Mason Zeigler considers himself an “extreme hobbyist” when it comes to racing dirt late models.
He doesn’t follow a series full-time, but when there’s a big check on the line anywhere in the Northeast or Midwest, his hauler is typically in the pits.
“I guess we’re sort of like a modern-day Brian Birkhofer, in that we go where the money is like he did,” Zeigler said.
The big money is on the line Saturday night at Lernerville Speedway and Zeigler, a 2015 Laurel Highlands grad, will aim to make his presence known like he did at Eldora Speedway earlier this month.
Zeigler is coming off a fifth-place finish in the S129,000-to-win Dream at Eldora and hopes to carry the momentum in the $50,000-to-win Firecracker 100 finale Saturday night.
“It gives me a little more confidence, but it’s a whole new ball game here,” Zeigler said of his run at Eldora. “This place can be glass slick, where you can barely touch the throttle and real slow where Eldora is a lot different, but it does give me confidence that my car was good. I think we’ll at least be in contention.”
Zeigler finished fifth in his first prelim feature Friday, which was a conclusion of Thursday’s program, which was postponed because of rain. He had another top-10 run going in his second prelim feature Friday night, but an issue forced him to retire and he was scored 19th.
Zeigler took a different path in racing than most. Prior to Rodney Gallagher and Keondre DeShields’ recent reign on the football field and basketball court Zeigler was a standout athlete at Laurel Highlands. He played football and basketball for the Mustangs prior to pursuing racing. His team started chasing the bigger money races in 2018.
“When I was younger playing sports was more of a priority, because that’s what my family wanted me to do,” Zeigler said. “We all agreed to do sports first, because you can only do that for a short period of time and then pursue (late model racing) afterwards. When a lot of these guys were racing at 14 years old, I wasn’t doing that.”
Zeigler has been close but hasn’t found victory lane at Lernerville. A win Saturday would be a dream come true for the Chalk Hill resident.
“It’s a fun track,” Zeigler said. “It’s elbows up, but it also changes a lot throughout the night. Believe it or not we live close to here, but we really haven’t raced that much here. Only a couple times a year. A few years back (Michael) Norris and I battled for a win on one of the prelim nights. We’ve had good cars here, but haven’t got a win. Hopefully we can get one this weekend.”