CONCORD, N.C. — In the lead up to the season, Kansas native Zach Blurton realized it was time to take the next step in his racing career.
He made the leap to full-time 360 sprint car competition, and decided there was no better place to do that than with the American Sprint Car Series National Tour.
“I wasn’t going to do it until I physically felt like my team was capable of doing it with the equipment and funding that we needed to go and do it,” Blurton said. “I felt like we had that, and enough motors and cars and stuff to go and do it, and it just finally made sense.
“I’m in a location where it is kind of tough for 360 racing. You’ve got to travel a ways to go race a 360 to begin with. Kyler Johnson and I are from the same town, and I know that’s what their decision was. We’re already going so far, if we’re going to do it, we might as well go and do it.”
Blurton found success in his limited National Tour starts prior to 2024, including a win with the Series at WaKeeney Speedway in 2022. Because of that, he had high expectations to start his Rookie of the Year chase, but he quickly learned that running the full tour is an entirely different animal.
“I thought we would do a lot better than what we have been, just been absolutely struggling,” Blurton said. “I know I can do it, and I’ve done it. I feel like the competition is so much more intense and there’s so many good drivers this year with it, not just the National guys. Going into it, I thought that we could run top 10 every night pretty easily, and shoot, I’ve struggled to even make the top 10.”
The Sunflower State is known for having some of the largest dirt tracks in the nationand Blurton expected his experience on the big tracks to play into his favor over some of his competitors who were raised on bullrings.
“I would have thought that we would have been able to have some better finishes, especially at the bigger racetracks,” Blurton said. “The small race tracks are definitely something that we don’t have up here. I’m used to racing on Dodge City [Raceway Park] and bigger, and the small racetracks are tough for me. And so, I figured when we would go to a bigger track, those would be our better chances, and we just haven’t been able to get something going.”
While Blurton is disappointed to only have two top 10s through the first 15 races of the year, he is proud of his ability to keep his nose clean and avoid trouble early in the night.
“I haven’t had to use a single provisional, and I feel like that’s pretty big right now,” Blurton said. “Not having to use any of those and having those in our pocket for when we actually need them.”
Blurton honed his craft in the 305 sprint car division for more than a decade before making the jump to the ASCS, and still pulls out the 305 to race locally on off weekends for the National Tour.
“As far as running a 305 versus a 360, I feel like a 305 helps me stay in the groove of racing,” Blurton said. “As far as learning something, yeah, a little bit here and there. But then the 360 and 305, it helps me a ton. I go back to a 305 and it’s so much slower. I have way more time to think about stuff throughout the race now, and it makes the 305 a lot easier.”
In between race weekends, the No. 2j team has been hard at work in the shop finding more performance in their 360 program and Blurton said he believes they may have discovered the issues that were holding them back.
“Finally figured out that we may have had some car problems with our new car that we got this winter,” Blurton said. “Before Knoxville, I switched to a different car, and so hopefully that changes some stuff from here on out.”
Up next on Blurton’s freshman campaign is a pair of tracks close to home, beginning with the National Tour’s second visit of the year to Dodge City on Friday, Aug. 16, and its first trip since 1998 to Lincoln County Raceway on Saturday, Aug. 17.
“Dodge City is close to home and special to us, and we always like going there,” Blurton said. “Then, getting to Lincoln County in North Platte, Neb., is something I’ve been looking forward to since they announced it. That race track is an oval, and it’s shaped how a race track’s supposed to be shaped, but there’s characteristics and things that it’s done in the past years racing 305s there.
“Looking forward to that place for sure, they always have a tremendous turnout of people in the stands. North Platte loves sprint car racing.”