Wilson Hopes to Overcome Bad Luck, Persevere at Nashville
If Lady Luck is on his side, Donnie Wilson will be among the group of favorites to win the North/South Super Late Model Challenge at the Fairgrounds Speedway in Nashville, Tennessee on April 8-9. The Oklahoma City, Oklahoma native led the most laps in the Southern Super Series presented by Sunoco race at the Fairgrounds one year ago, but a flat tire left him with a third-place finish instead of the win that he perhaps deserved.
Over the course of Wilson’s career, bad luck has been a theme. A flat tire here, a part failure there, if it can happen, it happens to the red and white No. 2w machine. He’s hoping that a visit to the Music City will help to cure those problems.
“I’ve been plagued with bad luck my whole career. I don’t know if I’m stupid or just dumb, but I keep at it,” Wilson said with a laugh. “That’s the only thing I know how to do is persevere. Just keep working hard and hopefully things turn around.”
Wilson said he and his team have been working as hard as ever in preparation for the North/South Super Late Model Challenge, an event that will feature the Southern Super Series and ARCA/CRA Super Series Super Late Models. He’s won at Nashville before, so he knows what kind of preparation is needed to win there. He believes the team and car are capable of winning, so naturally that is the ultimate goal.
“Every time we go to the race track we want to win and run well,” Wilson told Speed51.com powered by JEGS. “I’ve won there before, so I’m pretty excited to go back and get another one.”
The 45-year-old driver is hopeful that his car is as good as it was last year, and he’s also hopeful that the shorter race format will be a good thing for him.
This year the Southern Super Series presented by Sunoco and ARCA/CRA Super Series powered by JEGS will each run a 50-lap points race on Friday, April 8. The top-12 finishers from each race will transfer into Saturday’s 75-lap showdown.
Wilson said he’s a big supporter of the new format and believes that it’s going to bring about some aggressive racing.
“With the CRA and Southern Super Series bringing this deal together, it’s going to be a neat event,” he said. “We just need to qualify well in the first 50 and finish hopefully in the top five to give us a good starting spot for the 75 on Saturday. It’s a shorter race, so you have to be on it pretty quick.”
If Wilson can’t win, he would be satisfied with a top-five finish. Last year’s Southern Super Series runner-up plans on doing himself one better this year by scoring the series championship. In order to do that, consistent strong runs are needed.
“That’s our ultimate goal,” he said. “That’s what we keep fighting for. I’m getting a little old now, so my days are numbered. I think we’ve always had the team and equipment to do it, so now we just need to do it. I just need to do it this year. We were second last year, and I don’t think we had that good of a year as we did in 2014. But it was still a good year. We just need to be more consistent and that’ll get us some more wins.”
And if Wilson does score that championship, he will know exactly what he and his team did to get there.
“All I can do is work hard and have my guys work as hard as they can and hopefully it’ll turn around,” Wilson said. “I can’t do anything about Lady Luck. I’ve found that out over the last 10 years.”
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Sources: 51 Sports/Southern Super Series PR