2025 Appalachian Mountain LM Speedweek at Port Royal Speedway

Trever Feathers Making App. Speedweek Title Run As Tyler Emory's Sub

Trever Feathers is going for the Appalachian Mountain Speedweek title aboard the Cameron-Mann Racing No. 72.

Jun 7, 2025 by Kyle McFadden

Editor's note: This article first appeared on DirtonDirt on April 30 and is being rerun ahead of June 7-15's Appalachian Mountain Speedweek.

Trever Feathers appeared poised April 26 at Hagerstown Speedway to join only Josh Rice and Gregg Satterlee as the lone regionally based drivers to score top-five finishes on the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series to that point of the season.

From the 18th-starting spot, the Winchester, Va., driver passed Jonathan Davenport, Devin Moran and Hudson O’Neal, among others, to catch Tyler Erb and Carson Ferguson in the battle for sixth by lap 19.

But on lap 20, the impressive run for Feathers took a nosedive as he tangled with Ferguson exiting turn four. The 32-year-old couldn’t continue in his bittersweet 20th-place finish.

“I knew I was better than the No. 93. He was all over the place, didn’t know which line he wanted to be in,” Feathers said in April. “He came down the backstretch, sent it off in there middle-top, and I rolled it off in there, too. I was a touch free on entry, but I could hook real hard in the center.

“He was trying to cross real hard from the outside guardrail to the inside guardrail, and I was there. It was one of those racing things. It’s part of it. As I said, I was going free as the race was going. It’s just racing.”

If anything, April’s run is a confidence-booster for Feathers, whose 2025 won’t lack opportunities in the biggest events the Mid-Atlantic has to offer.

Feathers plans to contest more than 50 races this year in his career-busiest schedule split between his family-owned No. 27 Team Zero Race Car by Shane McDowell and Cameron-Mann Racing No. 72 Rocket Chassis that Tyler Emory drove to the 2023 Appalachian Mountain Speedweek title.

Atop his pursuits are title chases on the Jim Bernheisel-promoted minitours, the eight-race Appalachian Speedweek from June 7-15 and the inaugural 10-race Fall Clash from Aug. 29-Nov. 1 across eight tracks.

Undergoing extensive stem cell therapy on his lower back in late March, a procedure that’ll sideline him for the entire 2025 season, the 32-year-old Emory of King George, Va., picked Feathers as caretaker for the ride fielded by Pete Cameron and Roland Mann, Emory’s father-in-law.

“We’ve been working on it, getting better each time we’ve raced it,” Feathers said. “It’s quite busy. I’ve always wanted to (travel more) and race as much as possible. They have really good stuff and fast cars. We showed the last time at (Pennsylvania’s) Port Royal (Speedway on April 19) we are really good in their car. We just messed up in the feature and got too tight.”

Emory, who spent the entire last week of March visiting seven doctors for his ailing back across San Diego, Calif., and Tijuana, Mexico, has been out of the driver’s seat since June 7’s 12th-place finish at Eriez Speedway in Hammett, Pa., on the Jay’s Automotive United Late Model Series.

The Cameron-Mann Racing driver has dealt with significant back pain since December 2023 and raced the first half of 2024 through the ailment. Competing became untenable during June 8’s Appalachian Speedweek second-round event at Port Royal when a slimy part of the racetrack shot Emory’s car off the racing groove into the turn-three outside wall while leading his heat race. The hit, which was virtually head-on, “was the hardest wreck I’ve seen in a long time,” Feathers said.

Tyler Emory's Miniseries Title Defense Takes Hard Hit At Port Royal

"It pushed the motor back in that car. He couldn’t have squared up on one of the fenceposts better than what he did,” Feathers added. “We’re working with him trying to not only get me better, but get his cars a little better for me and him.”

Before the wreck, Emory started his Appalachian Speedweek title defense by winning June 7’s miniseries opener at Clinton County Speedway in Mill Hall, Pa.

Feathers, of course, is well aware how stout Emory’s race machine is. It’s the same ride that Emory to DirtonDirt Breakout Drivers of the Year honors in 2023. Before Emory took over the No. 72 full-time in 2023, Jason Covert contended for wins regularly with Cameron-Mann Racing.

An adjustment for Feathers will be Rocket Chassis, which he’s never raced in his career until joining the Cameron-Mann team for the interim.

“They’re really good cars,” said Feathers, who’s previously raced MasterSbilt, Barry Wright Race Cars and most recently Team Zero Race Cars. “Of course, I want to race. They’re good people and I want to be around them. Just trying to race as much as possible with them and being efficiently and smart where they’re not spending a ton of money to do it.”

Feathers hopes some of the gains he’s recently made setup-wise on his Team Zero Race Car in April at Hagerstown can translate to his success with the Cameron-Mann team’s Rocket Chassis program.

Last year, he failed to qualify for the pair of Lucas Oil features he entered — April at Georgetown and August at Port Royal — so April’s performance at Hagerstown pleases him.

“I felt like as long as we were having cautions, I could fire off real good. After two or three laps, I got real free on entry,” Feathers said. “We run American Racers, and this is the first race on Hoosiers since the Lucas Oil race at Port Royal last (August), and we absolutely completely sucked. We’re trying to dial this car in. It’s been kinda wishy-washy. We’ve been switching back and forth with the tires, and we can’t really lock a setup down. But I feel like we’ve had a better car than what we’ve had here in a while.”

Racing consistently in a Super Late Model this summer figures to benefit Feathers also. Last year, he trimmed back his open-competition engine races for budgetary reasons and simply because the lack of high-profile Super events in the Northeast. He did win a pair of Super events at Winchester (Va.) Speedway on Aug. 17 and Sept. 7.

“It shows our area needs to race more so we can run with these guys,” Feathers said, referring to being more competitive at nationally touring events.

What Feathers is looking forward to this year is battling more with Satterlee’s No. 22 and Dirt Late Model Hall of Famer Rick Eckert’s No. 24 for wins. Racing against the former nationally touring drivers only makes him better.

“We’re lucky, and it’s kind of a curse, to race with Satterlee and Eckert every weekend,” Feathers said. “It sucks because we don’t win the races we could or probably used to, but they make us so much better every week. People call Eckert all sorts of names and they say Satterlee is whatever, but they honestly make us better every time we hit the racetrack.

“If I’m going to get my ass kicked, I want it to be from the No. 22 or the No. 24. It makes me better to try and get a better understanding for these cars because they change every freaking week. I base myself off of that. When I came over here last year (at Hagerstown), Satterlee kicked our ass. I think it was the race in August. I ran second, but I couldn’t see him. It was in this car. We’re getting better. I don’t know if I had Satterlee’s speed there in the feature (April at Hagerstown), but we had some decent speed.”