held on.”
The former track champion had totaled 33 IMCA wins in the last eight years before the challenging 2024 points campaign.
“As long as I’ve raced, I’ve known that I would have a year like this, mechanical things, bad draws, stuff on the track,” Money said. “But we stuck with it, knowing everything we did would pay off eventually.”
Tathan Burkhart avoided getting caught up in an early melee and raced to a career-best payday of his own, taking the $3,000 IMCA Sunoco Stock Car checkers.
He started ninth, was in the lead nine circuits into the 30-lapper and kept Brett Berry, Tyler Tipton, David Murray Jr. and 17th starting Tyler Frye at bay over the final, uninterrupted 22 green flag trips around the oval.
“I won Fall Nationals my fourth year in a Hobby Stock and now I’ve done it my fourth year in a Stock Car,” said the hometown driver. “I raced against a lot of good guys, guys who have a lot of wins in a Stock Car and in other divisions. It was definitely awesome to win a big race like this.”
He’d also won at Sherman County Speedway’s Flatlander and was already B & B Racing Chassis All-Star Invitational qualifying eligible.
Two hundred and eight IMCA cars were among the entries at the 18th annual Fall Nationals. Robbie Thome was the $2,000 Friesen Performance IMCA Northern SportMod winner, Dillon Thompson topped the $1,500 to win IMCA Sunoco Hobby Stock feature and Toby Schwien’s career third Mach-1 IMCA Sport Compact Fall Nationals triumph paid $400.
The sixth-starting Thome made the most of the middle line in his move to the front, passing Cody Gearhart and then Brandon Spanjer for the lead 12 laps into that 25-lap main event.
Four-time and defending race winner Blaine Walt started 12th and got to second but could not challenge. Spanjer ended in third.
“It’s been a long year. We ran second at Super Nationals and were hoping to get a big one before the end of the season,” said Thome. “It was nice to beat Blaine. We have run second to him a number of times.”
Thompson had won Fall Nationals in 2021, leading that feature start to finish. He had to work his way up from eighth this time around, passing heavyweights Zach Olmstead and then Adam Armstrong in the late going.
“I just found something in the last four or five laps,” said Thompson, who passed Armstrong on a restart. “We had trashed the car before we went to Boone and did not run well at Super Nationals. It was really awesome to win this, especially with how many fast guys were in this race.”
“It means a lot to us.”
Armstrong was second and third went to Colton Czapanskiy.
And the Sport Compact checkers meant a lot to Schwien, who won ahead of sons Connor and Jakob.
“I enjoyed winning but I enjoyed running 1-2-3 with them even more. That was very special,” said Schwien, also first to the checkers in 2019 and 2021. “There’s a lot of very fierce competition here. We look forward to this race every year.”
Runner-up Connor Schwien was the defending race winner. 2018 race winner Jakob Schwien exited to fix a flat tire on lap 1, restarted 22nd and motored all the way to third.
Fall Nationals was broadcast by SPEED SPORT.TV affiliate IMCA.TV.