One of the best drivers in this area to ever strap into a Super Late Model is Rodney Franklin. Better known as "The Virginia Leadfoot", the Cross Junction, Virginia, resident's career spanned from the 1970s through the early 2000s before his retirement from competition.
Whether it was behind the wheel of his family's No. 33 or Creed Calton's No.01, you could be sure to be in for a treat when Franklin took to the track.
Franklin made a habit of parking his car in Victory Lane throughout his racing career. Franklin is ranked fifth among local SLM superstars with 181 feature wins and has well over 300 total victories in his career. The 2004 National Dirt Late Model Hall of Fame inductee is second on the all-time wins list at Hagerstown Speedway, taking home 117 checkered flags.
Franklin shined at big races against national competition, especially at Hagerstown. He won the first ever STARS sanctioned race held there in 1984. He beat the STARS competition twice for the Free State National 100 from 1984-85, and he won the prestigious Conococheague 100 in 1985.
Franklin also scored victories in six Bowers/Durham Memorial races. He was a four-time Hub City 150 winner, and a three-time winner each in the Johnny Roberts, Stanley Schetrompf and Ronnie McBee Memorial races.
My personal favorite Rodney Franklin win happened in 1998 at Hagerstown in the Hav-A-Tampa 100. Running in third place, he was trailing national superstars Scott Bloomquist and Billy Moyer with just 10 laps remaining. Somehow, Franklin had saved his tires long enough to make a banzai-like run over those final laps. First, he passed Moyer, then Bloomquist for the lead with just a couple of laps to go in scoring a very popular win among the large crowd at Hagerstown.
Franklin even tested the NASCAR water in his illustrious career. He made a single start in the Busch Grand National Series in 1990 at New Hampshire International Speedway. Qualifying 26th in the 46-car starting field, Franklin only completed 90 laps of the 300 lap race when engine woes ended his day with a 45th-place result.
Franklin was very good at every track he raced at. Besides his success at Hagerstown, he was pretty darn good at Winchester Speedway, too. He won the Winchester 200 twice. He held the quickest track lap time record there for several years. Franklin said in a magazine interview once that he loved racing at Winchester, and even though it was closer to his home, he preferred Hagerstown because of the speed.
Franklin also won local races at Williams Grove, Bedford and Lincoln Speedway, and he was a winner on the road as well, taking wins in Florida and Ohio. He was twice a track champion at Hagerstown in 1997 and 1998.
Throughout his career, Franklin also had driving stints for the Staub Brothers, the Staley's, Raye Vest and Bobby Allen. The Staub Brothers No. 13 car in 1983 was one of the fastest and wildest looking SLM cars to hit the track, back when the cars were known as "wedges." It was one of my all-time favorite race cars.
But he is best known for driving those orange and white No. 33 Franklin Oval Research and the red and yellow Calton Truck Service No. 01 machines. Those two numbers are most associated with Franklin and his many victories.
Add to that he was running the STARS series pretty regularly in the early days, finished 2nd at the World 100, and finished 3rd at the DTWC.
I like Scott Rhodes, Express Man but he doesn't even sniff the top 10 of Pennsylvania's best dirt late model drivers.
Just off the top of my head Wearing Sr., Herb Scott, Clate Husted, Lynn Geisler, Gary Stuhler, Rick Eckert, Chub Frank, Davey Johnson, Ed Feree, Charlie Cragen, etc.......
