After taking a year off and switching divisions, Zach Jung is back on the dirt track, this time racing Midwest Mods.

The Aberdeen native took a year break from racing to pursue a higher level education, but decided to come back to the sport after being away from it for a year.

“Me and my buddy, we’ve always been fascinated with heavy rigs, trucking equipment, so I ended up going to Watertown, Lake Area Tech. And then after that, a year later, it wasn’t for me, so I dropped out and came back,” Jung said. “Schooling was never for me, but I thought I’d give that a try. We’d go to the races in Watertown, and I’d watch in Watertown, and it was just kind of a tease sitting there and watching when I knew I had a car at home that I could race.”

He initially got into the sport because of his dad who used to race derby. He decided to choose a little bit of a safer route.

“Well, my dad, he raced. He raced many years. He raced in the derby and all that. One day he gave me an option. I could either race cars or derby cars and here we are racing cars,” Jung said. “I felt it’s more logical. If you’re gonna spend money on a car like that, you race in circles instead of wrecking it.”

Jung actually started his career racing Super Stock cars before making two division switches.

“When I was 15, I was in a super stock. We had a deal come up, and I switched to modified and I raced them for a couple of years,” Jung said. “One of our buddies wanted to switch classes and race the modified before he quit racing completely, so we traded modified for the Midwest mod.”

With experience in three different divisions, the Midwest Mods are beginning to grow on Jung this season.

“I wanna say Modified, but I’m starting to come around on the Midwest mods,” said Jung when asked about his favorite division to race in. “The modifieds are a little quicker than the Midwest Mods are.”

Competing in his first year in the Midwest Mod division, Jung is performing better than he was expecting to.

“I think it’s definitely going better than I thought it was going to. Modifieds, you have all that power to help get the car around,” Jung said. “I run a little crate motor, so I don’t have as much power as anyone else would running a Midwest Mod right now, so it’s definitely a learning curve.”

Even though the cars are different, Jung has a similar approach in both divisions which has helped him have a successful start to the season.

“I guess I kind of just do the same thing. There’s a couple things I gotta do different, but this year especially, I got a pretty good start to the season,” Jung said. “As long as I keep being consistent, it should be a pretty good season at the end of it.”

Heading into this past weekend, Jung was sitting seventh in points, and happy with his placing, but knows he has a couple more spots to climb.

“I’m definitely happy with it right now, but I know I’m gonna do better this year,” Jung said. “I don’t think I’ll finish in seventh. I’m shooting for a top five. That was my goal coming into it.”

And in order to achieve that goal, Jung knows that he will have to have consistent races.

“Consistency is a big thing. I mean, if you start your heat race and you finish good in your heat, you’re gonna finish good in your feature,” Jung said. “And if you finish good in your feature, you will have better points. As long as you finish your race, don’t get a DNF (did not finish), you won’t ever drop in points.”

Nothing could fill the thrill of being behind the wheel for Jung, and with many more years ahead of him, the Aberdeen native knows he will have chances to make more memories.

“I just like the rush of being behind the wheel, really,” Jung said. “I don’t think I’ve been racing long enough for any funny stories, so I’ll just leave it at that.”