There were 29 days between Jake Crum’s victory in the SMART Modified Tour race at Franklin County Speedway (VA) and wife Annabeth Crum’s victory in the Carolina Crate Modified Series race at Hickory Motor Speedway (NC) on Saturday night.
It was all a story that was 25 years in the making though.
This husband and wife team is rooted back to when they were boths kids racing karts. Jake was a young racer who relocated from Tennessee to Statesville, North Carolina at a young age. Annabeth was a native of Taylorsville, North Carolina; just over a county line. They ended up both at the track together and once they crossed those paths, they’ve stuck together.
Sometimes that has been through adversity. Sometimes that has been in victory lane. This past month, it’s been all of the second situation. The only question is which Crum is the winning driver and which is the supportive spouse.
“Now we know it’s my turn,” laughed Annabeth in victory lane at Hickory on Saturday night.
After the trophies were handed out and the photos were taken, she reflected back on the journey that got them there.
“We grew up racing,” said Annabeth. “That’s how we met. I’ve (almost) known Jake my whole life. We’ve raced go-karts together at six years old.”
Yet while racing has been life for the Crum family, it has not always been a fairy tale.
“Racing is everything to us,” said Annabeth. “I feel like we have gone from the lowest of lows over the past few years to the highest of highs over the last couple of weeks.”
Changing that bad to good took both hard work and introspection.
“I feel like a few years ago, everything fell apart and we didn’t know if we wanted to race any more,” said Annabeth. “It was just life..just everything. It all works together. It stopped being fun. I think that we were lost.
“When racing is what your life is, you find so much identity in that. You are a racecar driver. A few years ago, we needed to recalculate. We asked, “what are we outside of racing?”
Changes were made. The couple had primarily raced fendered cars before, but transitioned to the Modified world. It turned out to be a great decision.
“It was time to leave Late Models,” said Annabeth. “Moving to the Modifieds brought back for us the feeling that we had as kids racing go-karts. There’s a sense of community. There’s a sense of comradery. When we moved over to Modifieds, it brought back the spark and it brought back the fun.”
And then came the joy of actually driving Modifieds.
“They are so much fun to drive and we both fell in love with it,” said Annabeth.
The Crums took that new found love of Modifieds and went to work. They came into the 2026 season with their own team and that has been the key to true happiness – and victories.
“We’ve just been building,” said Annabeth. “Jake had been in it for a few years now racing for other teams. This year, both cars are in the same shop. Justin Link is the crew chief for both cars. He is in the shop every day. It is completely in-house now and that has been such a game changer. This is the first time in my life when we have had everything in house.
“It can be discouraging at times. I told the guys during the first part of the season it would work out. We started with the PRM chassis and they only had one or two other Tour cars. They started with no notebook and from the ground up. Every week, I say ‘we are building something…we are building something.
“At Franklin County, it just clicked. Now we took what we learned and applied it to my car. We came here (Hickory) on Wednesday (to test) and we knew that we found something. It has come together.”
The sense of accomplishment that came with turning the corner into victory lane has made the hard work well worth it.
“Everyone else, says ‘it’s cool, they won’, but for us it means so much more,” said Annabeth. “We have been building this literally from the ground up since January. We knew that it was coming. We knew that it was just a matter of time until it all came together. Now it has. It’s really cool.”
And these winning ways appear to just be starting. The SMART Modified Tour and the Carolina Crate Modified Series both race at Caraway Speedway (NC) this coming Saturday and the Crums come into the event as the latest race winners on each tour.
“We can look ahead to Caraway and it’s lights out,” said Annabeth. “That’s good track for both of us.”
It’s a great time to be a Crum – and that is not lost on Annabeth.
“We are just having fun,” said Annabeth. “This brings the joy back into it and we are having a good time. We are just blessed for all of the support that we get. People don’t realize how much it takes to make this happen.”
By Mike Twist
thepave.net