Dietrich Takes Opening Day 2024 at Port Royal

By Kenny Varner Jr.
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Updated: April 8, 2024

Photos by Bob Hockenbrock
By Drew Pellman
PORT ROYAL — You’d have to go all the way back to 2015 the last time a sprint car opener at Port Royal Speedway was contested in the month of April. That day, it was Aaron Ott scoring the victory. This time around, it was Danny Dietrich — and taking into consideration his 11th place starting position — it was certainly somewhat of a surprise.

The race got off to a rough start, with front row starters Jeff Halligan and Lynton Jeffrey making contact coming to the initial green flag. Jeffrey quickly found himself spun around with the entire field headed directly toward him. When the calamity finally ended and the first red flag of the season was displayed, four cars — Jeffrey, Gerard McIntyre Jr., T.J. Stutts and Blane Heimbach were all collected in the melee. Invader Corey Day, who is competing full-time in the High Limit Racing Series in 2024, also received damage in the crash and wouldn’t return.
The second attempt to start the race went off much better, and it saw defending track champion Devon Bordon — who started third — jump to the lead quickly and set sail from there. If fans were watching his No. 23 head to the front, however, they missed the move of the race by Dietrich. With most of the cars on the bottom of the track on the restart, Dietrich took to the top and seemingly drove around all of them with ease. All of a sudden the familiar No. 48 was in the runner-up position, with only Borden left in front of him.
But while Dietrich seemed as if he had the faster of the two cars, he was left to watch Borden’s tail tank for the next 22 laps. Like most dirt tracks in daytime racing conditions, the bottom lane was the preferred one, and Borden wasn’t about to leave it open for him. Everything changed with three laps to go though, when a yellow flag was unfurled for ninth-running Freddie Rahmer’s flat right-rear tire.
It was the opportunity that Dietrich was waiting for, and his experience proved to be the difference. At the drop of the green, Dietrich managed to get an excellent run down the front straightaway and into turn one before dropping to the bottom to squeeze between Borden and the inside guardrail.
Another caution with one lap to go — this time for a blown tire on Heimbach’s car — gave Borden one last chance, but it wasn’t to be as Dietrich drove away easily to score his 10th career victory at the Juniata County half-mile.
“Man, this is awesome — winning Opening Day here at Port Royal,” Dietrich said in victory lane. “I thought the track was pretty good, all things considered. If they would’ve had this thing opened up all week long, we wouldn’t even be here with all the rain we got.”
Borden was forced to settle for second, Halligan crossed third, Lance Dewease ran fourth and Billy Dietrich completed the top five. Heats for the 32 410 sprints were won by Chase Dietz, Day, Rahmer and Lucas Wolfe, while Dylan Norris took the B-main.
In 305 sprint car action, it was Ken Duke Jr. taking advantage of some misfortune for a pair of his competitors to score the make-up Blue Collar Classic from the 2023 season. With just a pair of laps to go, race leader Drew Young and second-place running Doug Dodson both had right-rear tires go down at the same time.
Roger Irvine crossed the line second, Jeff Weaver was third, Nick Sweigart took fourth, and Jason Roush rounded out the top five. Six heat races for the 44 305 sprints were won by Duke Jr., Sweigart, Kruz Kepner, Zach Rhodes, Weaver and Kenny Heffner.
Port Royal returns to action Saturday, with the return of the 410 sprints, as well as the first race of the season for both the super late models and limited late models.