In a perfect world, Gregg Satterlee would probably like to race more than 11 times before the month of June.

What he wouldn’t change, though, is the traveling dynamic of his family-owned team and how they’ve based their race schedule around events within a couple hours from Satterlee’s Indiana, Pa., home base. | RaceWire

A former preliminary winner at both the Dream and World 100 with a stout half-mile program to boot, the former Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series campaigner knows full well he could’ve made some noise at Eldora Speedway’s Dream XXXI in Rossburg, Ohio, over the weekend.

But for the third year in a row, Satterlee skipped the lucrative Big E event in favor of Selinsgrove Ford Appalachian Mountain Speedweek because racing around home has suited him so well — on and off the racetrack so he’s around his wife Kelsey and 7-year-old daughter Prudence more.

Like on Saturday when he stormed to victory in the $5,000-to-win miniseries opener at Port Royal Speedway from the eighth starting spot, vying for another Speedweek title is right up his wheelhouse.

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“Everyone likes going to Eldora. They’re a lot of fun to race. But this deal, (series organizer) Jim (Bernheisel) has all this extra money at tracks close to home, tracks I like racing at, tracks I have success at,” said Satterlee, who jumps out to a 24-point lead in the miniseries standings. “It just makes the most sense for me to be here. It’s how we’ve been racing. I’d love for it to not overlap Eldora and I could have went this weekend, but it’s good to be here and two hours from home. A little bit of money in our pocket, too.”

In his miniseries title run last year, Satterlee collected $24,950 in earnings between feature purses and the $5,000 champion’s share for winning the point fund.

Granted, there’s opportunity to pocket more cash during Eldora’s Dream Week, but there’s enough money to be won on the Bernheisel-run minitour to keep Satterlee plenty satisfied. He’s also the man to beat virtually anywhere he competes in Pennsylvania, which was definitely the case Saturday.

Satterlee marched right to the front of Saturday’s miniseries field, which started the night with a 41-car roster, and flipped the script of Trever Feathers’s strong outing, snatching the lead on lap 22 of 35 from the Winchester, Va., driver and never looking back.

While Feathers, the night’s fast qualifier, battled tightness as the feature wore on, Satterlee’s Rocket Chassis “got a little better every time we went on the track.” And even though “we weren’t as good as we wanted to be,” Satterlee still took care of business.

Satterlee stalked Feathers for five laps before pouncing while entering turn one on lap 22. Three laps before that, Feathers and Satterlee nearly got together when the Virginian brushed the turn four wall. Feathers approached Satterlee after the feature and apologized for the testy moment.

“I knew what you had to do to get the lead and I knew what I had to do to save the lead,” Feathers told Satterlee through a laugh.

“I hung it left and keep it wide open,” said Satterlee, describing how he reacted to Feathers’s slight misstep off the turn four wall.

The biggest obstacle for Satterlee, a top-five finisher twice on the Lucas Oil Series earlier this April, wasn’t needing to pass Feathers clean, nor was it starting outside the first few rows. It’s that he fielded a car he hadn’t raced since last July coupled with trying to figure out the right setup to accompany the American Racer-compound tires.

American Racer is the exclusive tire provider of Appalachian Speedweek in 2025, the brand of tire Satterlee hasn’t raced since 2023.

“Running these different tires, we didn’t know what to expect,” Satterlee said. “We kind of just went off our normal setup and we weren’t as good we would’ve liked.”

Satterlee missed the top-three time trial dash by 0.047 seconds (the top-three from each qualifying group re-qualify to determine the top-six starting spots) as his lap of 18.372 seconds fell short of Trevor Collins’s 18.325.

In a way, not advancing to the miniseries time trial dash helped Satterlee because while racing an eight-lap heat race “we got a better feel for what our car was doing or not doing.”

“We were pretty good in the feature. I don’t know if we were as balanced as what we need to be, but we made a lot of gains,” Satterlee said. “It was a good night. The car got more and more maneuverable, which, when you race and start back a couple rows, we did get better.”

Early cautions fell Satterlee’s way, too. Without Jason Covert’s flat tire that thwarted him out of third on lap five, Satterlee isn’t sure he would’ve been able to make his win happen. Satterlee was fifth before the first stoppage, about four seconds behind Feathers.

“Had that not happened, I don’t know,” Satterlee of Covert’s caution. “When we took off, I didn’t feel like I was making a lot of gains on guys. I had to adjust what I was doing and where I was doing it, and got better as the race progressed.”

Once Covert fell out of the race, he inherited fourth. Three laps later, he moved into third and two laps after that on lap 10, he powered into second. It took him roughly eight laps to erase Feathers’s two-second lead. But once he did, it was only a matter of time until he made his race-winning move.

“When I got to second, I could really learn what to do with the car following Trever,” Satterlee said. “When I caught him, I knew I was getting better. When I didn’t, I knew I needed to do something different. That’s always an advantage, when your car is good, you can move around and make time on the guy in front of you. You know, when you get to him, where you need to be.”

Satterlee also debuted a new paint scheme Saturday, which still features a white base with black graphics, but instead of his No. 22 featuring white lettering with a blue and black outline, the lettering is black with a white outline.

“Just something different. We’ve had that other paint scheme now for a number of years, and it was time,” Satterlee said. “Just change it up. It’s always fun to put a new look on it and get some different schemes for our T-shirts.”

Saturday’s event at Port Royal started a nine-race stretch for Satterlee over the next 15 days. Six of those races are Appalachian Speedweek events, and it would’ve been eight if not for rainouts Friday and Sunday at Clinton County Speedway in Mill Hall, Pa., and Hagerstown (Md.) Speedway.

The other three are June 19-21’s Lucas Oil-sanctioned Firecracker 100 at Lernerville Speedway in Sarver, Pa. Satterlee’s anticipates he and his team of crew chief Robbie Allen and Drew Walters to come into their stride as the summer months near.

“Busy schedule coming up, but man, we haven’t raced any,” Satterlee said. “We’ve only raced like 10 times. We’ll get her ramped up here and get some consistency running, and go from there.”