The series attracted a nice mix of young and old talent. The Westfalls had a dirt and pavement midget, but only one engine. Over the course of the 1998 season, they were forced to continually swap the power plant between the two chassis, but it paid off.
Westfall rarely made mistakes and by the end of the year he had won rookie-of-the-year honors and the series championship.
It was a great outcome, but as Westfall recalled, “after that one year Jack said he was done.” Still the family soldiered on. They would score their first midget win on the red clay of Indiana‘s Bloomington Speedway, and they stuck with the small cars for two more seasons.
It‘s a familiar story. Midgets are fun to race but it is hard to pay the bills when you compete with them exclusively. It was time to give sprint cars a try.
To get this phase of his career off the ground the Westfalls had to do a little bartering. They had a sprint car in their shop but needed an engine. In the end they worked a trade with Pennsylvania owner Gene Franckowiak whereby he would receive all the midget inventory in exchange for two 410 engines.
It‘s been so long ago now that Westfall can‘t recall where he first gave a sprint car a whirl but thinks it was at Gas City (Ind.) I-69 Speedway.
Concentrating on bullrings, he made 29 feature starts with USAC between 2002 and ‘04. Ever mindful of the bottom line, there was never a thought of racing with a series of that nature on a full-time basis.
Nonetheless, in 2006 he scored a USAC victory at Eldora. For an Ohio kid who spent plenty of time around Jack Hewitt, it was a very big deal.
Racing a sprint car is a supreme test, but in a blink of an eye Westfall faced an even tougher challenge.
In 2008, he was working in a gravel pit and was prepared to refuel a backhoe that was dredging a pond when he was hit by an extensive excavating bucket and smashed against his truck. He suffered a broken hip and every upper-body muscle was strained. It was a full month before he could get up and down on his own.
Little did he know it, but he had set the wheels of a recovery plan in place before his accident had occurred. During his racing life, he had become friends with Jim Hamilton from Ithaca, Ohio. Hamilton sponsored a midget owned by former racer Mack McClellan and driven by talented young driver Kevin Besecker.
Hamilton also owned a modified and for some time Westfall had bugged him to get in the seat. During a USAC sprint car date at Eldora, Hamilton relented and Westfall finished second in the car. Hamilton asked Westfall if he wanted to get back in the car the next weekend, however, the next Tuesday Westfall suffered his workplace injury.
After one night in a sprint car at Lawrenceburg Speedway, Westfall knew he wasn‘t physically up to the task. Pondering his options, he reasoned that racing a modified just might be the ticket to get him back into shape. It was the right call.
When it was clear that he still had the touch, he got a call from Bill Dues and the folks at the famed St. Henry Nite Club. He knew right away he was being presented an offer to take the seat in a car capable of winning. Wesfall spent much of the next five years racing a modified. It paid off.
In 2014, he won 15 times, claimed the Eldora championship and was seventh in the prestigious UMP national standings. “The mods were lot of fun, but they just don‘t pay very much,” Westfall said. “But through the years we didn‘t always have a lot of money, so I did whatever I could to keep racing.”
For more than a moment it appeared that this was just the platform to take his career in an entirely new direction. Eric Brock of Best Performance had a tempting proposition. Westfall spent the 2015 season behind the wheel of a late model with continued support from St. Henry‘s. The goal was to move to a national late model tour in 2016.
Westfall held up his end of the bargain, and when he says, “I had a really good year,” the facts back up his assertion. He was the Eldora champion and he also snared the Buckeye Late Model title. Arguably more telling given his aspirations was his performance in marquee events.
“I went to The Dream and set overall fast time and raced my way into the feature,” he said. “I started eighth and ran up front and got in a crash on around lap 96. Then we went to the Late Model Nationals at Knoxville and I made the show.”
Perhaps the biggest disappointment came at the World 100 where a suspension failure was the culprit in an accident which destroyed a car he had used so successfully at the big half-mile. The crew got another piece ready and in a heroic effort Westfall ended up missing the starting grid by a matter of inches.