Apparently taking umbrage to the fact that he could indeed be human after he suffered what he claimed was his first motor failure in four years Tuesday night, Scott Bloomquist came back with a vengeance on Wednesday night to dominate the final UMP sanctioned Late Model main of the Winter Nationals at Volusia Speedway Park on Wednesday night. The big block Modifieds made their first appearance of the week and a former Late Model driver as well as accomplished Modified driver Tim Fuller was the winner of that feature event.
The biggest field of Late Models to date signed in to race on Wednesday night with former truck racer Joey Coulter and Jimmy Owens, both who's car had been sitting in the pits all week, finally decided to join the action. Also towing in on Wednesday to join the action were Tyler Erb and last year's rookie of the year Brandon Overton. Kenny Pettyjohn, on the other hand, opted to take the night off while Brandon Sheppard ran out of motors and sat out the night. After the show, the Best Motorsports team rolled out of their pits and headed home, making Sheppard's first major race appearance a big disappointment and causing one to wonder just how long Sheppard will be staying with this arrangement.
The heat races provided a couple of major surprises, one of which involved Iowa driver Tyler Breuning. Not only did Tyler qualify well enough to earn the pole for a heat, he then fought off all challenges from Rick Eckert and Donny Schatz to win a heat and make the redraw at center stage. Breuning redrew the second row for the main event but he couldn't have cared less as he was on cloud nine just to be at center stage against a field of the best drivers in the sport.
He also raced quite well in the feature, finishing just out of the top ten at the finish in what has been the longest Late Model race so far this week at forty laps on the big half mile. The track really dried out Wednesday, partially due to the extra laps that the big blocks put on the track and the track raced different than it has to date this week.
Also surprising and winning a heat was young Pennsylvania driver Michael Norris who fought off Shane Clanton for eight laps in what was a scintillating event. Norris started fifth in the main but he couldn't maintain the pace and eventually was lapped late in the event.
Bloomquist didn't mess around on Wednesday and as the second car out for time trials, set the fast time of the night and followed it up with a heat race win. He redrew fourth for the main and then took his time, moving past Dale McDowell for the lead near the ten lap mark. After that, his major challenge was working through the heavy traffic, although Jonathan Davenport made things interesting for awhile. Davenport, who started ninth, moved into second and was closing the gap on Bloomquist. However, "Bloomer" was able to gain an advantage in traffic and rebuilt his lead to a comfortable level near the end of the race as McDowell actually cut the distance on Jonathan. Josh Richards also moved up a lot, starting thirteenth and racing all the way up to fourth at the end. He appeared to be closing the gap even more but ran out of laps. Despite all off season moves and developments among drivers changing chassis and motor builders, as the week moves along it seems to be boiling down to the "big three" once again as it appears that Bloomquist, Davenport and Richards are still the class of the field.
WISSOTA national champion Ricky Weiss had his enviable record finally broken on Wednesday when he missed his first feature since Florida action started as he made every show at East Bay and had done the same here. However, they misjudged the gear for time trials and didn't qualify well and then missed the main by one position twice. He drove the wheels off his car in a B feature, running the cushion like few others, but he just couldn't get by Jason Feger and had to watch the finale with the provisionals snatched up by the top two in UMP points for the weeks' action plus the top two in 2015 UMP points not in the show. Those two went to Michigan's Nick Kurtz and "The Hammer", Mike Hammerlee who were rewarded for their attendance at races last year.
The big blocks fielded thirty five cars for their action and while I get to see these cars very seldom, they provide some interesting racing action also. Clearly not a cheap race car by any standards, they are the class that eastern race fans love to see and some of the personalities of these drivers among the biggest in the sport. Fuller also showed his strength over the field as he was the quick qualifier of the night, won a heat and then after starting third in the main, moved to the cushion and took the lead. Billy Dunn stayed reasonably close to Fuller and a couple of restarts made things close, but Fuller never faltered. Billy Pauch threw a couple nasty sliders to spark the action and after "Lightning" Larry Wight ran Tyler Siri into the wall, Siri responded by throwing a mudball at Wight. DIRT titans Matt Sheppard and Stewart Friesen also had a pitched battle for most of their thirty lap feature. Look for things to just get more spirited as the week progresses. The big blocks started twenty six cars in their main with only one DNF and not a single lapped car in their main, impressive indeed.
Starting Thursday, the Late Models will be running under the World of Outlaws rules which means the line up procedures and provisionals will be determined in a different manner than earlier this week.
Crowds continue to get bigger and bigger each night for the racing action and pretty soon the folks at VSP will run out of seats for the spectators.
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