Miller crowned ASCS Frontier Region champion

By Lethbridge Herald on September 27, 2023.

By Justin Seward

Lethbridge Herald

Lethbridge sprint car driver Kelly Miller and his team from 2JR KDM Motorsports  ended off the season on a high note recently.

For the first time in his racing career, Miller won the Montana-based American Sprint Car Series (ASCS) Frontier Region Racing Championship with a total of 1,771 points.

“I think it was a big relief,” said Miller.

“Overall, we’ve competed competitively for quite a few years now and can check that one off the bucket list.  And prove that we’re a winning, capable team that can pull together a championship and win lots of races while doing it is pretty impressive. So I’m very proud of everything  that we’ve done. So pretty exciting.”

The championship was supposed to go last weekend but it got rained out at Big Sky Speedway in Billings, Mont., and instead Miller won off of his points.

Miller had six wins and 10 top 5 finishes throughout the racing season in Montana.

“We pulled together a solid start and all our homework in the winter time paid off when we rolled the car out,” said Miller.

“It actually had a lot of speed and … we massaged every corner of the car to make it the most optimal suspension, physics (and) everything driving in the same direction kind of thing. Our offseason produced  exactly what it needed to during the year.”

As a result, the team won four in a row right off the bat in Montana.

“So we showed some strength right there, right off the start and that kind of set the picture for the rest of the summer,” said Miller.

Another highlight came from the Skagit Speedway in Burlington, Wash., where they placed third  in a 360 sprint nationals that had top cars from the west coast.

They also placed second behind well-known sprint racer Dominic Snelzi in Banks, Ore.

His team did quite a few speed weeks, dirt cups and often travelled to Seattle to compete.

“Which we’ve started to do fairly well on the west coast with our team,” said Miller.

“We’ve always kind of  struggled out there. We just kind of lacked a little bit of experience. And we got to put the  miles on this year and we got  a few podiums out there and runner ups against some very stout competition.”

Miller is a second generation racer only to his father Don.