NASCAR XFINITY and Camping World Truck Series driver Jordan Anderson will join forces with Precision Performance Motorsports (PPM) to compete in this Saturday’s Ford EcoBoost 300 at Homestead-Miami Speedway. The XFINITY Series’ season finale will mar

Elliott Sadler and Timothy Peters have at least two things in common: both are in NASCAR Championship 4 races at Homestead Miami Speedway and both drove through South Boston Speedway on their way to this weekend’s championship events.

 

Sadler, who is in the Xfinity Series Championship 4, won the 1995 South Boston Speedway track championship. Peters, competing in the Camping World Truck Series Championship 4, won the 2004 South Boston Speedway title.

 

South Boston Speedway barely missed a Championship 4 trifecta. Denny Hamlin, who won nine races at South Boston during the 2003 and 2004 seasons, had a shot at the Sprint Cup Championship 4 until late in Sunday’s race at Phoenix International Raceway.

 

All of Sadler’s South Boston victories – 11 – came during his dominating run to the 1995 track championship. By 1997 he was full time is what is now the Xfinity Series and two years later he moved on up to the Sprint Cup Series. He returned to the Xfinity Series fulltime in 2011. He has 13 career Xfinity wins, three coming this season.

 

Peters’ first race at South Boston came in a legends car in 1994. He was 14 and had to get written permission from the sanctioning body to compete because of his age. He didn’t disappoint, posting a win. He wasn’t so fortunate in his first Late Model start three years later.

 

“It was the day after my 17^th birthday, August 30, 1997. I knocked the front clip off (the car) on the seventh lap. I remember it like it was yesterday.” Said Peters.

 

His first South Boston Late Model win came in a 75-lapper during the 2000 season. The next year he won six races, but lost the title to Brandon Butler, who had 10 wins.

 

He won six races again in 2004 and took the title home, even though Hamlin had seven wins.

 

Peters said no one should be surprised to see South Boston Speedway graduates competing at the top level of the sport.

 

“If you can go to South Boston and win, you can go just about anywhere else and win. That’s the way I look at it,” said Peters, who has 10 career NASCAR Camping World Truck Series victories. “There are always some of the best drivers on the Eastern Seaboard there. It’s good, tough racing week in and week out.”

 

Peters, who lives about 40 minutes from the track, still shows up with helmet in hand. He won the Denny Hamlin Short Track Showdown at South Boston in 2015. He competed in just one race at South Boston in 2016, starting dead last in the July 1 200 lapper and racing his way to second. He visits track on a regular basis when not driving, helping young driver Brandon Pierce.

 

“It’s where I grew up. That’s what helped me get to where I am today. I try to come back there and run when I can,” Peters said of his South Boston support. “I have a lot of memories at South Boston. Some have been very reward and some have been heart break. A piece of me is there. I just can’t get away.”

 

South Boston Speedway will kick off its 60^th season on March 25 with the Danville Toyota NASCAR Whelen Late Model Twin 100s, featuring two 100-lap races for the Late Model Stock Division, a 50-lap Limited Sportsman Division race, a 30-lap Budweiser Pure Stock race and a 15-lap Budweiser Hornets race.