KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Dillon Raffurty says he “just races” and doesn’t worry about wins.
This season, he took that relaxed attitude to the track and raced to a fourth consecutive Stealth Racing IMCA STARS Mod Lite national championship.
“It’s cool, especially to be the only national champion since IMCA began sanctioning the class (in 2021),” said Raffurty, from Kansas City, Mo., and the winner of 30 out of 40 starts this season. “IMCA definitely has a different point format than what we were used to and it’s made us work along the way, but it’s been neat to compete against everybody in the country and come out on top.”
Track champion at Electric City Speedway and at Valley Speedway – his IMCA career 100th win came on June 1 at Grain Valley – Raffurty also four-peated as the Missouri State king.
He’d started 2024 with another successful Southern swing, winning the night two show at Ocala Speedway’s Brick City Nationals and night three at Hendry County Motorsports Park’s Sugar Bowl Winter Nationals in Florida before sweeping Clash at the County at Grayson County Speedway in Texas.
“We didn’t worry about getting the 100th win, or any win. We just raced. If the wins came, they came, and if they didn’t, they didn’t,” reasoned Raffurty, “but I also knew that going down to Florida and Texas and getting any wins early in the year would make it easier to for us to get a head start at making a run for another national championship.”
He’d first heard of Grayson County when Mike Kennedy called and asked him if he’d like to run his car there. Kennedy picked him up on the way from Boone, Iowa, to Bells where he raced to the sweep on an uncharacteristically cold weekend.
“That was the first time I’d ever driven somebody else’s car in a race,” said Raffurty, who’d finish sixth the second time, piloting brother Michael’s car in a weekly show at Marshalltown.
“And that was a result,” he said, “of when a 300-pound driver gets in a 170-pound driver’s car without changing anything.”
His only other finish outside the top was a DNS when running with the Mod Lites of Arkansas at Arrowhead Speedway in early May after his motor blew up in his heat.
Raffurty promptly won six straight features after that, then 13 in a row after the sixth-place showing at Marshalltown.
“There was a while there when I had a bunch of motor issues but we finally got them figured out. I knew I had to hunker down and get some good finishes to fill the gap it the national points and it all worked out,” Raffurty said. “The bad luck got over and we got on a streak.”
The division leader with 118 career feature wins, his 75 percent winning clip this season was actually the lowest of his four years in IMCA, a shade under his 2021 mark. Career-wise, Raffurty has won an amazing 79 percent of his IMCA Speedway Motors Weekly Racing starts.
“It’s pretty cool when you don’t pay attention to that stuff and all of a sudden you find out there was some record here or this record or something that was broken. It’s cool when that stuff pops up along the way,” Raffurty said.
“What’s interesting is that every year there has been a different person or different people I had to beat for the national championship,” he added. “Josh May in 2021, Joel Huggins and Randy Bryan in 2022, Stevie Throop last year and Jaedon McDowell and Jon Padilla this season.”
“It’s cool to be able to consistently race for and win the national championship.”
Raffurty was again joined in the national point standings by brother and crew chief Michael, fourth, cousin Justin, fifth; and uncle Jeff, 13th.