MAIZE, Kan. — How he finished his 2024 campaign already has Jake Nightingale looking forward to next year.
The Maize, Kan., clipper repeated as back-to-back champion in the Jet Central Region for Friesen Performance IMCA Modifieds, with the same consistency but none of the late-season drama as last year.
“We were getting down to the last month and realized we were in the fight, we were right there,” said Nightingale, who tallied six feature wins and 23 top-five finishes in his 31 starts, all but one of them coming in his home state.
“We didn’t win as much as I think we should have. We had a lot of second place finishes and some of them were hard to swallow,” he’d continue. “We were good, but we weren’t good enough and I’ll be the first to tell you that.”
Fast but not fast enough through the middle of June, Nightingale picked up a slew of runner-up’s before winning consecutive outings at Saltcity Racing, RPM Speedway and Salina Speedway.
“That was a good streak, let me tell you,” said Nightingale. “The hardest part about being so close in those earlier races was because this is my first full season in my newer car. The Modified I drove all but one night this year is a 2023 Mullens I built in January of ’23 but didn’t race until the end of the season because my old car was just working so good.”
“This is the first season where I put the old car away because it was time to figure out the new one. We were always really close and finally got her pretty dialed in by the end of the season.”
Nightingale has been getting an IMCA Modified dialed in since his first, part-time season in the sanctioned division in 2020. He was runner-up to Jordan Grabouski in the Central Region points chase two years ago, then nailed down his first regional title via tie breaker, by winning night two of the season-ending special at Salina Speedway.
This year he won the championship night show at Salina, then ran second in his final start, at Sherman County Speedway’s Flatlander, in wrapping up back-to-back crowns.
“There are a lot of big names who have raced in this region for sure,” agreed Nightingale, reminded he had joined the likes of Johnny Saathoff David Murray Jr., Chris Alcorn and Grabouski as multi-time champions in the Central. “For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be a race car driver. This is our 10th season in a Modified altogether and to finally be able to put my name up there with the big important guys I’ve looked up to, guys who have been my heroes, I don’t even know what to think.”
While reigning as Kansas State champion for the third consecutive season, Nightingale’s latest regional title came without a track championship and the accompanying bonus points.
“I was competing for it, of course. I’d love to run a lot more nights and race for the national title but have to have a job to feed this hobby,” said Nightingale, second in standings at Dodge City Raceway Park and also a regular at Hutchinson – where he battled back after a blown motor kept him from starting the opening night feature – Hays and Salina.
“One difficult thing about local racing is that you race the same 12, 15, 18, 25 guys. But when you go to Super Nationals you get to see all kinds of things, how it’s working, why it’s working and all the curveballs,” he said. “How we grew even from Wednesday to Saturday at Boone, how much faster we got at Super Nationals was insane. We grew exponentially over that. I’m scared to even strip the car down now, we’ve got it dialed in so good.”