STEVEN DREVICKI: BACK ON TRACK

Speedway, Indiana (June 19, 2023).........There will be low points in every racing career, but there was a time when Steven Drevicki was concerned that the rain would never stop.

Winning never goes out of style, and Drevicki had experienced plenty of that.  He began racing midgets in 2010 and was champion of the venerable ARDC in 2014 and 2015.

As midget racing swooned in the East, Steven seized an opportunity to sign on with the new USAC Rapid Tire East Coast Sprint Car Series in 2018.  For the first three seasons of the group’s existence, Drevicki reigned supreme.  As the three-time series king, Drevicki entered the 2021 season confident as always, but suddenly, the landscape changed.

On June 4, 2021, Drevicki topped the field at Williams Grove Speedway, notching his 12th win in the first 37 meetings in the tour’s existence.  He was still considered the man to beat.  No one would have predicted that it would be nearly two years before he flashed under the checkered flag again.

All Steven can do now is shake his head when recalling his personal drought and give thanks that it has come to an end.

“It sucked,” he says with a disarming smile, “That was the basics of it.  The 2021 season was just bad.  It started out okay, but then, little things started happening and it just snowballed.  We wrecked a car at Selinsgrove during Eastern Storm, and two nights later, we went to Bloomsburg and flipped a car in time trials.  Then we wrecked another car at Big Diamond.”

It was time to regroup.  He spent the next month concentrating on his job, and slowly got another car together.  When he finally returned to the racetrack, inexplicably, disaster struck again.  Matters deteriorated.

“For a year and a half, I just went through the motions,” he says, “but it wasn’t like we stopped trying.  I wrecked those cars in that two or three-month period, then I took a month off for work.  Because I wasn’t racing, I got behind.  The other thing that happened was the East Coast series continued to elevate.”

Drevicki’s last comment is telling.  Steven is an engineer by trade, so taking an analytical approach just comes naturally to him.  The East Coast series was evolving, and he knew if he wasn’t careful, he was not going to catch up.

“We all came into the series together,” he recalls, “and for the first couple of years, it was people just kind of getting their feet wet.  In the last two years, it really took a jump forward.  Not just Briggs (Danner) and Alex (Bright) who have been winning all the races, but also the second, third, and fourth place cars are strong.”

Steven also thinks he can pinpoint what has fueled the transformation of his home group.

“These kids coming out of the 600 micros know what they are doing,” he says. “They are running up front right away.  Maybe their consistency isn’t there yet.  They might be third one night and eighth the next, but then two weeks later, they are back in the top-five.  So, it has gotten harder.  If you get behind, you get down on yourself and think you don’t know what you are doing anymore.”

There it is.  The mental game is so much a part of any sport.  It is possible that the fallow periods that all must face may be more difficult to endure for those who have tasted victory so often.

“If any driver says they don’t ever doubt themselves, they are probably lying,” Steven notes.  “You begin to wonder if the car isn’t really the problem.  You begin to think maybe I’m not doing something I ought to be doing.  I probably still doubt myself, but it sure helps when you get back in victory lane and win some races.”

Relief finally came in mid-May at Grandview Speedway.  He liked the feeling of taking the checkered flag so much, he repeated the experience one week later.  When asked if he was more relieved or elated, he says, “Probably both.  I think Grandview was a little unexpected.  We didn’t have our 360 motor, what we had was our 358 which we use with the wing stuff.  It is a little underpowered.  We got a good pill draw and got the heat race win then we got the car good for the feature.  Then we got our 360 back for the next week and got another win at Clinton County.”

Even with his success, he wasn’t prepared to say he was all the way back, but those wins, and a heat race victory during Eastern Storm, put a jump in his step.

“We aren’t quite there yet,” he admits, “We do well some nights, and the other nights, we are off on balance.  We’re getting closer.  Even after the heat race win at Grandview, I didn’t feel I was that good, but then you are running against very good guys.”

Going into Eastern Storm, Drevicki was realistic about his chances against the regulars of the USAC AMSOIL National series, but he also has a personal standard for gauging his overall success.

“At Eastern Storm, you don’t think that much about winning, but you hope to be at least in the back half of the top-ten.”

There are other factors besides equipment and experience that make it tough to reach this standard.  Steven is not alone when he laments his ability to qualify, but there are other issues at hand that the average fan may not consider.

“We don’t run in-cockpit shock adjusters in the East Coast Series,” he says, “we must set our shocks for the entire feature.  At Grandview, I finally made some adjustments in the last 10 laps, and if I had done it earlier, I would have been better.”

Drevicki also admits that he can easily forget that this is now a tool at his disposal.

“One of the things you have to be able to do is keep up with the car and think about the adjustments you can make,” then with a grin, he adds, “I went and raced with the BOSS series, and we were three quarters of the way through the race, and it was like, oh shoot, I have shock adjusters.  You forget about that.  You are racing non-stop, and your muscle memory doesn’t include adjusting shocks.”

By the time the tour moved to the imposing Port Royal Speedway. Steven was clearly marking the week as a success.  If he needed further confirmation, he got it.  Once again, he captured his heat race and then backed it up with a strong sixth place run in the feature.  After the night was over, he lamented being bumped out of a top-five finish in the late stages of the event but could not hide his grin.  He knows it, and his peers know it.  He’s back.

There are so many things he can take away from Eastern Storm that will benefit him when he returns to the East Coast series.  Adjusting the shocks on the fly provides new data on how to set up his car in the future.

“You are always learning,” he says, “The level is always higher when these guys come east, and you put more pressure on yourself to make sure you are running at their level.”

There are no illusions about his future.  Drevicki, a Reading, Pa. native, is a successful project manager for Reading Crane and Equipment and serves in multiple roles for the firm.  His real job allows him to continue to race at a high level and still pay the bills. He realizes that during Eastern Storm, he competes against those who race for a living.

“My career path is different,” he says, “I don’t think I ever had thoughts of being a professional athlete.  It is everybody’s goal and dream to a point, but I never really thought about that, especially living here.  I enjoy what we get to do on the East Coast side and getting to run with the national series when they come here.  We also try to travel a few weekends a year.  That is what is feasible in my life right now and feasible for the crew.  It is a hobby but it’s something we have fun doing.  It has been challenging at times the last couple of years, and if it gets to the point where it is not fun, it is time to quit.”

As in all sports, racing is always more enjoyable when you win.  With his program pointed in the right direction, don’t look for Steven Drevicki to hang up the helmet anytime soon.