Josh nelms prepares for the straightaway during a power slide through one of the turns at sycamore speedway. nelms says the numerous years on the dirt track have helped him for asphalt racing, as hehas learned to control the car.
13 years old. now 23 nelms has aspirations of racing asphalt, an endeavor
which will cost considerably more and require major corporate sponsorship.

NASCAR it's not
Racing takes root in the dirt

Just inside the bay door at BC Auto Body in Wheaton on the hottest day of the year, Josh Nelms and Joe Dynek are taking swings at the body of a car with rubber mallets.
  It’s not a matter of poor service. This is Josh’s car. This is No.99, a canary-yellow monster. This is Big Bird. This is 115 decibels, a jet that never takes off. This is an aluminum can bolted onto a rocket. Josh and Joe are spending the hottest evening of the year making sure that it’s a few miles farther from the recycling heap at the end of the day than it was at the beginning.
  The speed limit in Wheaton goes anywhere from 15 to 45 mph on average. Josh’s car, on the straightway, can double that. So to avoid a suspended license and a return trip to driver’s ed, he and the rest of the crew take Big Bird west on Saturday nights to sycamore Speedway, pay their entry fee, and see what kind of dust they can stir up.
  Sycamore’s track is dark, thick mud at the start of the evening, a bare-bones representation of the same soil growing an ocean of corn head-high that surrounds this island. It was as though Kevin Costner tilled, packed and banked his ”Field of Dreams” and turned it into pit row.
  Not long after the speedway was built, The Nelms family came. First Mike, Josh’s father, in 1979,Then Josh, who at 23 has spent 15 years behind the wheel at Sycamore in some capacity. Both he and his family tell the story of how, when he was 8 years old and driving cars in the pits, Josh’s head would disappear under the steering column when he hit the brakes.
  Josh had to sneak into spectator races when he first started driving. Now he saunters in, proud as a peacock flaunting its feathers. He’s not at the top, but he’s close enough and so it’s time to move on. Ten years after making his racing debut here, Josh is jaded from coming home with dust in his plumage and his feathers ruffled.
  “I’m moving to asphalt - thank God,” Josh said. “I’m tired of getting dirty. I think Joe’s getting dirty too.’ Joe nods as he taps out enough dirt from the car’s undercarriage to pot a fern.
  Some hobbies can get to a point where they are becoming too expensive to classify as such, and this is where Josh finds himself.
  “ When you’re going too far sideways, you can’t go forward,” he said.

  Josh was talking about the way the car handles around the turns, but it could just as easily be said for a career in racing. Aside from winning the point title, the youngest Nelms has achieved everything he wanted in the super-late-model class. It is time to accelerate through the learning curve.
  “It is gonna be a tough transition, like starting racing all over again,” he said. “But you can take a dirt driver and turn them into an asphalt driver. You can’t do the reverse.”
  The phrase “by the seat of your pants” is literal in the Nelms context. It is the way Josh drives.
   “You know exactly what the car’s doing by the feel of your (seat),” he said. Whether the translates over to the viscous flow of asphalt racing has yet to be determined, and only Josh and his rear end will ever know for sure. Still, the potential of pavement overrides the risks. Dirt tracks are where drivers their debt: They get to collect on the roads.
  All that being said, there is no place better, in gardening or racing, to sink roots than in dirt. NASCAR star Jeff Gordon started on dirt, as did Tony Stewart. On dirt, the cars shake more, otherwise known as squirrelly. Drivers learn the feel of the car and are able to adjust to so many more variables than are even present on the roads. They get dirt in their teeth. They build character that seems to stick to race-car drivers like bugs to a windshield.
  One of Josh’s competitors and friend, Danny Falkos, has been racing on and off at Sycamore since 1966. He’s also run on smooth, paved surfaces.
  “There’s a lot of difference between dirt and asphalt,“ Falkos said. “Asphalt is mostly tires, once you get the car right. With dirt, there are a lot of variables with the surface.
  “But there’s nothing better than a good car on asphalt. It would be a good experience for everybody here to run asphalt at some point.”
Mike Nelms agrees. “I’ve got to get him out of here. He could be a big fish in a little pond, or a big fish in a big pond,” he said.