Cory Fostvedt doesn’t prefer the spotlight in his role as Jonathan Davenport’s crew chief at Double L Motorsports, but on Friday at Huset’s Speedway, he found himself in it as his team’s pit area was a little more crowded than normal.

Davenport’s victory Friday was far more meaningful beyond the fact it was his first at the third-mile oval and 82nd career Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series triumph that moved him solely into second on the tour’s all-time wins list. | RaceWire

Growing up 90 minutes from the sprint-car-designed track, Fostvedt, the Watertown, Minn., native, savored the victory and post-race celebration with friends and family, namely wife Ashley and two sons, 18-year-old Mason and 8-year-old Jackson.

“It's pretty special. Growing up around here, we never really raced here, just because this is a typical sprint car track and I've never been a sprint car guy,” Fostvedt said. “So, honestly, really didn't really race here at all. So, it's really cool that my family gets to be here. This is the second time they've been with me (this year). It'd be the third time (they’ve ever been with him at a race).”

What’s even sweeter was that Fostvedt simultaneously celebrated the victory on his birthday.

“So we're going to have some cake, aren't we, buddy?” the 41-year-old Fostvedt told his youngest son during a post-race interview.

Fostvedt’s voice isn’t one that’s widely expressed among the top-tier mechanics and crew chiefs in the Dirt Late Model pit area, and he’s fine with that. His leadership often comes by example, and he’s a crew chief that delegates responsibilities to his trusted road crew rather than feeling the need to have his hands on every part of the car.

But his quiet presence continues to grow ever-louder with his team’s success and steadiness — both on the track and off — since taking over as Davenport’s crew chief at the start of the 2023 season. Fostvedt’s 37 wins since the start of 2023 ranks third among nationally-touring crew chiefs behind only Bob Pierce’s 93 wins with son Bobby and the 57 wins from Anthony Burroughs, who’s worked with Ricky Thornton Jr., Hudson O’Neal and Brandon Overton in that span.

“It's always cool to win on special days like that. We don't get out this way often at all and he don't get to go home much, so it's cool to have his family here and get to be in a picture with us,” said Davenport, who said his relationship with Fostvedt has been a healthy one, not only for them as competitors, but in character as well.

“I think we've both grown as people and as teammates,” Davenport said. “He does a really good job. And, you know, it's like anything. The more we do it, the more we learn, and the more we learn each other. There's been times we've been at each other's throats, but, you know, that's growing pains, and that's basically living with somebody, you know? Yeah, so if you're around somebody enough, you're going to have a couple disagreements.”

Friday was only the third time Fostvedt’s family was able to join him at a race since he became crew chief in 2019 for Darrell Lanigan. The first was September 2022, when his family “flew out to Tennessee and surprised me” at the World of Outlaws event at Smoky Mountain Speedway in Maryville, Tenn., when he crew-chiefed for Jimmy Owens that year.

“I didn't even know they were coming,” said Fostvedt, who so happened to win that night as well with his family in attendance. “And so that was pretty cool. But, yeah, it's cool. I got a lot of friends and buddies that I've raced with and known for a while that are out here.”

Though he grew up roughly 100 miles from Huset’s Speedway, Fostvedt doesn’t have any recollection of visiting the track largely because of its sprint car fervency. Fostvedt and his father, Todd, were invested in Late Models and modifieds on the WISSOTA scene, especially with a few family friends who owned race teams.

They didn’t have one particular track they called home, but rather a handful, like Redwood Falls (Minn.) Speedway, KRA Speedway in Willmar, Minn., Madison (Minn.) Speedway, Brown County Speedway in Aberdeen, S.D. and Dakota State Fair Speedway in Huron, S.D.

His father often wrenched on his buddies’ race cars multiple nights throughout a regular summer week, which is how Fostvedt was introduced to the mechanics of the sport.

“Man, I don't even remember how old I was. I was probably fifth or sixth grade and nobody in my family really raced. My dad brought me to some of his buddies' shops that raced, and I just started hanging around,” Fostvedt said. “It was, ‘Hey, can I help?’ And they were like, ‘Yeah, go sweep the floor, and dismount this tire and mount this tire up.’ And then, before you know it, we were cutting bodies and hanging bodies and learning how to put engines in.”

Being raised in WISSOTA country, it wasn’t unusual that Fostvedt would have his hands on a Late Model and modified for four race nights a week. Sometimes he could have his hands on four cars a night when factoring in street stocks and B-mods. That kind of experience is what accelerated Fostvedt’s journey.

“There's a lot of racing up here that a lot of guys don't know. Where I was kind of from, you could race four nights a week within 100 miles of your home,” Fostvedt said. “And so like I said, when I first kind of started doing this, the guys that I was helping, they’d race two cars, a modified and a Late Model every night. And so you learned real quick about what you had to do.”

Fostvedt then studied High Performance Motorsports at University of Northwestern Ohio, graduating from there in 2005. He landed his first job out of college at DynoTune Speed & Performance in his hometown where he worked for nearly a decade.

In 2014, he was out of a job and had fallen onto hard times, so much that “I didn't have a job and I was to the point where I didn't know how I was going to make my next month's house payment.” Through a relationship developed with Robbie Allen, who at the time head-wrenched for Austin Hubbard for Maryland-based Dale Beitler Motorsports, he landed a job as a traveling crewman for Clint Bowyer Racing.

“And I've been doing it pretty much ever since,” said Fostvedt, whose first Late Model touring gig turned into the head-wrench role for Steve Francis.

After working for Clint Bowyer Racing through 2019, he started 2020’s Georgia-Florida Speedweeks as a general mechanic for Mike Marlar. That wasn't a long-term gig, so when the Covid-19 pandemic shut down the racing world that March, Fostvedt’s plans were reset again.

Once racing resumed, he latched on with Frank Heckenast Jr., overseeing a full DIRTcar Summer Nationals run that year for the Frankfort, Ill., driver. From 2021-22, he crew-chiefed for Owens, winning 16 features — seven on national tours — in those two years. At the end of 2022, he got a head start on his new role as crew chief at Double L Motorsports, shadowing Jason Durham as the Glasgow, Ky., head wrench showed Fostvedt the ropes.

Davenport remembers that transition period as being essential to his swift-starting 2023 season where the Double L team made the cross-country tow to Vado (N.M.) Speedway Park’s Wild West Shootout where they ripped off three straight wins to start the year.

“You know, obviously, there's a hundred ways of skin a cat, and there's a hundred ways to to do everything on these race cars,” Davenport said. “He brought some stuff over. He does stuff different than I do that's better, and I probably do stuff that he didn't know how to do that's better than the way he does it. So, it's all about learning each other, but luckily, in the transition process, he came with us to a couple races before Jason left. So that definitely help.

“And then we went out to New Mexico and kind of started out there and just kind of tried to mesh out there before the season really got rolling. But that was definitely good. And, you know, I feel like in ’23, he was, he didn't really open up a lot at that time because, you know, we had done so well in ’22, he was just trying to play the part.

“He was just trying to do what he thought was right during that time. He didn’t have a whole lot of suggestions. But then, as we grew together and knew one another, then we could, you know, he would definitely have a lot more input.”

Though general mechanic Tyler Bragg wasn’t on the team last season, he was part of Davenport’s monstrous $2 million campaign in 2022. So with Fostvedt now in his third year as crew chief, Davenport feels the core of his team, along with first-year tire specialist Cole Perine — a West Virginia-based racer himself — is among the strongest around.

It’s shown this year as Davenport has wins at a variety of tracks, from speedplants like Volusia Speedway Park in Barberville, Fla., to black-dirt bullrings like Huset’s and Fairbury (Ill.) Speedway.

“We know we can unload from the biggest half-mile to the smallest quarter-mile and still have speed. That definitely says a lot about our program,” Davenport said. “I mean, right now, there’s not an itch in it anywhere. Cole’s doing a great job with tires. Tyler’s doing a great job on the car; so is Cory. Everybody is working together really well. Obviously, when you’re out on this road trip, that’s when that box can get awful small in that truck. Everybody’s kept their head about them, we ain’t had no beef or no crosswords. That makes it very easy.”

Fostvedt is pleased with the synergy his team exhibits as well, a togetherness that’s able to problem solve, smooth over the harder times and make victories like Friday truly satisfying.

“Everybody gets along, everybody gels, everybody does a good job,” Fostvedt said. “Jonathan, obviously, he's kind of the leader of us and he kind of just tells us what he needs and we all talk together. We try not to micromanage. We have really good people here and if they need help, I'll offer it to them. Jonathan’s the same way. There's nothing that he can't do on a car and there's nothing that I can't do on a car. But like I said, I let Cole do what Cole's good at. I let Tyler do what Tyler's good at, and when they need a hand, I'll jump in and I'll give him my advice, and do whatever I can.

“Jonathan's the same way. So it works very, very well. So, and everybody at the end of the day, everybody just gets along very, very well. I trust them to do their job. They trust me to do my job. And everybody just does what they got to do. And whenever there's any mistake or error, we all own up to it and we learn from it and we just, nobody gets down on anybody, and we all just keep trucking.”