Springfield's Kelly Kovski leaves ARCA as a champion, checkered flag or not | Mahan

<p>I’ve not spoken to even a fraction of the ARCA Series drivers who’ve driven the Springfield Mile dirt track, but I can confidently say one thing: No one wanted to win the Allen Crowe 100 more than Springfield’s Kelly Kovski.  And you know what? I wanted nothing more when covering these races over the last 14 years to write the “Kelly Kovski wins” story. Each year I go out there, that’s the only story I hope I’m telling. It was never meant to be.  Kovski, 45, told me after Sunday’s race, in which he finished seventh on the closing day of the Illinois State Fair, that was the last time he would be in his No. 16 Chevrolet on the Springfield dirt. I was stunned. I was sad. I felt my heart skip a beat.  More: Reaves draws crowd's ire, Boschele's anger to win ARCA Allen Crowe 100 “An Allen Crowe without Kovski? Say it ain’t so!”  That doesn’t take away the number of thrills Kovski gave the home crowd over the years, several after miraculously coming back from a horrific accident which should’ve been more life-altering and showed the “old man” can still compete on a shoestring budget compared to some of the well-funded teams. On Sunday, 16-year-old Max Reaves won the Allen Crowe/Calypso 100 in controversial style. He traded paint with his &quot;elder,&quot; 18-year-old Gavan Boschele and, when Boschele passed him with three laps to go, Reaves put his nose under the rear of Boschele’s car, and Boschele spun out, causing ire in the fans and anger from Boschele.   Reaves drives for Joe Gibbs Racing. JGR owns four NASCAR Cup teams, four cars in the NASCAR O’Reilly Auto Parts Series and the No. 18 ARCA car. Combined, Gibbs, the former NFL head coach, has 10 series points’ championships, including five on the Cup circuit.</p> <p>Until 2025, Bill Venturini’s Venturini Motorsports — now Nitro Motorsports — was &quot;the&quot; ARCA team with several young up-and-coming drivers sporting luxurious haulers and cars that dominated the series. Motorsports isn’t made for the one guy who tinkers on his car in the garage anymore. It’s a multi-million dollar business. That’s just partof what made Kovski special.   He wasn’t the only one on the ARCA circuit going about it while watching the nickels and being tight-fisted with the quarters. There are plenty of others. And I mean, plenty. If you’ve been to an ARCA race over the last who-knows-how-many years, you’ve seen it: many cars don’t have what it takes to even be somewhat competitive. By 10 laps of green-flag racing, some are, or are threatening to be, lapped. It’s not uncommon to still see a start-and-parker — a driver out there to get points, but who doesn’t want to risk damaging the car, using more than one set of tires for the entire weekend, needing expensive repairs and will come to pit lane after running several laps. They’re bean-counters as much as they are racers. Kovski wasn’t looking for contact, yet neither was he a dirty racer. He demanded his car give him everything it could. He raced twice a year almost yearly: at Springfield and Du Quoin, the only dirt tracks on the ARCA schedule. He has 40 starts since 2004. His car, his engine — even the body — needed to last. Any damage was Kovski’s responsibility to fix. And he put the nose of that Brandt/Allgaier Chevrolet into tight spaces and made room when needed. But he wasn’t reckless. He knew how to race, he knew how to race hard, and he knew how to win, even if he never made it to Victory Lane as a driver. But what makes him a champion in my book is the fact he can hang it up on his own terms. That didn’t seem possible less than a decade ago. In 2017, Kovski was injured when a race car flipped over a fence and struck three people in the pit area during a DIRTcar Nationals World of Outlaws race at Volusia Speedway Park in Florida. He suffered broken ribs, a collapsed lung, several fracture vertebrae and internal bleeding due to a ruptured spleen. Kovski was hospitalized in Daytona Beach, Florida, and on a ventilator. Kovski's spleen was removed, and he had major surgery on his broken back. He was in a coma for 2½ weeks. He had to re-learn how to walk and talk, let alone drive a race car at more than 100 mph. Three weeks after that Feb. 19 accident, Kovski was transferred to a rehab facility. His first steps came in March, a 20-foot journey. Kovski recovered enough that, by the August 2017 race, he served as crew chief while Grant Enfinger guided Kovski’s car 100 times around the mile track for the win. Enfinger said after that win, “It's a pretty emotional day here. We thought we lost (Kovski) there in February.”</p> <p>Kovski showed his perseverance by jumping in the No. 16 once again the following year and finished eighth. Two weeks later in Du Quoin, he was seventh.  In fact, four of his six-best Springfield finishes came after that accident: Kovski was third last year, fourth in 2023 and 2024 and fifth in 2020. In 2013, Kovski was in prime position for a win on his hometown track, in front of his adoring fans. On an overtime restart on lap 103, Kovski got a great jump and seemed destined for the victory, but ARCA ruled his jump was too good and penalized him for passing before the green flag. More: 'Need for speed' drove Logan County's Gehrke around race tracks Kovski’s last day as a competitor on the Springfield Mile didn’t end with an ARCA win, but he steered to a 15-lap victory in the Sportsman National race preceding the main event. Kovski has one more shot at glory. He will suit up to get that elusive ARCA win at the Du Quoin State Fair on Sept. 6, where he has his best ARCA finish of second in 2016, and also finished third last year.   Whether he finally gets what is long overdue or not, the sport will miss him. I will miss him. I may never got to write the &quot;Kelly Kovski won a race&quot; story, but I've definitely told my fair share of &quot;Kelly Kovski is a winner&quot; stories, because he is.</p> <p>Contact Ryan Mahan: 788-1546, ryan.mahan@sj-r.com, Twitter.com/RyanMahanSJR. This article originally appeared on State Journal-Register: Springfield's Kelly Kovski leaves ARCA as a champion, checkered flag or not | Mahan</p>