ZANE DEVILBISS CROWNED 2010 IMCA NATIONAL CHAMPION!
Story by: Bill Martin

VINTON, Iowa (Oct. 1) – Two wins on the final weekend of the 2010 race season made Zane DeVilbiss IMCA’s national Modified champion.

DeVilbiss won Sept. 24 and Sept. 25 features at Utah’s Desert Thunder Raceway. The sweep gave him the track title and another 24 bonus points – he’d gotten the same bonus by winning the EQ Cylinder Heads Wild West Tour – allowed the Farmington, N.M., driver to leapfrog Keith White of Little River Academy, Texas, and David Murray Jr. of Oberlin, Kan., into the top spot.

The first IMCA national champion from New Mexico in any division, DeVilbiss earns a $10,000 share of the divisional point fund, plus another $2,500 for winning the ButlerBuilt Western Region title, and numerous contingency awards.

His 21 feature wins came in five states, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada and Utah. With opportunities to race for points closer to home few and far between, he towed more than 50,000 miles in racing elsewhere around the region.

“We started off running for Wild West Tour points, then regional points,” said DeVilbiss, 23 years old and in his fourth Modified season. “It went down to the wire and a lot of things had to go right for us the last weekend of the tour and again the last weekend at Desert Thunder, but we pulled it off.”

DeVilbiss is the second driver from the Western Region to win IMCA’s national Modified title. Scott Pounds of Bakersfield, Calif., was the first, in 1994.

A maximum of 24 bonus points, based on average car counts, were awarded for each of as many as two local track championships, or for one track and for one special series, in determining IMCA national and regional standings. White had 35 bonus points, Murray 34.