Jacob Derrick has tried to win a championship for the last 11 years.
This season, after some frustration and a few near misses, Derrick can happily say he is not just a champion, but the NASCAR Local Racing Series Powered by O’Reilly Auto Parts Division II national champion.
Racing limited late models at Langley and South Boston Speedways in Virginia, Derrick racked up 11 victories in 19 features to secure his first NASCAR national championship by four points ahead of Bowman Gray Stadium regular Zack Ore.
“We haven’t been able to win a championship on asphalt,” said the 17-year-old native of Hampton, Virginia. “My last championship came on dirt in go karts when I think I was like 7 or 8 years old. I’ve gotten so close so many times, but to be able to close one out is sweet.”
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Like so many others, Derrick has racing in his blood.
He grew up watching his father Ricky race grand stocks. As he got older, he began helping his dad in the shop before taking up racing himself.
“I just watched him. I would hang out with a lot of people and hung out at the race shop and whatnot. I got into it really early, and it’s all I’ve been doing,” Derrick said. “I started in go karts, moved up to bandos, ran bandos for a few years, Legend cars and then got into late models in 2023.”
Derrick’s original plan for this season was to chase the track championship in South Boston Speedway’s limited sportsman division while picking up the occasional race at his home track, Langley Speedway.
However, a crash during the second week of racing at South Boston derailed those plans. Unable to repair his car in time for the third South Boston race weekend, Derrick and his team were forced to reassess their schedule for the remainder of the year.
Oddly enough, that crash at South Boston Speedway proved to be the start of Derrick’s Division II championship run.
“We just decided to travel and run our home track, Langley, and then go to SoBo and try to get as many wins as we could,” Derrick explained. “I think it was about two months ago we saw the points and we were starting to get closer and closer.”
Ore, the 2024 Division II national champion, led the standings for much of the year on the strength of 10 wins at Bowman Gray Stadium. However, the Bowman Gray season ended in August. So when Ore’s season was over, Derrick still had a month of racing to make up ground in the battle for the Division II national championship.
Veteran Virginia late model racer Mark Wertz, who raced and worked with Derrick’s father and also owns Derrick’s car, has ample experience with the NASCAR Local Racing Series points system.
Wertz realized Derrick had a real shot at the Division II national championship and advised him to do everything in his power to claim it.
“(Wertz) is super familiar with how the points work, and he told us that we had a good shot at it and that we should go for it,” Derrick said. “We had no idea at the beginning of the season what we were going for. We were just trying to go try and win races.
“Mark Wertz has been a huge help for us. He’s taught me a lot, not just about driving, but working on (cars), too. He’s been a huge help, for sure.”
With Wertz pushing him, Derrick made a run at Ore and the national title in the last month of the year. On Aug. 20, Derrick was fifth in the Division II standings, 46 points behind Ore.
With exactly one month to make up 46 points on Ore, Derrick went to work. He competed in five features between Langley and South Boston, winning twice at Langley and never finishing worse than third.
Entering the South Boston finale on Sept. 13, Derrick had made up those 46 points and found himself tied with Ore at the top of the Division II standings.
He completed his championship effort with a runner-up finish that day at South Boston, which was just enough to secure the Division II crown.
“With Bowman Gray, they ended up a whole lot earlier. I felt like we were in the catbird seat,” Derrick said. “We were in striking range to be able to take the lead. One of my teammates, his dad, they had a whole points layout, so we knew where we had to go and where we had to finish.
“There was one night, there was a ton of rain coming down at Langley. We ended up having to start by points. I think we were fourth or so and only had 35 laps. That was a big race for us, and we ended up winning it. That put us tied with him and then we went to SoBo and finished second.”
With the Division II championship locked up, Derrick is ready to look toward the future. The plan for 2027 is to make the move to the ultra-competitive late model stock class, where he’ll battle drivers like Peyton Sellers, Woody Howard and Trevor Ward.
Derrick can do so with confidence knowing he’s proven his worth by capturing the NASCAR Local Racing Series Powered by O’Reilly Auto Parts Division II national championship.
“I know not many kids my age will get to do this,” Derrick said. “I’m very grateful for the opportunities I’ve gotten, for the people I’m around, like Mark Wertz, Chris Edwards and my dad. It’s our first championship on asphalt, and it’s a national one, at that.
“It doesn’t get much better than that.”