Benny Westcott
Sweet Home resident Jason Ferguson won the 2023 Willamette Speedway International Motor Contest Association Sport Modified season championship with 359 points, 16 more than his nearest competitor. 10 races at the speedway in Lebanon make up the season.
“Always one of my main goals in racing is actually winning a championship,” Ferguson said. “Luckily I got it this year.”
Last year, his first full year racing at Willamette, Ferguson finished seventh. “I knew I was going to run all the races at Willamette and try to finish better than what I did last season,” he said. “Pretty much the entire season we were in the top three to four cars each night. So once we got halfway through the season I was more focused on running for the championship.”
He added that “The biggest thing was just staying consistent and keeping up on everything. It’s pretty much just making sure everything’s in order. If something’s broken you fix it and replace the part that’s broken. I was making sure I was staying up on my maintenance and focusing on being able to be out there all the time, keeping up on scheduling and making sure I’m free for the races.”
A highlight of the season for Ferguson was winning the Sept. 2 race, which earned him a $500 payout.
He said with four races to go “I was able to get the points lead and had a good gap to be able to keep my point total above the competitors.”
Still, he kept his foot on the gas, so to speak.
“I still always wanted to go out and win races and just stay competitive,” he said. “I didn’t want to just chillax and go out there and just be there. I still wanted to be competitive and win races, even though I knew that I had the championship pretty much in the bag.”
Ferguson drove a 2021 Shaw chassis this season. He was supported in his efforts by his wife Angela Ferguson, co-owner, whom he met at Willamette Speedway back in 2019. Hunter Robison was his crew chief, McKenna Davis his videographer, and Kristin Robison his tires and fuel person.
Ferguson, 33, moved to Sweet Home in 2022 from Yuba City, Calif., where he was born and raised. He and his wife moved to Sweet Home to be closer to her family in Oregon.
Ferguson started racing when he was just six years old. “My birthday was actually a date that I had to be born because my dad had a race that weekend,” he said. “So pretty much I was born around racing.” Indeed, he started driving outlaw dirt go-karts at the age of six. “What I like about racing is just the competitiveness, and then the friendships you get to build with people,” Ferguson says.
From his go-kart roots Ferguson then moved to dirt street stock/super stock, dirt limited late model, and finally dirt IMCA sport modified racing in 2014. Some notable victories for Ferguson were a first place finish at Antioch Motor Speedway in 2015 and another first place at Siskiyou Motor Speedway in 2019.
An agricultural technician for Hult Ag Solutions in Albany by trade, Ferguson says he plans on traveling for races more next year after his championship this season.