Saturday, February 18, 2017

Bloomquist Get Serious at East Bay

The preliminaries are over. The money grows larger and the Lucas Oil Series points are back on the table for Friday and Saturday night's events at East Bay Raceway Park. Not surprisingly, the cream rises to the top on nights like that after after a few days to shake down everything, the top notch teams are ready to get to work.

Scott Bloomquist dragged himself out of a hospital bed and to the track last night where his effort was less than stellar. But as he noted himself, last night gave him the opportunity to try a few things with his car and those points were noted for Friday night's event as he grabbed the lead early and held off several strong challenges from Josh Richards to win the fifty lap main event and bank another ten grand.

The evening started off with forty ten cars signing in to race in round four of the series here at East Bay, with one round lost to the weather. Three drivers pulled out after Thursday night's racing with both Craig Wolford and Greg Oakes heading for Screven and the World of Outlaws show were neither would make the main event, just as they had been also failing to accomplish here. Stephen Breeding was also missing and apparently headed home.

Two drivers had trouble in hot laps and failed to race after that. John Gardner Jr. had undisclosed issues while Freddie Carpenter was seen in the pits after the show changing a motor on the Kryptonite house car. Local driver Shan Smith was also in the pits although he didn't enter Friday night's action as he was also busy changing a motor throughout the evening.

One notable addition to the field was the appearance of Bobby Pierce who was driving a second car for the Gordy Gundaker stable. Of course, Gundaker also races Pierce cars so the addition of him to the field made perfect sense. Frankly, it was a bit of a surprise that Pierce wasn't entered with his own car down here at East Bay anyway.

Of of the young stars of this week's action was laid low by mechanical problems also as Michael Lake had a motor lay down on him in his heat after qualifying poorly as he drew a very early number. They then parked the car and Doug Horton, who was driving the back up car for the Lake team indicated in victory lane after winning the Dirt on Dirt dash that they would likely pull the motor out of his car and swap it into Lake's car for the final night of action. Afterward in the pits it appeared that they were doing exactly that.

As has been the case for much of the week here, the preliminary qualifying events have been among the best races of each night. Friday the heats were good and the two B features were exceptional with drivers desperate to make the main events pulling off wild slide jobs and racing three wide to try and get into the main. Both the B's had the crowd up on the edge of their seats as the action was nonstop and spectacular.

Unfortunately, this would be the highlight of the night as the track seemed to give up for the main event, taking rubber by the halfway point and driving the racers to line up and follow each other around the track with passing at a premium and those attempting to run the cushion found themselves in reverse.

It seems like all week the preliminary events have been first class racing but the track has been spotty all week for the main events with it being good for one night(example on Thursday when the surface was icy and allowed much passing) and then it would tail off for the next night such as Friday. There is no doubt though that when the track is "on", the racing here is among the best around.

Kentucky's Dustin Linville, after much spectacular driving during the week that usually ended up with bad things happening, finally made a main event Friday as his bold move to the cushion in a heat race event finally worked out for him. Unfortunately, he was the first car out of the feature race and shortly after the show's completion, his hauler was headed out the gate and he was presumably headed back to his "olde Kentucky home."

Things got wild during one of the feature race restarts when a track official placed the restart cone quite far out into the track and leader Bloomquist cut under the cone as did many of the field behind him. Several drivers clobbered the cone and Kenny Pettyjohn dragged it for a lap around the track with the rope wrapped around his air cleaner. The cone was then placed much closer to the inside of the track with a considerably shorter rope!

Richards and Tim McCreadie made the most progress in the main event, passing a number of cars in the first half of the race before the track started to lock down and Richards had actually maneuvered himself to a point that he was just ready to make a pass on Bloomquist when the yellow came out on lap thirty. After that, Bloomquist adjusted his line and the track's surface took car of the rest.

Don O'Neal made the save of the week when he got turned sideways by Jonathan Davenport as they battled for the third position. O'Neal slid sideways nearly the length of the back chute but somehow saved the car and only lost one position. I'm sure this move will be on the highlights package of every TV show in the upcoming months.

The house was packed on a beautiful Friday night with a huge crowd but as usual, the folks in attendance played "second fiddle" as we had to wait around for the winner's interview until TV was done doing "their thing." Some day, if this sport turns into another of the many "TV sports" it will look a little bit silly when the Dave Argabright's of the world interview the winner in front of an empty grandstand! But that's the way they treat the paying customer; as a second class citizen.

People coming to Speedweeks are carrying lots of cash and dying to spend it. That's why it absolutely amazes me that very few of the race teams have their shirts done and Lucas Oil doesn't even have a program to sell. There are lots of misses opportunities to make a buck here and a lot of marketing people are really missing the boat here.

Iowa Dirt Late Model Hall of Famer Ed Sanger was spotted roaming the pits on Friday night along with Wisconsin Hall of Famer Pete Parker.

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