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Hardwork, determination and sprint car racing are what Jason Sides knows best. He combined those three elements again this past season as he took to the road with the World of Outlaws Sprint Car Series.
When the dust settled, the 2003 Kevin Gobrecht Rookie of the Year had racked up 17 Top-10 finishes, with three of those being Top-Five performances and he was 13th in the series championship standings. He raced his way into the Crane Cams Dash 16 times in 2008 to earn Top-10 starting spots in A-Feature events. He did this all mainly with one crew member, doing much of the work on his race car himself, as well as driving the truck and trailer from race to race.
“I guess it is a lot of determination and we just enjoy racing,” Sides said earlier this season when asked about what it takes to be successful and stay motivated on the road with the World of Outlaws, with the countless miles spent driving from track to track and the endless hours of work on the race car.
After opening the season in Australia with two Top-10 finishes against a number of fellow World of Outlaws competitors at Parramatta City Raceway, Sides arrived early in Florida to gear up for the Alltel DIRTcar Nationals at Volusia Speedway Park. He finished seventh in the finale of the annual event and ran strong in all three A-Feature events contested by the World of Outlaws, leaving the Sunshine State in the Top-10 in the series standings.
After rain interrupted a number of the events in the early spring, Sides picked up his best finish of the season with the World of Outlaws at the famed Eldora Speedway in Ohio, where he is a past winner of the Kings Royal, coming home third on April 11. It was the second consecutive season that he had finished on the podium at the half-mile in the early spring event at the track.
“It seems like we have hit on something here,” said Sides after that race. “Last year we had a good run here the first time around. Usually when it is cooler like it was, it stays a little wet and is a little bit better for me around the bottom. We got around the top some, but we were on the bottom most of the time. We’ll take them anyway we can get them.”
Sides hit his stride in late July, rattling off five consecutive Top-10 finishes, including a fourth-place effort in the series debut at 34 Raceway in Iowa, after a strong sixth-place showing in the previous race at Paducah International Raceway in Kentucky, where he was in the Top-Three for much of the race. He carried that momentum on to Wilmot Speedway and Charter Raceway Park, both in Wisconsin, where he had solid runs. During this stretch of races, Sides had an extra crew member helping the team, which paid big dividends, especially with it being in the heat of the summer, during a stretch of six races in a nine-day period at six tracks in five different states.
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