BOONE, Iowa — Jonny Carter needed a single night to accomplish everything he’d hoped to and a lot more Wednesday at the IMCA Speedway Motors Super Nationals fueled by Casey’s.
The rookie from Fairmount, N.D., won his heat from eighth starting and turned in the fast time in B & B Racing Chassis All-Star Invitational qualifying, then raced his way into Saturday’s Big Dance with a second-place finish in his feature.
“I told the guys when we left, hey, if we can somehow make a qualifier this week I would take that as a win,” said Carter, encouraged to make the trip to Boone Speedway by uncle Todd, cousin Jarrett and crewman Kyle Anderson. “Just to make a qualifying feature, there’s so much competition here and so many names I’ve seen over the years. It’s an honor just to be racing with these guys.
“This is the first time I ever laid eyes on the place. It kind of has some characteristics of a few places we raced back home more or less back in my street stocks days,” he added. “It has more or less a little bit of everything, but it’s the kind of track that falls into my wheelhouse. I like the little bullrings.”
He followed uncles on both sides of the family into the sport – Todd Carter has been a wheelman himself for nearly 50 seasons – and described himself as being on the racing path from birth.
“IMCA has been making its way closer to home and I just needed a change of pace,” Carter said. “I wasn’t sure what we were going to do and ended up coming up with a trade deal for a Stock Car. It looked pretty interesting so we figured we’d give it a shot.”
In a 2014 Terminator that’s “still got some speed in her,” Carter brought five wins in just 17 sanctioned starts into the week of Super Nationals, becoming B & B All-Star qualifying eligible with his rich checkers at McLean County Speedway’s Night Before The Tourshow.
He started fifth, searched around the track for the fastest line and stayed in the top five all 25 laps of his feature before chasing Jake McBirnie across the stripe.
“Our goals are pretty filled now,” Carter said. “Looking at the Big Dance, we want to run a good, clean race. Everything from this point is just icing on the cake. We’re riding on high. Whatever happens from here on out happens. We’re pretty excited.”
Watch the IMCA Super Nationals on IMCA.tv.