Dragon, Avery Motorsports Team For 2011 ACT Campaign

MILTON, Vt. -- Brent Dragon and Avery Motorsports are will join forces to run for the ACT Late Model Tour championship in 2011, Dragon Motorsports announced Monday.

"We're pretty excited about it," said Dragon, who owns more career ACT starts than any driver in series history and is fourth on the series' all-time win list. "This is really going to be a good deal for all of us."

Dragon is a three-time ACT championship runner-up. The multi-time Airborne Speedway track champion owns nine career Tour victories, and he's won some of the northeast's most prestigious Late Model races -- including the Milk Bowl at Thunder Road International Speedbowl and the Fall Foliage 300 at Airborne.

Last season, Dragon finished third in the final ACT standings while running the full schedule with his own Dragon Motorsports team. He had planned on scaling down to a partial schedule for the coming year before working out a deal with Donald Avery and son David Avery over the weekend.

Dragon will drive an Avery Motorsports car in a minimum of seven Late Model events in 2011, and he will field his own new car in the remaining races on the schedule. Both cars are Distance Racing cars out of the stable of noted car builder Jeff Taylor, and both will carry the No. 55vt with sponsorship from Furniture World of VT, Beverage Mart and Charlesbois Freightliner.

"The biggest thing is that this is going to help in terms of being more prepared going to the race track," Dragon said. "It just gives us all more time to get each car more ready during the week leading up to races."

The Averys have committed to fielding their car for Dragon in the ACT season opener at Lee USA Speedway on April 17, as well as at Thunder Road's Merchants Bank 150 in May. The car will also hit the track for ACT races at Oxford Plains Speedway and White Mountain Motorsports Park, the track owned by the Avery family. It will also compete at the Labor Day Classic 200 at Thunder Road and the Milk Bowl.

They will also run the 2011 TD Bank Oxford 250 together.

Dragon said the car might also appear in other events as the schedule allows.

"It really was their choice (on the races)," said Dragon, who had been in discussions with the Averys for more than a month. "Those were the races they wanted to run, and most of them are Sunday races that don't conflict with them running their events on Saturday nights at White Mountain."

The two teams first came together in last summer's Oxford 250, when the Averys asked Dragon to practice the No. 10 Chevrolet on the Saturday before the race while regular driver Ben Rowe was competing in an event in Canada.

"I was really impressed with the car," said Dragon, who finished fourth in the 250 one year after winning the pole for the event. "I only ran about 10 laps in it, but it was good. It was faster than my own car."

Avery Motorsports has four career ACT wins. Each of those victories came in 2006 with Rowe as the driver, including a string of three straight victories in the first half of the season.