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After a 5-Year Layoff, 2009 Sportsman Derby Champ Hoover is Back in Contention at Five Flags

By Chuck Corder

The time seemed right for Billy Hoover.

A former Sportsman Snowball Derby champion, Hoover hadn’t run a full slate of races at Five Flags Speedway since that memorable year.

But feeling like his house was in as good of order as it’ll ever be, Hoover decided to return to racing full-time this year.

He’s picked up where he left off.

While he’s still searching for his first win since 2009, Hoover boasts a runner-up and fifth-place finish through three races and sits third in the Beef “O� Brady’s Sportsman class points standings coming into Friday night.

“All the guys are really working hard, I’m telling you,� Hoover said of the series level of talent. “The competition has been pretty intense. Everybody wants to poke their chests out a little bit. It gets pretty aggressive, so I’ve gotta stay up on the wheel.�

The Allen Turner Pro Late Models, Faith Chapel Super Stocks and Butler U-Pull-It Bombers join the festivities when the gates open at 4 p.m. Friday.

Admission is $15 for adults; $12 for seniors, students and military; $5 for children ages 6 to 11; and free for kids under 6.

It wasn’t many moons ago that Hoover had the car to beat at Five Flags.

A multiple-feature winner, Hoover was a perennial favorite to go home with the checkered flag every Friday night he unloaded.

Hoover soared so high that in 2009 he stood on the mountain top after fulfilling a lifelong dream of capturing the Derby.

“I fell in love with Five Flags the first time I came here when I was 14,� the 42 year old said.

But just as Hoover was busy making racing plans, life happened.

The same year he won the Derby, the 20-year veteran of Pensacola’s high banks had a daughter and business, literally, began picking up for his many ventures.

“I had to sacrifice the personal stuff, and racing is all I do,� Hoover said.

Cole Hoover is 5 years old now, and her father found it more and more difficult to resist scratching the itch to race.

Racing brings balance to Billy Hoover’s life.

“I’m a businessman first, but for my life to complete, I need to be in a seat,� he said.

His many platforms of entrepreneurships include a towing business, owning and operating Southern Raceway — the dirt track in Milton — and cooking and selling boiled peanuts to both fans at Five Flags and around the southeast.

Hoover has run Southern for seven seasons now despite admittedly being “terrible on dirt. It’s just not for me. I have no talent for it, at all.�

Instead, he focuses his attention to the famed half-mile asphalt oval.

Hoover would love to cap off his return to Five Flags at the end of the season triumphantly.

While he has finished second in the points five times, a track championship remains one of the few feats that has eluded Hoover in two decades of racing.

“I’ve won everything else,� he said. “It’d be the closer on my career and I’d probably quit if I won it.�

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