Friday night, February 3, proved to be a challenging and memorable evening for racing at the East Bay Raceway Park in Gibsonton Florida. It was round number four of the Modified portion of the twenty fourth annual Winter Nationals and the last chance for drivers to earn points toward their starting positions for Saturday night's big seventy five lap feature that will pay five grand to the winner. And along with the points, Friday night's run would be worth fifteen hundred dollars to the winner plus bragging rights heading into the finale on Saturday.
The race event would start off challenged as a series of rain showers would sweep through the Tampa Bay area from morning until just after Noon, putting the program in jeopardy. Fortunately track owner Al Varnadore and his crew are not new comers to dealing with this kind of challenge and while the infield would be a sea of mud all night, they would get the track in racing shape as they worked throughout the afternoon, moving mud and packing the racing surface while also making the pits drier too. The drivers would be required to do a little more track packing than normal but the racing program actually started just at the same time as it had on the previous nights so a great job was done by those workers on the heavy equipment.
Sixty four drivers would sign in to race on this night as heavy hitters like Kyle Strickler, Chase Allen and Dave Wietholder would be added to the field as the largest field of Modifieds at this event in the last two years would gather on this night.
It would be a fast track early and the track would build up a cushion such as we had yet to see this week. The first sub seventeen second lap would be turned as Lucas Lee, later to be a part of the controversial finish, would turn the oval at 16, 937 seconds, early on establishing that he would be one to beat.
As the week comes to a close, the gloves are off between the drivers in many cases and very hard driving, some the result of the heavy and fast track and some because of over aggressive moves, seems to have become the norm. The heats races were very hard fought and particularly evident in heat race number six where two Illinois drivers caused five yellow flags as they ran into and spun each other out on multiple occasions until track officials finally asked one of the drivers to exit the racing surface so they could do some real racing and not a demolition derby.
Eight heat races and four B Features would again set the twenty four car starting field for the main event, scheduled for thirty laps. The redraw would find Lucas Lee on the pole with Kevin Adams to his outside as the heat winners would redraw for their starting positions.
Lee would jump into the early lead, running the inside line as he has all week. Only two laps could be completed before a big five car pileup in turn one would slow the action, an incident that would take quite some time to clear up. Finally, racing would resume with Lee continuing to lead with L.J. Grimm moving into second. Rodney Wing was hanging with the leaders while Tyler Nicely showed for the first time in the top five after starting seventh.
The next portion of the race would see the longest period of green flag racing as the green would stay out for eighteen consecutive laps. The biggest gainer by far was Drake Troutman, who had gone to the cushion and was driving a very aggressive line on the top side of the track. After falling back, he was able to fight his way past Grimm, Nicely and Adams and pull to the tail of leader Lee.
This long period of green flag racing had allowed the front cars to catch the tail of the field and there was a group of about five drivers running nose to tail on the inside of the track that Lee caught he chose to follow them, rather than try to pass them. This was the opening that Troutman needed and in the course of about five laps, he made up a half a straightaway on Lee, using the top side.
As they burst out of turn four, Troutman was able to blast past Lee on lap twenty three to take over the lead and just seconds later, Blake Brown would nose into the wall in turn three, triggering a yellow. Troutman would hold the top spot for the restart but Lee continued to be very strong on the inside line and with a clear track now, he would edge back in front of Troutman on the green as Drake continued to bang off the cushion.
Lee would continue to hold a small lead over Troutman as the yellow would wave on two consecutive laps and when Adams nosed into the wall in turn one, it would set up a two lap sprint to the finish.
As they came around to take the green, Lee was hugging the inside line and Troutman would get a strong run off the banking in turn four. They would race side by side down the back chute with Troutman getting just enough advantage the he would dive to the inside down the front chute, cutting off Lee's low side run. Troutman would gain just a little on the final lap and a last corner charge by Lee would come up short as Troutman would work the cushion and race home to a two car length wind.
Or, at least that was what appeared to be the result. Troutman would then stop on the front chute and things didn't appear just right. Then, after crossing the scales, Lee would drive into victory lane and it was clear that something had happened. It was then announced that track officials had docked Troutman two spots for jumping the final restart and Lee was then awarded the victory. Nicely was moved up to second and Troutman was officially scored in third.
I have my own opinion on the call but I was not at the driver's meeting so I don't know what instructions were given to the drivers there as far as how to handle restarts and what would or wouldn't be called relative to "jump starts." Therefore, without that information, which is vital to making a correct opinion, I will reserve mine until I talk to folks that were directly involved in making those decisions. What I can say with certainty is that the #7 car was much classier in defeat than the #12 car was in victory!
Devin Dixon, with his best run of the week after going to a second car on Friday, and Chris Wilson(#17) would complete the top five. This night did produce some drivers that hadn't been running as good earlier right up front and whether that was due to the heavy track, which always makes some cars otherwise struggling fast or not, will be determined on Saturday night when the long distance race will likely see a slicker track.
The six drivers locked in through points for Saturday night's finale would include Troutman, Lee, Nicely, Adams, Dixon and Brian Skaggs.
One thing is for sure though. The pot has been stirred and there will be several strong running drivers that have "scores" to settle and the action on Saturday night is sure to be as cut throat as it can be. It should be an exciting show to watch in person or on PPV.
The cold front that came through and brought the rains also drove the temperatures down considerably. We had been basking in some wonderful weather early this week but reality hit on Friday with strong and cold winds and temperatures that dropped to the mid fifties. While I don't expect to get much sympathy from folks dealing with sub zero temps like at home, it did produce a profound change in how the night felt and it did get darn cold from my perspective.
And for the first time this week, I found something to take the folks at East Bay to task for and that was the fact that they had only one wrecker available, making any accident clean up longer than it should have been and the five car wreck in the feature took a terribly long time to clear. Surely they have more wreckers available when they have Sprints to push off or Late Models. Couldn't they do the same for Modified week?
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