FREMONT, Calif. — Shane Golobic will make the 27-hour haul from the Golden State to the Marion County Fairgrounds for Friday’s World of Outlaws Invitational at Iowa’s Knoxville Raceway.
It’s a long trip, no doubt, but Golobic isn’t worried about the miles he’ll log with his Matt Wood Racing team.
“We’re just happy to be going somewhere with a race car in tow again,” he told SPEED SPORT by phone.
Golobic raced a midget during the Lucas Oil Chili Bowl Nationals and competed in three sprint car races in his native California before the COVID-19 pandemic brought sports worldwide to a halt in mid-March.
The results? Pretty impressive, when you consider he made the Saturday A-main at the Chili Bowl in January, won one of his three sprint car starts (at the Stockton Dirt Track) and finished second in the other two sprint car events — the latter pair racing against the Lucas Oil ASCS National Tour.
Since then, Golobic has kept his NOS Energy Drink-backed No. 17w at the ready but has not been able to roll it into the trailer and hit the road until this week.
It has been a strange feeling, Golobic admitted, considering he’s not one to spend much time idle.
“I’m a busybody. I can’t sit around and do nothing,” he said. “The good thing is that Matt (Wood, Golobic’s car owner and father-in-law) kept us busy with all the midgets (six) that we brought to Chili Bowl, so we were actually a little bit behind on sprint car work after the Chili Bowl was over. So in a way, the pandemic has allowed us to catch up a little bit on sprint car stuff and get it all ready the way we like to have it ready. That only accounted for a couple of weeks of it, though, unfortunately.
“The rest of it’s just been kind of mind-numbingly boring … and it’s just hard to stay sane without doing what we normally do,” he added. “Friday night finally gives us a chance to get back to business.”
Golobic enters the event as a relative underdog compared to the likes of World of Outlaws champions Donny Schatz, Brad Sweet and Daryn Pittman, as well as other heavy hitters including reigning Knoxville 410 sprint car titlist Brian Brown and All Star Circuit of Champions kingpin Aaron Reutzel.
He’s not worried about that aspect, however. The California ace is simply happy to have his name in the hat among the 48 drivers and teams who were invited to compete.
“It’s pretty cool. Looking at the list, there isn’t one slow car or one car where you feel like, ‘Oh yeah, we could probably have them beat,’” Golobic noted. “It’s a stout field. We’re going to be a small fry when it comes down to it, just with being a California team and not getting to run Knoxville a whole lot, but we’re excited about it and excited for the challenge.
“Really, this is kind of what we do. When we sit down and look at our schedule for the year, we try and go where we think all the best guys are going to be,” Golobic admitted. “And I think there’s no doubt that all the best guys in the whole country are going to be at Knoxville this weekend. So we’re pretty excited about it.”
Knowing how deep the field will be on Friday night, Golobic is carrying modest expectations into the Knoxville Invitational, even though he earned his second World of Outlaws victory and broke a long drought with the series at Placerville (Calif.) Speedway in 2019.
“Our first goal is just to make the show. This almost has a feel of like a Capitani Classic type of race, where everybody’s going to be there and just making the show at a race like that is a tough feat,” Golobic explained. “So that’d be something that we definitely are going to be shooting for to start. And then from there, it’s kind of all gravy at that point.
“We’ll just try and get as many laps as we can and learn from the best in the world.”
Golobic also hopes Friday’s learning experience gives him a baseline of what to expect down the road, since he’s planning on returning to Knoxville for the famed Knoxville Nationals in August.
“Part of our plan this year, pre COVID-19 anyways, was to try and get back to Knoxville a few more times throughout the year. With Matt (Wood) being from Iowa himself, Knoxville is very important to him and he grew up watching race in there as a kid,” Golobic noted. “So before all this kind of came about, we were shooting to be able to run Knoxville five or six times before the Nationals, whether it was with a 360 or a 410 … just whatever it took to get back there. We were going to take some sprint cars back to the Midwest and kind of leave them there originally.
“So this was kind of all part of the plan, but it’s working out a little differently than we expected it to,” Golobic added. “But any laps in Knoxville, as everybody knows, are huge. We’re going to take advantage of it as best we can and see what it gives us.”
Friday’s World of Outlaws Invitational will air live on DIRTvision starting at 7 p.m. ET.