Daniel Sanchez.
I started racing 4 cylinders when I was 13 years old. I won a handful of times my first year out, at a bullring called Accord Speedway in New York. When I was 14, I moved up to the Pure Stock division at Lebanon Valley Speedway. We picked up 2 feature wins that year (2012) and picked up 6 more in 2013. At the end of 2013, I found myself in a Northeast Pro Stock. My Dad had raced Pro Stocks and Northeast Modifieds for 25 years. It was always a dream of mine to get behind the wheel of a Pro Stock. I raced Pro Stocks at Albany Saratoga Speedway and Lebanon Valley Speedway through 2015 picking up multiple feature wins and even raced a Northeast Crate Modified a handful of times. In October of 2015, I started college at The University of Northwestern Ohio. I majored in High Performance and Automotive Technology. UNOH has their own Motorsports team and owns Limaland Motorsports Park. When the team hosted driver tryouts, I gave it my best, competing against some great up and coming drivers from across the country was exciting! I was fortunate enough to be chosen to race one of their Thunder Stocks during the regular season. One weekend when Limaland was off, I was able to travel home to race the Pro Stock at Lebanon Valley Speedway in the King of Dirt Jimmy Langenbach Memorial. Over 30 cars started that race and we won. I was very homesick in college and going home and winning that race, I could not hold back the tears in victory lane that night. Between the meaning of the race and the support of my hometown, it was all very overwhelming. After a year on the UNOH team, I talked with my family and friends and we decided we wanted to travel and race more tracks in the Midwest. In 2017 we brought our Northeast Pro Stock to multiple tracks in Ohio and Indiana. We quickly realized that we needed to upgrade the suspension on our car to be more competitive. At the end of 2017 we bought a new to us Super Stock and won our 3rd time out with it at Wayne County Speedway in Ohio. In 2018 we returned to Limaland Motorsports Park and won the championship! That was such a great feeling and a memory that will last a lifetime. At Eldora Speedway I was awarded the Chick Hale Sportsman of the Year award as someone who represents Eldora Speedway as a racer and a person. That is the biggest and best award I have won in my entire life. It means a lot for someone to think of me as a good racer but it means even more to know they think enough of me as a person to give me the honor of being the 2018 Chick Hale Sportsman of the Year. We also went on to win the Monster Mash later that year against some of the toughest Indiana Super Stocks around! In 2019 we started racing UMP Modifieds at the same time as running our Super Stock. We spent a lot of time learning the Modified program and fortunately found ourselves just 2 points out of the point lead in the Super Stock Division at Eldora Speedway! We won our heat race and had high hopes for the feature. Going into turn 1 on lap one of the A Main a driver on the outside row spun and hit us in the right rear sending me up and over several times in front of the field. Thankfully I and everyone else involved was okay. We sold the remains of Big Blue the Super Stock and also our Modified. At the end of 2019, we were presented the opportunity to run one of the first ever Kryptonite Modifieds ever built. We jumped at the opportunity and picked up our first Modified feature win last year at 35 Raceway Park in Ohio. I have since graduated from college with my Associate's Degree in High Performance and Automotive Technology and a Bachelor's Degree in Business Administration and Marketing Specialized Studies. I now live in Illinois working in the racing industry and meet my family in Ohio every time we race. They travel from New York and we meet at our Friend Mike's shop where we keep our car to do some racing together! This year we are racing Eldora for points in our Kryptonite Modified and visiting a few other tracks around the country like Volusia Speedway in Florida, Bristol Motor Speedway for the Bristol Dirt Nationals, Charlotte Motor Speedway for the World Short Track Championship, and as many more as we can fit into our busy schedules. Thank you for this awesome opportunity.
