CONCORD, N.C. — Six years ago, Mike McKinney held an opportunity to claim one of the most coveted championships in dirt modified racing and lost it in the final race of the season. But 2024 was the year of his redemption.
McKinney, the former DIRTcar Stock Car national champion from Plainfield, Ill., clinched the 2024 DIRTcar Summit Racing Equipment Modified Nationals championship — the first of his career — after his eighth Feature win on the final race weekend of the summer tour at the same track where he was defeated in 2018 — Fairbury Speedway.
In doing so, McKinney completed a comeback in the points standings after trailing breakout contender Trevor Neville the entire summer, erasing a 119-point gap in the final week of racing to take the lead and seal the title in the season finale at the Prairie Dirt Classic. He became the third driver from the state of Illinois to win the points championship and only the fifth different title winner since the series’ inception in 2011.
“I’ve been doing this Mod deal a long time now and I’ve never really won a marquee championship,” McKinney said. “There’s only about two or three UMP marquee championships you can win. To finally add my name to one of those definitely feels good.”
His triumph completes a story that began in 2018, when he led multi-time Summit Modified Nationals champion Mike Harrison by four points coming into the 2018 Prairie Dirt Classic at Fairbury. In the season finale, Harrison won the main event and was crowned with his sixth tour championship while McKinney struggled to climb from the rear of the field, spinning out in the closing laps and watching as a rival hoisted what originally looked to be his championship trophy earlier in the summer.
Looking back, that night is now nothing more than a distant memory. McKinney is several years older and wiser, and after eclipsing 11 years of experience in the UMP Modified ranks last year, he’s arrived at his season of redemption.
“It is kinda cool how it came full circle however many years later and was able to clinch it the opposite way of how I lost it,” McKinney said. “In that aspect, it definitely made it special, for sure.
“To win it the way we did it — traveling up-and-down the road and having to fight back and win it on the last night was definitely really special.”
At its largest, McKinney held a 140-point gap to Neville with half of the season remaining. Both drivers won a feature in the tour’s debut in Arkansas during Week 4, and by the start of the fifth and final full week of competition in Michigan, the gap had closed to 119 points.
After back-to-back rainouts kicked off Week 5, McKinney made the most of the remaining four races, winning the first two at Butler Motor Speedway and Crystal Motor Speedway before Neville took the checkered at Oakshade Raceway in Ohio. Coming into the final race of the week at Wayne County Speedway (Ohio), McKinney’s gap sat at 17 points.
McKinney took the checkered flag in the main event for his third win of the week, earning him 41 points in the championship standings and vaulting past Neville into the lead with only the Prairie Dirt Classic remaining. One final win in his Showdown Feature on Friday night of the event sealed the title, earning McKinney even more points to put Neville’s comeback chances out of reach.
“It was definitely stressful,” McKinney said. “There were times we were sitting in the trailer handwriting all the points and throwing out nights on paper just to see if we had a chance. We weren’t gonna drive all the way to Arkansas and these places if we felt like we were out.
“It made it fun; I think we both pushed ourselves to go to Arkansas, go to Michigan, go to Ohio. If it wasn’t for me getting closer, [Neville] wouldn’t have kept going and same for us. It made it fun being in that battle and having a lot of attention on it.”
The Summit Modified Nationals utilizes a best-of championship points system, counting each driver’s best 12 finishes for points in the standings. Once a driver hits 12 races entered, every finish after that has the potential to “replace” their lower finishes and earn them large chunks of points toward their total.
The dynamics of this system played directly into McKinney’s favor as his wins in Week 5 replaced some of his worst finishes of the season — all of which came at tracks he knows the best — including three seventh-place runs at Fairbury in Week 1, Federated Auto Parts Raceway at I-55 and Lincoln Speedway, and a sixth-place finish at Spoon River Speedway.
“That second and third week there, we just had some really bad runs at all my best racetracks,” McKinney said. “All the tracks you’d expect I’d run good at — we ran pretty bad at. But I still felt like we kinda had a shot and just needed to go out and race in general to get our baseline back and get our stuff better. The more we raced, the better I got and the closer I got to winning that points battle.”
With the big trophy in-hand, McKinney now continues his quest for another championship in the national DIRTcar UMP Modified ranks. He currently sits third in the season-long standings, 63 points behind fellow Illinoisan Michael Long, in the chase for his first national championship since winning the 2012 DIRTcar Stock Car title. Mike’s father, David McKinney, was by his side for that season, and Mike would love nothing more than to bring home another trophy to complete what they started together at the birth of their Modified operation almost 12 years ago.
“We work out of a three-car garage at our house with no room in it,” McKinney said. “We don’t have big ol’ trailers and stuff like that and a bunch of crew guys. Me and my dad, we’re a family-owned team. It’s just working really hard.”