Kugel Overcomes Obstacles En Route To 2017 Championship

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"I would have called it quits if I didn't have people challenging me."

For one moment in October, it looked like Rocky Kugel's bid to put his name in the record books might just come up short. His path to the trophy had been thrown a roadblock courtesy of the weight rules, and also a product of throwing a new car together and no opportunity to scale it properly at the end of the year. He found himself starting 22nd on the grid at the RUSH Sportsman Modified finale at Lernerville Speedway, in need of a minor miracle. He would need to place on the podium, the higher the better, and he needed to do so within 20 laps.

Kugel did the best he could given the circumstances, and then some, displaying a confidence accumulated during a noteworthy career in cars of varying amounts of horsepower. He did it, not banging and beating his way to the front, and not simply pegging 15 restarts in a 20 lap race either. He simply raced through with precision and purpose, managing to take the RUSH Sportsman Modified Weekly Championship by one single point when all was said and done.

"It means a lot, it's the first championship I've ever won. We had a great year we had eight wins and to win it at the last race on the last lap was awesome. I was really pumped up, and to come from 22nd to second in 20 laps and to lose the race by only four or five inches, it couldn't have unfolded any better. We had run earlier at Mercer in the new car and they didn't have scales." Kugel said.  "And here I find out this is a lighter chassis so I came home after Friday and my brother stayed there with the car and I brought back 60 pounds of lead with me and just bolted all over the car. I just made one adjustment on Saturday and that was it.

It was a true high water mark, in a career that has seen him become a success no matter what the car, or where the tracks were. A career aided by the advice of his father Larry, but mostly has been something that he's managed to move along on his own. Kugel's been a "one man band" throughout most of his career and has taken lessons from where's he's been throughout the whole of his career to this point.

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The dream for Kugel, began on Saturday night's at a legendary facility in the Western, PA area.

"I used to go to Pennsylvania Motor Speedway to watch my dad race. I was born in 1976 so I would bet it wasn't long after that. I can remember to this day, I woke up early in the morning and Bud Kunkel had given me a shirt, he was friends with my dad. Bud was number eight, I remember that to this day. I remember watching my dad and Steve Baker, Davey Johnson, Buck Johnson and Jimmy Irvine who was one of my favorite drivers. I knew all those guys and they'd come up to you after a race. I was like five years old, and Steve Baker was also one of my favorite drivers and for my birthday he signed a picture and put it in a plaque and gave it to me. I've got some amazing memories of those days."

And so as the passion grew, the urge to race followed suit. Kugel's father, legendary EMod driver Larry Kugel had a great piece of advice at the ready when the time was right.

"My daughter was seven and she's 21 now, I'm not really sure how old I would have been, probably 25 or 26 somewhere in that area,  I started around 2004,   My dad had raced EMods and won in just about everything he raced.   And I would tell my dad, because I used to build his bodies and help him with his setup. I was in the garage all the time. I could change motors and a lot more, I was his crew guy basically.  I would always ask him to let me take what he was driving out for hot laps. And to this day, I'll never forget what my dad told me. "You'll never drive a race car until you get a job to where you can afford to own one of these race cars." So it kind of set my career path so I could have a job where I could save up some money and afford to race."

Kugel's first experience unearthed the fact that he liked to drive fast and also that he wasn't satisfied to simply drive around and compete, two themes that have remained concurrent throughout his career.

"Actually, the first car I bought, well actually we built it.  We were partners with Kevin Greene on a Street Stock car, more like a Hobby Stock car and we actually built it from the ground up. We went and bought an old Monte Carlo and we raced a half a year with it and it just wasn't fun. It was like driving your car down the street. So I went to Scott Bidwell and he had an Emod he was selling and he gave me a great deal on it and I brought it home and had Billy Kell build me a 408 small block Chevy to put in it and I was off and running."

Jobs and racing don't always mix. And for Kugel, getting the right set of circumstances was important to both his family and his racing. A twist of fate would alter the course of his racing education just a few years into his driving career and it would show him a completely different world than could be found in his familiar surroundings in Ohio and Western, PA. He found himself in the middle of the legendary Indiana dirt racing scene where he befriended a legendary driver while also managing to master a completely different car at the same time.

"The very first time out, I was at Muskingum County Speedway and I also ran Wayne County Speedway too and the following year I ran there again and won their 50th anniversary bash. It was $2,000 to win and everybody who was anybody was there and my dad actually ran third. After that I moved to Indiana for a job which payed quite a lot. I got to race at Lawrenceburg, Tri-City (IL), Brownstown and Bloomington too. It was kind of like being in dirt track heaven. I actually won at Lawrenceburg and Bloomington. It was a great time. I can remember letting John Gill use my trailer and whenever I wasn't racing I would crew chief for him. I made a lot of friends in Indiana and even got to work at Masterbuilt Race Cars for a little bit. I became friends with a lot of the guys there and eventually sold my Emod and started Crate Late Model racing, got a better job and wound up back in the area again."Out of everything I've driven, I'd say Crate Late Models are my favorite. They've gotten out of hand now, you need so much money to run up front. When they first started around here it wasn't bad, everybody was pretty equal, you still had Pegher and Blair and guys like that who were ahead of the game but I could still beat them once in a while.

Kugel then found himself with a new start in the RUSH Sportsman Modifieds in 2014, and the experience he took from other cars and tracks made him an instant success as both he and Greg Martin lead the fledgling first year sanction in terms of competition. Kugel found himself winning races with as much success as anything he'd driven to that point.

"I've raced a lot of race tracks. I've raced all over Kentucky and Indiana and these are slick race tracks out there. Brownstown Speedway was probably the slickest track I've ever raced at, you had to keep the car underneath you or you're not going to be fast. I think I'd learned that early on and that's how I think I came out of the box so smooth in the RUSH Mods. I was watching these guys over driving the car going into the corner and doing crazy things. My dad always told me that sometimes if you're slower, you're faster so I always have that in the back of my head. You just can't bury it into a corner when it's slick and expect to come off. You've got to give up one to have the other. I've watched a lot of guys never lift coming off the back stretch and I'm just driving underneath them completely out of  the gas. In these cars if you spin the tires or break them loose or get the car sideways it takes a whole lap and a half to get it going again, there's only 350 horsepower. So I think racing the Crate Late Model over the years taught me a lot. You just can't get the car out of shape."

Overcoming challenges has been a mantra for Kugel and it keeps his passion stoked. His work weeks are long, but he finds time to maintain the work, life and family balance, even if that means the results take a back seat to make room now and then.

"I have a garage connected to my house and it's a full race shop. It's usually just me working on the car. I work four-12 hour days during the week and on the day's off it's a 40 hour a week job with the car. Sometimes though, I'll spend some times with the family and make it a 10 hour week, It might mean that the result isn't there that week that I'm looking for, but it's important to me to be able to spend time with them, and my wife Shanna and children Ashley and Karen, their support is amazing.  My car probably looks like the ugliest out there, it's beat up. The last car I finished the year with was a new chassis that I had put together myself in about three days which ended up being three cars put into one basically, complete with mismatched colors."

The challenges for Kugel also extend to other areas of racing. The 2017 championship for Kugel was both challenging and frustrating. Challenging due to the fact that the RUSH Sportsman Modified division has seen a dramatic influx of new cars and has seen the talent level grow by leaps and bounds since it's beginning, meaning Kugel would have to overcome  and out drive young hotshoes such as Kole Holden, Chas Wolbert Chelsie Kriegisch, Brandon and Nick Ritchey and Kyle Martell, a group that is tremendously talented and keeps getting better every year. And frustrating due to a disqualification for failure to report to the tech area immediately after a race, and repeated protests calling for further inspections from his competitors. Kugel has been found right during the protests and subsequent tear downs, and they only seem to make him hungrier to win.  However, Kugel admits that the tech provided by RUSH has done a very good job overall and he simply works through the frustration that it can cause sometimes.

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"As far as the tech goes, they do a great job. Without tech, you don't have this series because you can have guys come in with illegal motors, carbs, headers and such. There's some stuff on some of the cars that probably are illegal, I've seen it when some of the cars have been in my garage that I've worked on, but on the things that matter most, the tech has been awesome, especially on the things that can really give somebody an advantage. Some of the challenges were frustrating. I heard some people saying I would take the motor out every race if I knew tech would be there or not." Kugel said with a chuckle. " I really only have one motor so there's that. It's funny, I've even heard some say that I had a fuel cell inside my fuel cell that was running nitrous. These people were serious too. I'm probably the most legal car out there because I get teched the most."

So what does the future hold for Kugel. It's up in the air at this point. He races for the love of it, and is still mindful of the time tested formula of racing what a driver can afford to at that time, without having to beg, borrow and promise to drive at a level above. Kugel would like to move up into a Big Block Modified at some point, but only if it makes economic sense to do so.

"I threw around the Big Block Modified possibility for 2018 earlier, but I'm a poor guy basically doing this out of my own pocket. I don't have $40,000 to go buy a motor and if I pop one, I'm done. I've been trying to accumulate some sponsorship money and winning this championship helps out a little bit. The car I have right now would be a good car, I wouldn't be scared of putting a big block in it and going racing with the big dogs. I just can't swing it financially right now. But, the only thing holding me back right now...is the funds."

No matter what he drives or where in 2018, one thing is clear. Kugel can be a polarizing figure and will continue to be so. It's part of who he is and what he does and the challenges keep him coming back to the track. When he unloads, he's coming to win and makes no apologies for it.

"The challenge of driving to the front, the challenge of the changing track conditions, the challenge of getting the car setup to be better than it was. A lot of poeple would say it' the camaradarie of the race track, but that's not me. I'm not there to make friends, I'm there to win the race. A lot of people don't like me because I will talk to you or will help you out if I can see that you you're doing something wrong or something that could get somebody hurt. I might help somebody with a setup or an idea from time to time. But I'm prepared to win a race. I love driving the cars, I love winning and I love trying to get the car better, and that's what really keeps me coming back to the track."

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