As promised, we did make it to Charlotte(Concord) North Carolina for day one of the twelfth annual World of Outlaws World Finals at the Dirt Track at Charlotte Motor Speedway. The Dirt Track is a spectacular facility right across the highway from the "big track" but we have no interest in checking out the Roval this weekend(or quite frankly, any other weekend for that matter.) Instead, we're going to get some good old fashioned North Carolina red clay in our hair and our eyes and lots of other places where we probably don't need any red clay dust but that's a story for another time.
This is the final race weekend for the World of Outlaws in 2018 and three champions are set to be crowned on Saturday night. The point races vary from close to a guaranteed title just by taking a green flag on Thursday night. In the Sprint Cars, Donny Schatz guaranteed his fifth straight title and tenth overall just by taking a green flag for a qualifying lap. What a remarkable statistic his ten titles is. All this from a guy I first saw race when he was sixteen years old and riding his car over the wall at the Red River Valley Speedway in West Fargo North Dakota. Matt Sheppard is in good position to win yet another Big Block title and he would have to stumble badly to not win it. The Late Model race is closer with Mike Marlar, Chris Madden and Brandon Sheppard still with mathematical chances to win.
Big Block Modifieds, Late Models and Sprint Cars will all be in action all three nights but not much racing truly gets started until Friday night. Thursday night is reserved for qualifying time trials for all three divisions plus the Big Blocks run two sets of heat races that set their running order for the Last Chance and Feature races on Friday and Saturday night.
Forty two Big Blocks, seventy six Late Models and fifty two Sprint cars rolled into the facility on Wednesday and Thursday, making for a grand total of one hundred and seventy high buck race teams on hand for the weekend's activities. Of those one hundred and seventy teams, I saw only one open trailer and that was for a Late Model that traveled only across one state to get here. There are drivers on hand from nineteen states and three countries with both Canada and Australia represented in the field.
For someone who lives in a part of the world where time trials are never used and I see perhaps six to twelve time trial races all year, this event is a true test of one's patience and resolve. Between the three classes with two full rounds of time trials for both the Sprints and Late Models used to set the fields for the heat races on the two days that follow, along with two full sets of timed hot laps by the Big Blocks, nearly seven hundred laps of time trials are seen on Thursday! That is enough to stretch the patience of any race fan and it is a wonder that as many fans are on hand for the opening night as there are. Mostly, I guess, it is because they are interested to see just who is on hand to race. And if it were not for the good organization of the Outlaws staff that click off this tedium as quickly as possible, we would likely be here for even more hours of non competitive events.
The shame is that when all this is done, then they still go ahead and line up the cars straight up for the heat races, thus further increasing our chances that we won't actually see and passing and racing. You can find the complete results I'm sure posted so I'll not go into those very deeply but Billy Decker and Brett Hearn set the pace in the Big Blocks, Dale McDowell, Shane Clanton and Mike Marlar in the Late Models and Parker Price Miller and David Gravel in the Sprints. With all the upcoming switches in the Sprints, it's tough this weekend to keep straight who's racing for who and where they are moving to next season. I wonder how that must feel racing against a car that you know you'll be behind the wheel of in a few short weeks. To wreck him or not, that is the question.
After the Big Blocks ran their group qualifying, their heat races for Friday and Saturday were interspersed among the rest of the qualifying as they really do get treated like the "red haired stepchildren" at this event and I'm surprised they don't demand their own event where they would get more decent billing. Fortunately, to keep the passing at a minimum, the Big Block heats were lined straight up too and I'm pleased to say that seven of the eight heats were won right off the pole with a bare minimum of passing. The only heat that wasn't taken from position one was the first heat where none other than Matt Sheppard moved low from the second row, passed in the first corner and then everyone was able to settle back and just follow one another again. We can only hope we'll see some more true racing in the nights to come.
This entire weekend has been started under the veil of the threat of rain for most particularly, Friday. However, the first insurgents of the coming cold front moved in even earlier than expected, as halfway through the last set of Late Model qualifying, it started to rain and quite hard initially. So, group B of the Late Models will have their qualifying prior to the start of their program on Saturday to set their running order for Saturday's heats. Both night's shows have an identical format with heats , Last Chance and Features for the Late Models and Sprints while the Big Blocks run Last Chance and Features only. There is a significant chance of rain on Friday which would throw a big monkey wrench into the weekend. With the Outlaw banquet slated for Sunday, that day is not a workable option for racing so if things would get rained out on Friday, they would run both shows on Saturday, starting in the morning and going until they got done. You talk about a marathon. We shall see what happens.
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