64 SPORTS ILLUSTRATED | SI.COM
IT’S THE UNOFFICIAL slogan of dirt track racing. But
at least on this crisp October night, it’s all business
before the race starts. Twenty-five stock cars take their
places at Raceway Park, a^3 / 8 -mile oval in southern
Portsmouth, Ohio, hard by the Ohio River, where Kentucky,
West Virginia and Ohio touch bumpers. Engines rev and
screech. Drivers’ eyes narrow like blinds as they stare
straight ahead, applying death grips to their steering
wheels. The smell of exhaust and gasoline hangs in the air.
When the starter finally whips his f lag, the drivers
are off, racing for 25 laps, seeing who can be the first to
make 100 left turns. Spewing out from the limited late-
model cars—with their f lat, pointed fronts, high tails and
souped-up engines—cloudbursts of dust hover over the
track before drifting toward grandstands packed with fans.
This was the 41st annual Dirt Track World Championship,
the season finale for a nine-month circuit that wends its
way through the tracks of Appalachia and the Midwest,
where the sport’s heartbeat pulses loudest.
Through the plumes, it was hard not to notice (and
hear) a green-and-white Steel Block Late Model with a
Kryptonite chassis, bearing plenty of dents, the legacy
of a season of racing. In lieu of sponsor decals—of which
there are suspiciously few—the car’s rear bears a decal
that strays from your conventional bit of trash talk.
It reads: dustin-that-a$$.
Dustin Sprouse drives the No. 43 car, christened in honor
of Richard Petty. And, like the King, he is relentlessly friend-
ly and open. He has a habit of absently fiddling with the
diamond earrings in his left and right lobes as he speaks,
which is often, and a high-pitched voice at odds with his
burly physique. His accent reveals his home: the country-
side of West Virginia. His fallback look is a warm smile,
framed inside his trim goatee. He is also an openly gay dirt
track driver; perhaps the only openly gay dirt track driver.WHEN THE GREEN FLAG