CONCORD, N.C. — DIRTcar UMP Modified racing has long embraced its home in the Midwest, playing host to weekly battles on the black-dirt bullrings that have come to define the region’s motorsports scene.
But since the turn of the decade, a new spark in popularity has brought these high-horsepower machines to tracks all along the Eastern Seaboard with the rise of one of DIRTcar’s newest regional organizations — Modified Mafia Tour.
Since 2023, Modified Mafia has been the go-to series for UMP Modified racing outside the Midwest, hosting events as far north as New York down to the Southern heat of Georgia. This fall, the tour sanctions the UMP Modified portion of the 11th annual World Short Track Championship, Oct. 29–31, for the third consecutive year.
The marquee DIRTcar event has brought over 450 cars in 10 different divisions to The Dirt Track at Charlotte Motor Speedway in each of the last three years. Forty-two of last year’s 489 total entries were UMP Modifieds, with several standout talents in the field from across the country.
Now in year four of operation, the tour has kept full-field car counts steady, grown its schedule to a comfortable-yet-competitive 25-plus races, and begun putting high-paying marquee events on its calendar to further cement its place as the premier open-engine Modified organization on the East Coast.
“I feel like what we’ve built here, people want to be a part of,” said Tour Director Brandon Riffe. “Some of the best talent in the country in the Modifieds are over here.”
Riffe has been the head of Modified Mafia since its inception, breaking ground on the series following the dissolution of the Renegades of Dirt Modified Tour, which began operation around the same region in 2012.
Outside the small roster of tracks that raced UMP Modifieds weekly along the coastal states, a void was left needing to be filled for the region’s most ambitious racers with Renegades gone after the 2022 campaign, and Riffe was the one that drivers called on to start something new.
“These guys are my friends, and we kept looking at it, and it looked like if we didn’t do something, these guys weren’t gonna have anywhere to race,” Riffe said. “So, they’re gonna have 40-to-50-thousand-dollar cars that are just gonna sit here because there’s nowhere for them to race. That was the main factor.
“These guys are super talented, they’d already spent a fortune in their programs, and they wanted to race.”
A native of West Virginia, Riffe had been a driver for several years while also working as a DIRTcar technical inspector. He, along with numerous other Modified racers in the area, had been accustomed to racing by and building cars according to the DIRTcar rulebook for several years. This made the choice of sanctioning clear for the start of the new tour in March 2023.
“They kept on me about it, and about the middle of January when everybody went to Volusia, I just bit the bullet and was like ‘Alright, if that’s what you guys want, we’ll try it and we’ll see what happens.’” Riffe said. “I talked to Sam (Driggers, DIRTcar Director) and said, ‘I want to do this, and I want to make sure that you can back me with the sanction and all that so I can run DIRTcar rules.’ And he was 100% for it.”
In its first season, the tour received great support for its North and South circuits, thanks in part to a $2,000-to-win, $200-to-start purse, a points fund for the top-10 finishing drivers, and a host of marketing partners coming on board.
“We tried to build this from a driver’s point-of-view, really,” Riffe said. “With me being a driver and knowing what I wanted when I ran series races, whether that be contingencies or the points fund and payout or whatever.
“My biggest thing when I was a driver was, all the bottom spots paid the same. So, if I’m running 18th or 12th and they all pay the same, what’s the point of me being out there still? That’s one of our bigger things — we pay really good money to win but we also pay really good money through the field.”
Additionally, Riffe’s expertise on the technical side was a big factor in establishing a fair, honest environment for all drivers to race — another point of emphasis in the tour’s first season.
“Our tech is really strict, probably the best in the country I’d say,” Riffe said. “We tear cars apart. If you’re doing something wrong, you’re going to get disqualified for it. I feel like that is a huge driver’s responsibility because it’s like, ‘Alright, I know I’m on the same playing field as everybody else. So, if I’m getting outrun, I need to make my car faster.’”
