The 4th Turn: August 7, 2025
~ By Tom Boggie
Confidence is an important aspect of any sport, and can be gained in different ways, depending on the sport.
In golf, it’s booming a couple of drives early in the round. In basketball, it’s watching a couple of three-pointers touching nothing but net.
For Derrick McGrew Jr., confidence comes from winning a sportsman feature at Albany-Saratoga Speedway after starting 17th.
“It felt really good tonight to drive from 17th to the lead,” he said last Friday after chalking up his first sportsman victory at Malta since 2023. “I know I can race with these guys. I went by Tim (Hartman Jr.) on the way to the front.
“The last couple of weeks, the track was different and it was hard to drive to the front,” he added. “But Lyle (promoter Lyle DeVore) worked really hard to get the track back to where it used to be. It was really racy.”
It’s hard to believe that McGrew Jr. is only 18 years (he celebrated that milestone birthday on July 10) because it seems like I’ve been watching him race for decades. After a very successful go-kart career, he moved up to open-wheel cars in 2018. That year, he made his debut at Fonda Speedway on April 21, winning the limited sportsman feature on the first night he raced.
He went on to win 17 races that season at Albany-Saratoga (two), Glen Ridge Motorsports Park (nine) and Fonda (six).
He moved up to the regular sportsman division in 2019, recording his first victory in that division at Airborne Park and also had two top-five finishes at Malta, highlighted by a second to Andrew Buff during Malta Massive Weekend.
McGrew and his father, Derrick Sr., made the decision to move up to big blocks in 2020 and in 2021, ran an ambitious schedule of 41 events. He saved his best for last that season, finishing in the top 10 in all five races of the Cajun Swing in the fall.
But the team ran into a rash of motor problems in 2022, and only ran a total of 12 big block races. By mid-July, the big block portion of his career was over.
McGrew Jr. went back in the sportsman division in 2023, and added two more victories to his win list at Albany-Saratoga (he also chalked up wins at Brookfield and Accord). But the highlight of his season, and probably his career, came when he made his debut in the ARCA Menards East Series for Rise Motorsports. McGrew had passed the test to get his ARCA license with flying colors and signed on as a developmental driver for Rise Motorsports. He made his one and only start on May 20 at Flat Rock Speedway in Michigan, finishing 10th in a 16-car field.
The ride with Rise Motorsports was a pay-to-play deal, however. The McGrew team had to provide their own cost of transportation to Michigan and also had to pay for tires and fuel at the track. That proved to be an impossible obstacle to overcome, and McGrew Jr. never competed in another race.
Just for reference, the winner that day at Flat Rock was William Sawalich, who is now a regular on the NASCAR Xfinity Series for Joe Gibbs Racing. Sawalich’s father is Brandon Sawalich, the president of Starkey Hearing Technologies, the largest hearing aid manufacturer in the U.S.,
McGrew Jr. didn’t win a race at Albany-Saratoga last year, but still came into the 2025 season feeling good about his chances.
“I thought we ran good last year,” he said. “We went through some ups and downs but we got wins at Glen Ridge and in South Carolina. We ended the season great. I finished sixth at Super DIRT Week after running in the top three for a while and had a shot at the win at Charlotte until I wrecked.
“We’ve been super consistent this year, but luck hasn’t been on our side. I wasn’t sure when I would get back here (to victory lane). My dad has been busting his butt every day to give us what we had tonight.”
The win last Friday moved McGrew up to fifth in the sportsman points race, just 21 points out of second.
McGrew is continuing the family legacy at Albany-Saratoga. His great-uncle, Randy Hotaling, won nine sportsman races at Malta from 1994 until Aug. 12, 2005, and was the track champion in 1995. McGrew Sr. has 22 career wins at Malta and was the sportsman champion in 2015.
MORE FROM MALTA
Peter Britten had both his big block and small block cars at Albany-Saratoga last Friday, but only got to run the big block in a feature. He shut down the small block on the last lap of his heat race, and had to be pushed back to the pits, the victim of engine problems.
But he ended his night in victory lane with the big block, recording his first win of the season. Britten had raced on six consecutive nights before having a night off last Thursday.
“Last night wasn’t a night off,” he said after win. “We were up to 2 this morning after losing a motor at Drummondville. But this win will definitely help out. Winning helps keep you going.”
Jessey Mueller led a good portion of last Friday night’s big block feature, but had to settle for fourth, after giving up the lead to Britten on lap 32.
“I bounced the nose too many times,” said Mueller after the race. “If I could have kept the car underneath me, I don’t think anyone could have gotten by me. But it was tough to hit the same mark every time. In (turn) three, I was really bouncing around. But that was a good run. I’m happy with it.”
Prior to the night’s racing, I ran into Ron Proctor talking to Elmo Reckner in the pits. Proctor hasn’t raced at Malta since early July and I asked him if he was just taking a little time off.
“My back’s been giving me problems,” he said. “One of the last times I ran, I had to pull off. That was the first time in my career I’ve had to pull out of a race because I was in pain. Usually, I can block it out.”
So my next question was, is this it?
“I don’t know,” said Proctor, who celebrated his 72nd birthday in June. “I’ve got an offer to sell everything, including my trailer. I’m still thinking it over.”
Not to be overlooked was Adam Tranka’s first career limited sportsman last Friday. Tranka is a longtime competitor at Malta, beginning his racing career in hobby stocks in 1999. Later that year, he moved up to pro stocks and recorded his first of two career wins in that division on July 30, 1999.
In recent years, Tranka has been back in a street stock, and made his way back to victory lane in that division at Malta on Aug. 27, 2021. But most of his success was achieved at Glen Ridge Motorsports Park, where he chalked up 21 street stock wins from July 5, 2020 to Sept 5, 2022, which puts him fourth on the all-time street stock win list at the Ridge. He also won the track championship in 2022.
I took a look at the Wall of Shame (where all the fines, probations and suspensions are listed) last Friday and saw that Sarah Arnold was serving a one-week suspension for an incident in the pits the previous week. Well, at least DeVore doesn’t play favorites. Arnold usually sings the National Anthem at Malta, but Olivia Delaney took her place last Friday.
Although DeVore put down a new racing surface last week, he wasn’t 100 percent happy with the results. “The rain all day (Thursday) killed me,” he said. “I couldn’t do everything I wanted to do. There are still a couple of soft spots.”
Longtime fan Don Boonstra put up $50 bonuses for the limited sportsman heat race winners last Friday. Those bonuses went to Yule Cook, Tranka and Dan Odell.
AROUND THE TRACKS
Stewart Friesen was released from Albany Medical Center earlier this week and will continue his recovery from his horrific accident at Autodrome Drummond at home. His wife, Jessica, posted on Facebook, “Procedures to reconstruct his shattered pelvis and right leg tibia-fibula went smoothly. He has extra plates, screws, rods and pins, as well as fractured C7 (vertebrae) and fractured left hip.”
Christopher Bell will be subbing for Friesen in this weekend’s NASCAR Truck Series race at Watkins Glen, and Kaden Honeycutt will pilot the Halmar/Friesen 52 for the reminder of the series.
Orange County Speedway was back in action last Saturday, with Tanner VanDoren recording his first career big block win in the 106th Anniversary Night. Marc Johnson, who had his third runner-up finish of the season at Malta on Friday, finished fourth at Orange County while Jack Lehner was seventh.
Devil’s Bowl Speedway will be running the annual C.J. Richards Memorial “Prelude to the 200” on Saturday night. The feature will pay $5,000 to win.
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