After two nights of chasing Josh Richards, the Lucas Oil Late Model Series regulars restored a little order on Wednesday night, Feb. 10th when "Superman" Jonathan Davenport led all the way to win the main event. However, the win was not an easy one as a late charge saw Tim McCreadie nearly make an exciting last lap pass for the win. McCreadie went for broke on the last lap but his high side charge failed when he hooked the berm going into palm tree III (corner three) and stuck his car head on hard into the wall, triggering a yellow flag and forcing a one lap sprint to the finish.
Davenport seemed to have been slowing before the last lap yellow but on the final green he got a strong charge and pulled away from Don O'Neal and there proved to be no last lap drama.
By the third straight night of racing action, the nonstop racing is starting to take its toll. Chad Hollenbeck was in his back up car tonight after several days of rough luck including a soft roll over last weekend and after stuffing his car into the wall last night, Mike Marlar also rolled out another car which he promptly qualified as quickest of the night. Unfortunately, he was one of many that later would bite the wall and become a non finisher.
Missing the show tonight while still trying to straighten out his MasterSilt car from a hard contact with the wall last night was Michigan's Jim McKeown. Jim is "living the dream" this week, having towed his car down from Michigan in an open trailer pulled by a vintage motor home as he is clearly the lowest financed team here. With a lot of volunteer help, he was bending and pounding and twisting on his car all afternoon but they just didn't get it put back together in time to race on this night.
On Monday, some of the brighter minds that follow Late Model racing were saying that a forty car field would probably be about what would enter the pits for this week's racing at East Bay. Last night that number was topped by one and with McKeown's absence Wednesday, that is exactly what the field was. It seems unlikely that many, if any, new cars would show up this late in the week, so that would seem to be the number of the WinterNationals. Ending speculation, after the show on Wednesday, Richards announced that he was heading out for Screven for practice on Thursday and there may be another car or so that would follow him, so it would seem that the field has peaked for this week. It will be interesting to see if Richards continues to sport the orange spoiler on his car that he earned from last weekend's victories that gave him the Lucas point lead.
For the third straight night, the track was just a little different again on Wednesday. Early on, it was wetter than Tuesday but not as much as Monday. It did black off again tonight but instead of taking rubber like it did last night, it turned icy slick with drivers fighting for traction on the inside and the berm being dangerously close to the wall. However, it proved to be easy on tires, even with the extra ten laps of feature racing tonight. It's a good thing too, as tires was a major concern after Tuesday night's affair when twenty five laps nearly burned off a whole set of tires. If that trend had continued, drivers would have been sorely pressed to figure out a strategy for the weekend's longer distance races, and that still might be a worry, depending on what kind of track is offered to them.
One of the rougher nights was endured by defending WISSOTA champion Ricky Weiss, who didn't back down in his heat race when a couple of nasty "sliders" were thrown his direction and the end result was that he got stuffed into the wall and wrecked his car. J.R. Haley rolled out their back up car, the machine that Ricky Thornton Jr. raced so successfully with in Arizona and Weiss drove that the rest of the night as he got into the main on the fast timer provisional and made some laps before pulling off.
I expect the pits will be a "beehive" of activity on Thursday as besides McCreadie, Brian Shirley, Bobby Pierce, Jared Landers and several others all got into the wall at various points of the evening with plenty of work to be done on several of the cars.
Despite what was a very chilly night, the crowds have continued to grow each night of the series and I would expect a packed house all weekend. I figured out what the incoming crowd reminds me of, and it's the crowd that fills the Tulsa Expo for the Chili Bowl each year. It seems like many people sit in the same seats at this race year after year and as they come in, they greet people from all over the country that they only see once a year, and that is at this race week. It's a very interesting concept but one thing I have noted that is concerning is what an old crowd it is, with very few young people to be seen anywhere. At some point, this does not bode well for the future but that is a topic for an entirely different discussion.
Once again, series and track officials did a great job of running off the program with the final checkered flag of the night waving before 9 p.m. I am going to be so spoiled with this that when I get back to the "real world" of racing, a normal program is going to feel like it's lasting all night!
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