PORTSMOUTH, Ohio -- Garrett Smith unleashed the wave of emotions that had been bottled for 100 nerve-racking laps when he arrived on the winner’s stage of one of Dirt Late Model racing’s most storied events Saturday at Portsmouth Raceway Park. Tears came uncontrollably and words were understandably short.

“I’ve worked so hard to get here,” Smith said, his voice crackling. “To finally get it done feels so good.”

The Eatonton, Ga., driver, who four days earlier celebrated his 19th birthday, had solidified himself as the youngest winner in the 42-year history of the Dirt Track World Championship by virtue of unshakable poise in the throes of perhaps the most apprehensive finish Dirt Late Model racing will see this season.

Nine different drivers suffered flat tires over the final 16 laps of the $100,000-to-win crown jewel. Through the countless restarts, Smith’s feared that the biggest win of his life might vanish at his fingertips.

But Murphy’s Law never bit Smith, who polished off a performance that cements his fledging name alongside the sport’s greatest drivers with one of the DTWC's biggest upsets. Topping long-distance ace and newly minted two-time Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series champion, Tim McCreadie, by 1.084 seconds completed Smith’s clean sweep of the weekend. It wasn’t until Smith reached the back pit area that he could sufficiently describe the career-altering feat.

“Yeah, I have a little bit better (realization) … it’s sunk in now after about four minutes,” Smith said as his fuchsia Breast Cancer Awareness Month car rested outside the Lucas Oil Series trailer, fans piling around to greet the driver after an interview. “I just … I just can’t … I couldn’t ever imagine doing this. It’s so hard to run with these guys.

“As I said earlier in my interview with you, I could always qualify and heat race good, but when it comes down to being the leader on the last lap, I haven’t been able to do that until now. It feels really good to be a Lucas Oil winner now, and not just that, but a Dirt Track World champion. I’m really at a loss for words. I don’t know what to say. I’m really proud of my team with how far we’ve came this year.”

VIDEO: Watch highlights from Saturday's Dirt Track World Championship.

Before Smith upended Late Model racing’s heavy hitters, Brandon Sheppard held the mark of youngest Dirt Track World Championship when he won at age 20 in 2013.

Prior to Saturday, Smith only finished on the lead lap in two of his four 100-lap features this season: when he finished 15th in the Prairie Dirt Classic on July 30 as the last car on the lead lap and then 12th in the Hillbilly 100 on Sept. 29 at Tyler County Speedway in Middlebourne, W.Va. For more context on just how extraordinary Smith’s breakthrough win is that, before the weekend, he had never even finished in the top-five of a Lucas Oil Series race.

Amid the many restarts the final 20 laps, McCreadie said that Smith made only “one small mistake” when he slipped off the bottom exiting turn four with six laps left. Other than that, the Lucas Oil Series champion had nothing to overthrow the youngster.

“He did a good job,” McCreadie said. “We’ll take a second. It’s a big drop off in pay, but what are you going to do? The kid did a great job. From what I saw, I saw one small mistake, and I wasn’t there. We’ll take it and move on.”

Smith said on lap 94 he hit a bump in three that knocked him out of the groove. The Georgian affirmed that was the only instance he felt he messed up.

“Luckily it didn’t cost me the race,” Smith said.

In hindsight, McCreadie’s best chance at the win developed on the initial start. McCreadie, starting on Smith’s outside, hoped to beat the polesitter to his right-rear exiting the first corner. When that didn’t happen, McCreadie then tried using his top-side momentum to dive underneath Smith in an attempt to dislodge him from the bottom on the next corner, but “he was just a little better,” he said.

All week, and really all season, Smith has leaned on the advice of Scott Bloomquist, whose former crew chief, Cody Mallory, now serves the same role on Smith’s team.

Before Smith took the one-laned, bottom-dominant track Saturday, Bloomquist told the young driver “that later in the race, (the track would) clean up on the bottom (and) to not get off that bottom and no matter what — don’t try to pass a lap car. No one’s going by on the outside. Maintain a smooth pace. Keep your tires under you. You’ll win the race.”

“He’s the G.O.A.T.,” Smith said of Bloomquist. “I just put what he told me into play, which saved us our right-rear.”

Smith's winning pace was only seriously threatened once, when Brandon Overton pulled alongside Smith on lap 14, moments before the race’s first caution for Mason Zeigler.

Outside that, all Smith had to do was execute restarts smoothly, hold a steady wheel and be easy on the throttle.

“You just mentally focus. You just really focus,” Smith said. “It’s been a minute since I focused that hard, about just staying straight and hitting your points without sheering the car loose and what not. I was pretty focused there the last 30 laps.”

“When those last couple late cautions were coming out, I was getting really worried,”  Everyone’s right-rear tire kept going out it seemed. I was getting a bit nervous on that. I just knew if I stayed straight, don’t spin them, I had a better chance of finishing the race without blowing a right rear.”

Overton tried the outside a few laps after restarts on laps 14 and 33 with the intent to sneak by Smith, but the move didn’t pay off. With 10 laps left, Overton, who had fallen to third, fell victim to the slew of flat tires down the stretch.

Smith, like McCreadie and third-place finisher Mike Marlar, managed to have no issues with Hoosier’s 40 right-rear tire compound, whereas frontrunners Overton and Chris Ferguson couldn’t make their 1425 compounds on the right-rear go the distance.

Marlar acknowledged Smith’s attentiveness at the wheel, but also noted that “being out front, not having to pass anybody, you’re just rolling around the racetrack driving real straight,” which makes tire management much easier than those racing in a pack of cars.

“That’s when you’re the easiest on them,” Marlar said of tire management. “All of us guys on restarts have to race each other, this and that. It just kind of grinds them off, wears the rubber off of them. I was fairly conservative. Where you hurt (the tires) is on restarts, if you spin and catch a rock or something. I was being really careful not to spin them on restarts. I knew (the tires) were paper thin.”

Marlar, who fell back to eighth early, said “it was a pretty frustrating race to drive” and “pretty frustrating not being able to race at all” given the track’s narrowness.

“At one point, I was like, I’d rather run 10th and try than not try,” Marlar said. “Fortunately it worked out in the end and we got on the podium.”

McCreadie, while letdown he couldn’t win his first Dirt Track World Championship, says he’s seen storylines like Smith’s emergence on the big stage before. Where Smith goes from here is yet to be determined, but if there’s anything to draw from history — particularly Sheppard’s DTWC win in 2013 as a fresh-faced 20-year-old — is that the crown jewel raises career trajectories of those who do win it.

“This race, at this track, has produced young winners, or winners you thought were never coming,” McCreadie said. “A lot of those guys have turned out to be pretty good race car drivers. So, yeah, he might be the next one in line. They do a good job. He seems like he’s a real nice kid. They have a good crew, and that’s what it’s all about, putting yourself in position to do it. He was a little bit quicker than us all weekend. I can’t do anything but say good job. I mean, he did a good job. He did a really good job.”

Smith himself isn’t sure where he now stands in the world of Dirt Late Model – “I don’t know,” he said in response to what this means for the rest of his career — but he rests assured on one truth.


“I think this shows that I belong here, you know?” Smith said. “As I said, I believe I belong here. Some people don’t. In my eyes, I feel like I belong here. I’ve been waiting for this for a long time.”