For the fourth straight night it would be a Rocket chassis that sat in victory lane at East Bay Raceway Park and this time it would be their house car as Hudson O'Neal would lead all forty laps and produce his first win for the Rocket team since taking over that prized ride when Brandon Sheppard stepped out of the car last Fall. O'Neal would start on the outside pole, put distance first between himself and Dennis Erb Jr, then Ricky Thornton Jr and finally hold off a late charge by Max Blair to take the ten thousand dollar victory in what would be the first point counting race for the Lucas Oil Late Model series here at East Bay.
The beautiful weather of this week remained but it also produced just a bit of a Summer feel as not only was the temperature hovering around the eighty degree mark, there was a feel of humidity in the air, the first time that has occurred this week. This was one more factor that the track prep crew had to take into consideration as they continue to search for that elusive combination that would provide the best racing surface possible. As the evening progressed, a line of thunderstorms built just to the East of the track, providing a light show for much of the evening over the top of Mt. Slag, the huge pile of debris from the mining operation next door to the track that will eventually take over the land here.
Sixty three cars signed in to race on Thursday night; sixty four if you count Perry Brown who got his car fixed and took some laps at the back of heat race number six. It is getting to that time of the week when the equipment is starting to get stressed with Brandon Sheppard, Jonathan Davenport, Chase Junghans and O'Neal all going to back up race cars with perhaps some others as well that I missed. There was one additional entry as local driver Adam Boyd broke out a new Kryptonite car while Mike Benedum, John Tweed, Daniel Adam and Payton Freeman were among the latest to call it a week.
Brian Shirley and O'Neal would be the quickest qualifiers for the two groups as O'Neal would foretell the rest of his successful evening with a lap of 14,903 seconds. The first time trial session would start out quite shaky as within the very first cars that came out, Brenden Smith would stuff his car into the concrete and be done for the night and Brandon Overton would break a driveshaft, putting him behind the eight ball that he could never recover from. In fact, Overton, who was able to make the main by racing to a win in one of the B Features, would break once again on the parade lap of the feature and never see the green flag.
The format would be the usual one with six heats and three B Features forming up the starting field for the main event, on this night for forty laps. However, since this was the first points race of the week, more provisional starters would grace the field and big one of thirty drivers would take the green flag.
For O'Neal it would be a dominating win as he would lead all laps and only be challenged near the end when he finally caught lapped traffic. He would take the early lead over Dennis Erb Jr with Ricky Thornton slipping into third. Yellows early on lap two for a spinning Kyle Bronson and on lap ten when Sheppard lost a motor would keep the pack bunched. Right after Sheppard dropped out, Thornton Jr would fail to fire on the restart when his driveline refused to cooperate. Adding in the pre race woes of Overton and an early out by Devin Moran, the infield was quickly a collection of some of the sport's biggest stars.
Blair would get past Erb and settle into second and the leaders then began to line up in a familiar single file formation, one that we had seen oh to often this week. While some at the back of the pack tried the outside and hammered away on the cushion, the drivers up front quickly found a single file formation to be much more productive.
One lap past the halfway point, John Henderson slowed and the final yellow waved, which allowed O'Neal to have a clean track when the race resumed. Garrett Smith had driven up to fourth by this time with Tim McCreadie also in the top five.
The last nineteen laps would go by without incident or any changes in the top five running order. O'Neal got close to the back of the pack in the last few laps but he was able to time things such that he didn't really have to try any passing attempts while still keeping Blair just a few car lengths back. Blair was hoping that O'Neal would have to fight that traffic, as it seemed his only chance at making a pass. Jimmy Owens was the most successful at moving up as he came from eighteenth to sixth by diving under cars when they slipped off the bottom or dropped out. Eight of the starting field were not on the track at the finish while only Wil Herrington a lap behind.
While the track was quite wet for the start of the program, it didn't appear quite as wet as it had been on Wednesday night. Still, Lucas officials opted to let the first four groups of hot lap drivers do double hot laps. While I'm still trying to figure out the point of this, one thing for sure is that it throws the race schedule totally out of whack with the first race not hitting the track until 7:45 pm. Then, after some smooth heats found them catching up on time, the decision was made before the feature race to grade and water both ends of the track and that took perhaps an hour or more. Sadly, all this work and effort didn't really seem to produce much in the way of positive results as the track became one lane quite quickly although I didn't observe it to rubber up and it produced quite the dust storm in the stands. Spectators at any track in the country would be raising the roof on their promoter if they had to put up with the sandstorms that have blitzed the fans here all week.
Everyone that still has a working race car will try it again on Friday night. The stakes go up as it will be twelve grand to win and the distance of the feature goes up by ten more laps. By the way, the crowd was enormous on Thursday night and appeared more like a Saturday night crowd on a good year for this event. They certainly must be setting some attendance records so far this week.
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