MACON, Ill. — As Mitchel Moles prepared to return to the site of his most recent USAC sprint car triumph at Macon Speedway this weekend, he reflected upon the experiences throughout his first two years of USAC AMSOIL Sprint Car National Championship competition.
Those experiences have run the gamut from jubilation to despair and nearly everywhere in between.
Since his Macon triumph nearly 12 months ago, Moles has endured a hospital stay, torn up race cars, a nearly completely new crew and almost an entirely rebuilt team.
The payoff came in the form of a USAC Eastern Storm championship less than two weeks ago.
“I think it was a big gain for our team as a whole,” Moles said. “I feel like, up until this point, basically since Indiana Sprint Week of last year, we’ve just been trying to rebuild and get everything right. We’ve lost a few crew guys and had to start over with a new team, which didn’t necessarily hurt us at all. It was just about getting used to everybody and getting back in the flow of things and trying to build confidence back up with myself.”
Prior to the start of USAC Eastern Storm, Moles’ average finish for the season stood at 9.125 throughout 16 events with a mere single top-five finish to his credit. However, during Eastern Storm, he bumped it up to 4.8 and finished each of his final five starts of the series inside the top five.
The only blemish of the week was a 12th-place finish in the opener at Grandview Speedway.
For a team such as RUM and Moles to deliver during one of the most grueling and grinding weeks of the season, that’s truly a testament to a team that has hit its stride, a fact that isn’t lost on Moles who feels the annual east coast venture is the toughest stretch they face on a variety of levels.
“The feeling is a lot different,” Moles said. “It’s so tough right now and I feel like it’s as tough as it’s ever been as of recently. (Logan) Seavey’s on a roll; Brady (Bacon)’s always good and (Kevin Thomas Jr.), I feel like is in the mix every night, plus Kyle Cummins, Justin Grant and all these really good race car drivers, it’s just hard to hit that top six every night.”
It’s certainly been a winding road for Moles, the former pro bass fisherman who grew up in a family of raisin farmers. Moles made a splash in his USAC National Sprint Car debut at the Terre Haute (Ind.) Action Track in 2022, leading 21 of 30 laps before finishing second. He won twice during his first season.
Over time, team owner Andy Reinbold has learned what to do with the race car when Moles’ comes off the track, and his dialogue with new crewmen Dylan Cook and James Turnbull has helped guide them to a level of consistency this group hadn’t had since teaming up a couple years back.
“Andy and I have changed everything since I’ve gotten here,” Moles explained. “He’s done anything and everything to help myself and the car feel better. Where we were at on the racecar when I showed up compared to where we’re at now is incredibly different. I’m almost uncomfortable sometimes here and there while driving because I feel like my left rear tire is up higher than normal. But Andy tells me, “Well, that’s just a normal sprint car.”
Moles has also endured some of the not-so-wonderful side of the sport, especially following a string of successive incidents he went through last summer, which caused him to miss a bit of action. Moles acknowledged it took a toll on him, especially when he was lying in a hospital bed with only the ticking of the clock and a slew of thoughts running through his mind — a stark reality of the profession.
“Everybody can act like they’re tough,” Moles begins. “You hear somebody say they won’t get hurt, but it happens. If you do this long enough or you’re driving hard enough, it’s going to happen. I feel like the biggest thing is what you can do when you come back from it. I got in a little funk there, and if your head is a little off, it takes a toll on you, and you just realize that it hurts. It hurts to crash; there isn’t any secret behind that.”
Moles has always had a penchant for going fast, but results and finishing, at times, in the past were difficult spots to overcome, admittedly. Moles took a different approach and has now been running at the finish in all of his 22 series starts this year.
“We got to the point where we just needed to finish races,” Moles admitted. “I didn’t care if we ran 21st; we just had to finish races because it doesn’t do us any good to hang it from the fence every night. Some were my fault; some of them were not. That’s just the cards that you’re dealt, and you have to deal with it. I feel like we’ve made tremendous gains from there. I try not to look back on the past much, but I’m just getting better every night.”
And this weekend he returns to Macon where he triumphed in a photo-finish last July.
“Macon has been really good to me,” Moles beamed. “The last two races there, I’ve won one and ran fifth in the other. (The track) might be a little different; we might see a whole new Macon, or it could be exactly like it was. I go into every racetrack optimistic, but almost every place I’ve been to at this point has changed. I watch a video, then we go there the next night, and it’s completely different. It’s dirt; it changes all the time, and we’ll just try to keep doing what we’re doing. Wins will come but you’ve just got to stay positive, stay up front, and make things happen when it counts.”