Just days away from the start of this weekend’s fourth annual Arizona Sport Shirts Gateway Dirt Nationals at The Dome at America’s Center in St. Louis, Mo., Chad Zobrist of Highland, Ill., was in his shop with his crew making final preparations to his car for the ballyhooed indoor Dirt Late Model event.

Written by Kevin Kovac of  DirtonDirt.com

“I’m not sure why, but we put a new body and wrap on it,” Zobrist said with a laugh, aware that fresh, crisp bodywork is unlikely to stay that way during a weekend of racing on the tight confines of the temporary fifth-mile dirt oval constructed on the Dome’s concrete floor. “It was getting pretty bad.”

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The 41-year-old Zobrist, of course, doesn’t want his equipment looking run down for the Gateway Dirt Nationals. The race, after all, is effectively his World 100, a show that is by far the biggest and richest the modestly-financed bullring specialist enters all season. It’s also virtually in his backyard — he lives just a half-hour across the Mississippi River from downtown St. Louis — so a healthy contingent of his family members and friends will be in attendance cheering him on, including nearly 50 who will watch from two Dome suites they’ve pitched in to buy.

“It’s a lot of work trying to get everything ready for it — it’s not a normal race it seems like — but it’s fun,” Zobrist said Monday night after a long day spent plowing over a half-foot of snow off Illinois thoroughfares in his position as the road commissioner for Helvetia Township. “It’s nice and close, and there’s nothing else to do in December.

“I’ve got a huge following that goes every year and they love it — and knock on wood, so far the Dome has been pretty good to me. We’ve had some pretty good success.”

Indeed, Zobrist has been among the top contenders in all three previous editions of the blockbuster affair promoted by Cody Sommer. He finished sixth in the 40-lap finale in both 2016 and ’17 and was running fourth early in last year’s headliner when nosepiece damage forced him to retire and accept a 21st-place finish.

Most notably, Zobrist has been a remarkably consistent qualifier at the Dome. He’s time-trialed well (third overall in ’16, third in group in ’17 and 12th in group last year), won a Friday heat race all three years and stands as the only driver who has locked into one of the top-eight starting positions for Saturday’s finale every year with his Friday preliminary feature finish (sixth in 2016’s lone race, third in his ’17 and ’18 prelims).

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“I’ve been pretty lucky with qualifying, just drawing a good number, going out at the right times and being able to put down a good lap,” Zobrist said of his past performance at the Dome. “It helps a ton when you can start up front there. Any race is good to start up front, but especially at the Dome.

“My problem is, it seems like every year the old pill draw for the feature (among the eight Friday transfers) has bitten me. I’m always back there drawing the 7 or 8 (he picked the fourth starting spot in ’16 but has started seventh the last two years), so maybe I need to work on my drawing skills.”

Beyond good fortune, though, there is something about racing around the Dome’s hardscrabble layout that, Zobrist asserted, “fits me.” While some drivers more accustomed to bigger tracks might grow frustrated with the slower, close-quarters action, Zobrist feels right at home. Throughout the last decade he’s settled in as a Weekend Warrior who focuses on the St. Louis area’s small tracks — specifically his hometown’s quarter-mile Highland Speedway, where he’s a 10-time Super Late Model champion, but also the fifth-mile Belle-Clair Speedway in Belleville, Ill. — so, for him, rubbing is definitely racing.

“A lot of guys, they’re probably used to the (tracks with) wide, sweeping corners, where they just drive through ‘em,” said Zobrist, who has raced at half-miles during his career — including Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio, the home of the World 100 — but hasn’t competed on a track bigger than a 3/8-mile in “quite awhile.” “Here (at the Dome), it seems like you gotta muscle through the corners, but you gotta be very careful, very patient. You can’t just go balls-to-the-wall like you want to sometimes.

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“When (the Gateway event) was announced (for December 2016), I was like, being that close, it was definitely something we have to do,” he continued. “I was a little unsure of how big a track they could actually get in the Dome, but once I seen it, it’s not really a whole lot different than Belleville or Macon. At first I didn’t know how much racing you could really do on it, but it’s proven you can race on it and I feel comfortable there.”

The track also serves as a great equalizer, reducing the need for horsepower and setup technology and allowing more unheralded entrants to battle on a level basis with bigger names. Zobrist is a prime example of a racer who can shine on the Dome’s big stage — in front of a five-figure crowd that ranks as one of the largest to see a Dirt Late Model event all season — without the resources it would typically take to do so in other races that boast a $30,000 first-place prize.

“My equipment, it just fits the little bullrings,” Zobrist said. “I don’t have the motor for big, open tracks. And hell, my car’s an ’07.”

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That’s not a misprint. Yes, Zobrist’s self-owned No. 78 machine remains the same 2007-vintage Rocket he’s been running for the last five years, including in every Gateway Dirt Nationals. He said people ask him “all the time” when he’s getting a new, or at least newer, car, but he hasn’t seen the need to make that investment.

“It was my little cousin Jason’s car,” Zobrist said of his relative Jason Zobrist, who also competes in the St. Louis area’s Super Late Model division. “He ran it and got a new car and (the ’07) was actually sitting out back in the weeds. When we pulled it out, I put it on the jig and checked it over, we changed some front-end stuff and made some other updates and then put it together. That’s what we’ve been running ever since.

“I do have another car just like it, just around the same age, sitting in the shed, but it’s not set up and ready to go. This one hasn’t done me wrong so I haven’t gotten rid of it. If it’s not broke, don’t fix it — that’s my theory all the time.”

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Zobrist doesn’t have a high-dollar piece under his car’s hood, either. The stronger of his two powerplants broke with about a month to go in the 2019 season and was determined to have irreparable damage, so his older 18-degree motor — an engine originally built by Cornett that Zobrist has since had Bill Faust and Mike Dargie freshen up — has become his only option. He said it’s a modest engine that, if he would try to sell it, he might get $8,000 to $10,000 for it.

Nevertheless, Zobrist is sure that he can give the top stars in this weekend’s Gateway field — Bloomquist, Sheppard, Davenport, Pierce, Babb, Moyer, et. al. — all they can handle. He’s done just that, after all, for the last three years.

“When I can run with them guys, it just boosts your confidence even going into next year,” Zobrist said. “You feel like you’ve accomplished something when you can go in there and run with them guys all night. They do it for a living day-in and day-out. I’m not near that guy at all.”

This season, in fact, Zobrist made a total of just 15 starts. Eleven of them came at Highland, where he won twice and registered four runner-up finishes en route to finishing second in the points standings to Mark Voigt of Marine, Ill., marking just the second time since 2009 that Zobrist failed to capture the track championship (’14 was the other season). He also made three starts at Belle-Clair and one at Fayette County Speedway in Brownstown, Ill.

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“The older I get, I haven’t raced as much as I used to when I was younger,” Zobrist said. “My kids are getting older (son Ashton, 12, and daughter Reese, 7, as well as his girlfriend Christi’s 10- and 6-year-old sons) and they’re involved in sports, so there’s other things going on besides racing. But I’m still having fun doing it locally here lately and everything’s working out.”

Zobrist might not have had an especially active 2019 season — he hasn’t even raced since late August — but he’s entering this weekend’s competition with a clear plan.

“Looking back at some of the things we’ve done to the car (over the past three years at the Dome), yeah, there’s some things I want to change this time,” said Zobrist, who credits help he receives from Randy Korte — the retired former DIRTcar weekly champion who lives just a quarter-mile from Zobrist — for providing him substantial technical advice. “I didn’t want to mess with it too much (while in the midst of racing at the event), but looking after the race, we put in our notes what we probably needed to do the next year.”

“This year I see where they have an inside (concrete) barrier on the turns (rather than large tractor tires to keep cars out of the infield),” he added, wondering how the change will effect the racing. “It’s just like Belleville (Belle-Clair), which has the same deal, a concrete barrier on the inside. You can get on top of it and it’ll hurt you, so you’re definitely gonna have to be cautious now. I do think it’s gonna collect a bunch of cars. Before, somebody would hit a uke tire and they sort of spun to the infield. This year I think you’re gonna see cars climbing up on that wall a bit and collecting a bunch behind them, but hopefully they get that middle and top going a little better this year.”

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Zobrist understands that “all good things must come to an end,” so he’s not counting on simply walking into the Dome and once again locking into Saturday’s finale with his Friday qualifying performance. But he certainly would love to be one of those drivers who has a highlight video shown on the Dome’s big screen during Saturday’s sparkling introductions — a moment that “gives you goosebumps, that’s for sure.”

“I’m hoping we can keep it going,” Zobrist said. “It’s all in the qualifying. If I can qualify decent, finish decent in a heat and start towards the front of the feature … I’m really hoping to go in and win a heat race again. That would be ideal. To be in that Elite 8 (of qualified drivers) where you don’t have to run on Saturday, it’s just an awesome feeling knowing you’re locked in and don’t have to tear things up to get in. You can just watch until the feature, watch the track and what it’s doing. I’m hoping for the same thing again this year.”

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And Zobrist doesn’t discount the possibility that he could end up in victory lane holding a 30-grand check on Saturday night.

“To win that deal would be absolutely awesome — and I feel like it’s not that far out of reach,” said Zobrist, whose team sports sponsorship from such backers as Rinderer Farms, Metal Arrow, Be-Wet/Be-Dry, Hogg Dairy Farms, Houseman Plumbing and Steve Schmitt Auto Sales. “It’s just about everything lining up. I’ve dreamt of winning a (DIRTcar) Summer Nationals and that came true (with a $10,000 score in 2018 at Highland), so as long as I keep dreaming of winning this race … I mean, it can be done.”

If it did happen, though, getting Zobrist and Co. cleared out of the Dome’s pit area Saturday night might be a chore for race officials.

“Oh, it would definitely be a big party,” Zobrist said with a chuckle. “It would take us into Sunday, no doubt.”