HAMILTON, Mo. — Looking to expand his racing horizons, Jace Whitt figured a Friesen Performance IMCA Modified just made sense.
He’d travel to 13 tracks in four states before the sun set on the 2024 point season, winning four features and earning rookie of the year honors in the Razor Chassis North Central Region.
“Rookie of the year wasn’t a goal at the start of the season. After the first couple nights I was toward the top of the standings so I told myself this was something I could probably do and tried for it,” said Whitt, from Hamilton, Mo. “I went pretty hard the rest of the season and came up a little short for national rookie but won the region.”
He made 41 North Central region starts, at eight tracks in Iowa, two in South Dakota and one in Minnesota, bookending May 9 and Aug. 8 checkers at Park Jefferson Speedway around July wins at Worthington Speedway and Crawford County Speedway.
“Everything just kind of worked out perfect that first night I ran Park,” already the seventh different track he unloaded at, Whitt said. “I got a front row starting spot and just took off from there.”
“Winning a race in my first season in a Modified, against the competition I faced, was really my highlight this year. I didn’t think I’d win one race and I ended up winning four,” he’d add. “I had run the Sunflower Classic at RPM Speedway and led there (on night two) until about six laps to go, then made a couple mistakes. There was some good competition there and that set my expectations higher for the rest of the season.”
Whitt had run an e-mod class in his home state, then won four Friesen Performance IMCA Northern SportMod features in 2022. He piloted a USRA B Mod last year.
“I didn’t like the USRA deal as much as IMCA, so I went to IMCA,” he explained. “It just made sense for me to move to the IMCA Modified because I could travel a lot more and I was limited where I could go with the B Mod.”
A fan of the old configuration at Park Jeff, Whitt also has a soft spot for Stuart Speedway in particular – he got his first-ever win there, during the Frostbuster in 2022 – and Mike Van Genderen-prepped tracks in general.
“I just like traveling around, racing against different drivers on different surfaces, just trying it all out. At the beginning of the year I looked at all the schedules. I had raced the SportMod at some of those tracks already, like Worthington, and I like the way that races, but hadn’t been to places like Park Jefferson or Interstate before,” he said. “I watched some videos from there and have some buddies who race there, so I went and raced with them. I like doing different things. I hate racing the same place over and over.”
A true road warrior after making nearly all of his trips to the track without any pit crew help, Whitt completed the season without a single parts failure.