Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Sheppard On Top of East Bay Opener

With the open wheel cars now vacated East Bay Raceway Park, it was time for the Late Models to take center stage for  the opening round of the historic Winternationals at this venerable facility. With the Lucas Oil Racing Series administering the action here, the first few nights are non points races for Lucas so a few different things generally take place. Drivers use the opening few nights to do some experimenting while others prefer to leave their cars parked(as if five grand to win for only twenty five laps is nothing more than chump change).

Forty four cars signed in to race on the opening night with cars for Bloomquist, O'Neal, Lanigan, Horton, Flinner among others that remained parked on Monday. According to series announcer James Essex, Bloomquist was at the hospital to have his hand examined after injuring it while the Bowyer cars always seem to just watch on the opening night.

There were however, a lot of different drivers on hand that have never before ran at East Bay and the mix was rather interesting and much more of a cosmopolitan field than most series races, no matter what the sanctioning body.

Among the most spectacular car entered was that of the Kryptonite house car driven on Monday by Tyler Carpenter. The car was wrapped entirely in a spectacular gold color and certainly stood out from the crowd. This car was one of the highlights of the PRI show and many were surprised to see that it was not just a "show car" but a real race car also.

When one enters a race car for the Winternationals at East Bay, they had better have their "stuff" together. The action starts quickly and doesn't slow down with things coming fast and furious. Any race team had been be prepared to take on the field here. Once the cars are called to stage here, things move quickly with one race quickly followed by the others and the intensity level being high from start to finish. There is no waiting for anyone here and if you're not ready to race, you get left at the gate.
The field is split into two groups for qualifying here with the fast cars starting up front in the heats and the heat race finishes determining the main event order. So, as you can imagine, qualifying is hugely important to having a good  and successful night.

The heat races are often the best events of the night with a surprising amount of passing. With so many strong cars and the track still fresh for the heats, drivers use different grooves and the sense of urgency to get to the front produces some dramatic racing. The results will show that the front row cars won all four heats but don't really tell the tale on how entertaining the short events were.

As per usual, once the show begins at East Bay, other than to perhaps pack in the outer groove with some work trucks, the track crew never touches the racing surface. Sometimes that's good, sometimes not so much. Monday, the humidity seemed to increase just before main event time with the bleachers and other items in the grandstands actually feeling moist. I thought this would be a good thing and lead to a memorable main event. However, with this track being extremely difficult to "read", I was totally wrong. Other than a few half hearted attempts to try the outside in the early going, everyone dove right to the bottom and followed each other around "the ditch" and the main event proved to be anti climatic. It also produced one of the dirtiest tracks in recent memory as the fans in the stands got blasted in a big way.

Brandon Sheppard was clearly the fastest car and after he got past Brian Shirley, he cruised home for the rest of the feature and at only twenty five laps, the racing hardly gets started before its time to throw the checkered flag. Josh Richards was one of the few to move up the track and he passed several cars before he felt the top starting to go away and he dove to the inside also.

My biggest takeaway from the opening night action was the performance of two young drivers in the field. I had read about the results produced by young Pennsylvania driver Michael Lake but I had never seen him race before. It didn't take me long to realize that the moon faced youngster was the "real deal" as he raced hard three wide in his heat and gave no quarter and was hanging in the top ten for most of the feature until slipping back slightly at the end. Looking hardly the part of a race car drivers(who said a race car driver had to look like an athlete anyway), the fifteen year old clearly has a ton of talent and appears to also be well supplied with top notch equipment.

The other young driver who impressed was Hudson O'Neal. I suppose that no one should be surprised that with his last name, race car driving would come naturally to him. Again, he has top notch equipment to work with but he can clearly drive. And we should not be surprised that he shows absolutely no fear, sticking his nose right in the action against the biggest names in the sport. He started nineteenth in the main and on a track that didn't produce a lot of charges to the front, he worked his way all the way up to ninth at the finish. 

As usual the East Bay crew along with the officials of the Lucas Series cranked off the program in spectacularly prompt fashion and the final checkered flag waved just after 9 pm. The crowd was also very good for a Monday night opener for this week's series.About the only thing missing from the opening night was an appearance by Jean Lynch but she's apparently back home this year.

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