Local racing talent showed strong against the best of the IMCA Modifieds last month, as Aaron Turnbull headed down south to Arizona to compete.

Taking part in the 9 day, 4 stop Karl Performance Arizona Mod Tour, of which he was only able to fit in one stop due to his work schedule, he made it count. While his father, Ed Turnbull, and fellow local Kody Scholpp participated in the whole tour, he flew down and joined them for the final stop in Yuma, Arizona at the Cocopah Speedway and promptly left his mark.

Hitting the track on February 17th for day one in Yuma, Round 7 of the tour, Aaron placed 9th. Round 8 on the 18th, however, was a different story. Coming out of turn four of the opening lap of the feature, he overtook the only competitor in front of him and lead all 25 laps to take first under the checkered flag.

"The way the cars are, we don't have mirrors, so I had no idea what was going on behind me. But I guess there was about four or five guys that were kind of mixing it up for second. I had no idea if they were right on my bumper or if I had any kind of a lead, I was just driving as hard as I could, and it worked out good," Aaron said.

He then went on to place second in the final round on February 19th.

"I've never been to that track before, and every track's different, so the first day I was a little off. I had to do some adjusting to the car, but obviously got it a lot better for the second day."

"There was some really stiff competition there, probably the toughest guys in the United States were there, as far as IMCA Modifieds go. I wasn't really sure if I could fly in there and beat that type of competition, being that they've been running all week and getting their cars working better every night. It was pretty cool to show up and run like that," he added.

Aaron said that there would be lessons and thoughts to take away from the event to apply at home in the coming season.

"I kind of tried some new stuff on the car down there, and obviously it worked pretty good. Definitely helps the confidence level, and because of the way we ran down there, I think I'm going to go to a couple of the bigger races down south. There's one in Iowa we're looking at going to probably in May, and another one down in Arkansas in September or October."

Kody Scholpp's unit was seen on the dirt in every race. First stop of the tour was at the Arizona Speedway in Queen Creek, Ariz, where he placed 18th and 5th. Carrying on to Casa Grande, he made 14th in Round 3 while Ed Turnbull placed 22nd, and in Round 4 Scholpp placed 25th. Round 5 in Peoria was rained out, but in Round 6 Scholpp came away in 16th. Round 7 saw Scholpp battle his way back to 15th and Ed grab the 20th spot, as Aaron made his start in 9th. While the latter topped the pack in Round 8, Scholpp came in 25th, and in the final round, he found 14th as Aaron grabbed 2nd.