With 2 points titles, E-Mod driver has season to remember
FENELTON — Consistency was the name of the game for Russ Dunn on the race track in 2006.
The 1990 Seneca Valley graduate and driver of the No. 47 E-Modified won points championships at Sharon Speedway and Mercer Raceway Park and reached victory lane at four different tracks: Sharon, Mercer, Tri-City Speedway and Raceway 7.
"The key to this sport for me is owning the car we're driving and having control over its parts and maintenance,"Dunn said. "It's just a lot more fun that way."
Dunn began his racing career in 1991, developing his desire to race through his father, Dan Dunn, a dirt track racer during the 1980s.
Dunn first got into racing with the Kessler family, a race team based in Cranberry Township.
"Iraced for a few different people for a while, got married in 1997, bought a house and had to cut back,"he said of his racing career.
Dan Dunn bought an E-Mod in 2001 and watched his son drive it to the Sharon Speedway points championship that year. In fact, Russ Dunn won eight of the 12 points races at the track that season.
After that season, Dunn decided to work on finding a ride in the Late Model division.
"We did well everywhere we went in that E-Mod and didn't think we could go any farther,"Dunn said. "Like any other driver, I was hoping to move up to a Late Model and we didn't have the financing to do it ourselves.
"That's when I learned that if you don't own your own equipment, you don't have control over it. The key to our success is our maintenance program with our own equipment," he added.
That's why Dunn combined forces with his father and Dave Olivieri of McCandless, who he had met through the Pittsburgh Circle Track Club, to form an E-Mod race team at the end of the 2004 season.
Since he works as general manager of Frankland Racing Supply in Saxonburg, he never is far from racing.
Last year, Dunn won four races — again at four different tracks — in 22 starts. The team did a lot of traveling and didn't race for points anywhere.
"We became a two-car operation so we could race more often,"Dunn said. "By pooling our resources, we were able to do that."
This year, Dunn's team decided to go after the points title at Sharon, and he took the points crown despite winning just one feature there. Dunn put together a streak of 13 successive top-five finishes, including two seconds, three thirds and five fourth-place showings.
"We were in the thick of it every week," he said. "The points title at Mercer just sort of happened. They didn't have a lot of points races there and were good enough to win it."
Also on Dunn's race team are his wife Christina, Charlie and Luke Vogel, and Lee Kirstein.
Next year, he expects to challenge for the points crown at Raceway 7.
"They are going to increase the payout for E-Mods, so I imagine we'll be there on a weekly basis,"he said. "We'll do a little more traveling, too."
The team is debating whether to go to Florida this year for Winter Nationals. Dunn finished ninth there in 2001.
He raced at Lernerville Speedway this year, winning a heat race in his No. 47 during a show Aug. 4. The other Dunn-Olivieri car was driven by veteran Late Model driver Chub Frank, who won a heat race that night as well.
"Lernerville's held three E-Mod races the past two years,"Dunn said. "Nothing beats racing locally. I'd love to do more of it."
