Jerrod and the team celebrates a win earlier this year in Jacksonville (Mark Funderburk Racing Photo)
(Bill W) October 19, 2016 – Sprint car legend Jerrod Hull is calling it a career. As his son Jett embarks on responsibilities in racing and baseball, the Sikeston, Missouri driver is quietly stepping away from sprint car racing. Jerrod wrapped things up last weekend at one of his favorite haunts with the MOWA series, Jacksonville Speedway.
Jerrod, who racked up four more wins this year, explained his decision. “I’m retiring,” he says. “I have everything for sale. My son Jett is at an age now where he’s involved not only in racing, but with baseball on a traveling team. We don’t want to miss out on that.”
It is a decision he’s pondered for some time. “I was going to retire a couple years ago, but we kept going,” says Jerrod. “I’m glad we did, but I just don’t enjoy it like I used to. It’s going to be tough, because you enjoy going to the races and competing. I’ll still have that with Jett, plus I don’t have the pressure. I’ll let him have that!”
Jerrod decided this a while ago. “I kind of knew it going into this year,” he says. “Last year, I had thoughts of retiring, but MOWA put up that extra money for the championship. We had missed a race earlier in the year, like we did this year. We were still able to win the points. I may have retired, but I wanted to run the Neal Tire deal for this year. I made up my mind a while ago that I was going to do this whether or not we won the points.”
Jerrod has dominated both the MASS and MOWA series over the last decade plus. He is the leading feature winner with both series, and is second on the Sprint Invaders all-time win list despite limited appearances. He was looking to end things with another MOWA win in Jacksonville. “We were hoping the last weekend would be better, but it wasn’t,” he says. “We qualified o.k. the first night, sixth quick. We ran second in the heat, and started seventh and ran seventh in the feature. We weren’t able to pass any cars and it was what it was.”
Things didn’t go any better Saturday. “We timed in 11th quick on Saturday,” says Jerrod. “We ran second in the heat after Ian Madsen hurt a motor. We were one spot out of the redraw, which has happened a lot in the last ten races. We started seventh and we just weren’t very good. We lost two positions right off the start and we didn’t get any better. We finished 13th.”
For the first time in series’ history, Jerrod had to settle for second in the standings. “We missed a race, so to still finish second was good for us,” he says. “Congratulations to Parker Price-Miller and his team. They did a good job. We didn’t do what we needed to do to win the championship, and he did.”
It’s seems like yesterday, that he broke into sprint cars with the All Stars and the NCRA, but it has been twenty years of winning already. “I kind of feel relieved,” says Jerrod. “The last two years has been so stressful. The older you get, the more you want to win. With retirement on your mind, you want to go out winning. Then you put that stress on yourself. When you don’t run well, that makes it tough to deal with. It’s the right time.”
Photo: Jerrod and the team celebrates a win earlier this year in Jacksonville (Mark Funderburk Racing Photo)
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