Quick Q & A with Kyle Strickler at SRI's Fan Fest

Quick Q & A with Kyle Strickler at SRI’s Fan Fest

By Rhonda Beck, WISNC Creations/BeckRacingMedia

11-5-2024

Today, several drivers gearing up for the World Finals at Charlotte this week gathered at SRI Performance in Mooresville, N.C. to greet fans and do some on-air interviews. They also took a few moments to answer some individual questions before heading to the Dirt Track at Charlotte for tonight’s hauler parade and other festivities. Here is a short Q & A with Mooresville, N.C.’s Kyle Strickler, driver of the number 8 super late model. Strickler is also coming off a good weekend where he won at The Dirt Track at Charlotte in the UMP Modified World Short Track Championship feature for a record fourth time.

Rhonda Beck: Kyle, good to see you here at SRI Motorsports today. First, congrats on your UMP Modified win over the weekend at The Dirt Track. Anything to say about that and, again, setting records over there?

Kyle Strickler: Yeah, that race being close to home is always an important one that we wanna go win, definitely the modified portion of it. And then run as good as we can--I’d love to win one on the late model side of it too. Love going to Charlotte; it’s one of the places where we get around really good. It was a great weekend and everything went the way we planned with the new car. So I was super pumped about it.

RB: And I kind of already talked to Nick Hoffman about this and saw people writing about your long-term relationship and rivalry, but I saw you guys race at East Lincoln and Carolina back in the day. I remember when Mark Abernethy would play that song, “Why can’t we be Friends” when things happened out on the track. But it’s neat how you’re running his chassis now.

KS: Yeah, when you have two guys coming from different areas--I had just moved down from Pennsylvania, and that was my first ride I got down here. And then Nick was from St. Louis and was here and had modified background. We were both, I guess, battling hard to be the top dog around here. So you’ll have that when you race against each other and you have two guys that are really passionate about what they want to do and really want to win. And you’ll usually have run-ins when you’re racing two nights a week, or at that time I think we alternated weeks between East Lincoln and Carolina. So it’s cool to see how you progress through your career once you do late model racing and a lot of stuff you do when you get older. I don’t know that we necessarily really hated each other; we just really wanted to beat each other. And of course, that boiled over to doing whatever we had to do to win. So nowadays it’s nice to see us mature and have respect for each other and be able to work together. And even when we compete against each other--I made the joke that years ago when we were modified racing against each other, we wouldn’t tell each other if we were running square tires or round tires. And now we try to help each other on the late model side and also on the modified side. It’s cool to see how time changes things and we end up working together.

RB: For sure. I know you had a lot of good competition back then, including other guys like Derrick Ramey, Ryan Ayers and Danny Bohn. A lot of you have done well since that time. And as far as the World Short Track Championships, do you have a comment on that event? Like for some of these guys, for instance the last winner on the last night, it may have been the first win of their career.

KS: Yeah, Charlotte’s one of those places that it’s really cool to race at, and especially for guys that don’t get to go to facilities like that when they are in 4-cylinder classes or like street stock stuff. It’s really cool for them guys to be able to go race at Charlotte and then they can kind of stick around and get to watch the supers and the big block modifieds and the sprint cars race on that same track. So places like that mean a lot. It’s almost like the Eldora or Knoxville type of feel where being here in Race City USA, this is where so much motorsports stuff surrounds us. It’s cool for all them guys to be able to get to go race there. And then if somebody gets their first win at that track, it’s definitely special.

RB: And I didn’t get to talk to you at Eldora at the World 100 and you’ve just done some select late model races this year. But do you have something to say about Scott Bloomquist and having known and worked with him?

KS: Yeah, he just was one of them guys that you kind of put him on a pedestal, that he was this larger-than-life character. And then once you get to know him—I just kind of wish I had more time to spend with him and learn some more from him. But obviously the greatest of all time to drive a late model. I was fortunate enough to be able to get close to him and spend that much time with him and learn a lot from him. But yeah, I mean, the World 100 was my only late model race this year, so this weekend will be the second late model race of the year. We still have the same Bloomquist tribute wrap on there, so hopefully we can go out there and get a good run for him.

RB: Did you test here some?

KS: No, we were so busy working on that new modified, trying to get it done. That car came from Eldora and we maintenanced it. Everything’s pretty much ready to go, and we’ve got it ready for tomorrow night.

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