Continuing my swing of the Florida region, on Monday Feb. 8th I attended the opening night of the 40th annual Winternationals at East Bay Raceway Park for the Lucas Oil Series Late Models.
This was the first time I had ever been to East Bay and as I have often discovered over the years, some preconceived ideas one forms about a race track proved to be true while others were not so much.
I had been told that East Bay was in kind of a rough part of the Tampa Bay area and that proved to be more than true. Actually, I can't remember seeing so many junky looking buildings and what appeared to be some subsistence businesses as I saw on the way to East Bay. The truth be told though, the track is probably in a good area of the metro as there didn't appear to be many people living within complaining distance of the track; mostly heavy industry and swamp. The track is rimmed on three sides by what I called Mt. Gypsum, the huge slag piles from the by products of the gypsum mining industry that appears to be going full throttle. I was told by some people that attend the races at East Bay on a regular basis that the mountain East of the track had grown by thirty five feet in the last year and the second mountain Southeast of the track was brand new while the third one Southwest of the track is overgrown with grass and apparently not used any longer. Fans of the Hibbing Raceway in Minnesota(and I did see a few of them in attendance Monday) must feel right at home at East Bay as the scenery, or lack thereof, looks just the t aconite tailings piles that dwarf the back chute of that track.
East Bay Raceway Park is an old race track and it is showing its age. Despite an attempt to keep everything freshly painted and spruced up, the facility is showing its age. In many ways it reminded me of some of the Illinois bullrings I have visited with concession buildings, maintenance buildings and ticket offices all cobbled together with no apparent orderly pattern to them.
East Bay is listed as a third mile track and that seems like just a bit of a stretch to me; perhaps if one rode the wall all the way around it might be a third mile. However, the track is very wide which allows for good racing and while the banking doesn't seem near as steep in person as it looks like on TV, it is still one racy joint, and after all, that's what keeps the fans coming, right? And what other track has Palm trees on the wheel fence to number the corners of the track?
The surface at East Bay has long been talked about so I won't go into any specifics of that, other than to say that it started out the evening as quite slimy but quickly widened out and provided an excellent racing surface for the majority of the night. The groove was wide, the racing intense and the drivers even sang the praises of the track, something that is oh so rare.
Thirty five cars signed in to race on the opening night of the six night series here at East Bay. While Don O'Neal and Darrell Lanigan were on hand and had their cars unloaded, they apparently felt no need to race on this night while Jonathan Davenport kept his car parked and instead made laps for Mason Zeigler in his new car. Apparently the contracts of some of these "stars" are just too good if they can afford to sit and watch a $5,000 to win show when they are on the grounds. As for Scott Bloomquist, as series announcer James Essex stated, "Scott must be playing the penny slots somewhere else tonight."
It was pointed out to me by a fan that since the race fans on hand were paying top dollar admission prices expecting to see all the stars of the series in action, that perhaps the sanctioning body should take steps to make sure all their advertised drivers were on hand. Whether it be to make all six nights full point nights or perhaps award "show up" points for all shows, there would seem to be some rationale is his thinking. But I guess that as long as the spectators continue to buy tickets, nothing will probably ever change.
In the early going of this race season, Pennsylvania"s Chad Hollenbeck seems to be one driver hit with more than his share of bad luck. After a roll over at New Brunswick earlier, when I walked through the pits on Monday they had every piece of the body removed from the car and were completely going through the whole car as they checked for damage. Hollenbeck won the Strawberry Dash to make the main but was the first car out, as his problems continued.
Josh Richards appears to be a man on a mission this year as he looks to regain his foothold as the number one Late Model driver on the planet and push the Rocket chassis back to the top in the brand name wars. If so, he is definitely on the right track as his performance Monday was nothing short of spectacular. Coming from ninth in a short, twenty five lap main event and passing the cars that he did to take the win was very impressive. A couple of his passes were scintillating, especially the move past Jared Landers, one that Landers did not complain about later either. Jimmy Owens and Tim McCreadie both had solid runs as they both try to reestablish themselves after a rough 2015 campaign.
Lucas Oil and track officials did an excellent job of running off a quick program in the face of falling temperatures and gale force winds. Truly, a one class program with a total of eight events should not take hours to run off, but many places would do just that. On Monday the first green flag came just minutes after the advertised 7 p.m. start and the final checkered waved just over two hours later. On a week night, that is exactly the kind of show that will keep people returning.
The racing at East Bay was just what I was hoping for and one of the highlights of the evening was my chance to meet the legendary Jean Lynch.
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