Night number three of the Modified portion of the twenty fourth annual Winter Nationals at East Bay Raceway Park in Gibsonton would produce the third straight different winner. On Thursday night, in a thirty lap main event that would see three different drivers hold the top spot. Tyler Nicely would make the winning pass on lap twenty three and then hold off a final charge by Drake Troutman to record the win which was worth $1,500 and perhaps even more importantly to Nicely, give him some extra points in his quest to get into the top six in series points and avoid the dreaded Saturday night Last Chance races before the finale of the week.
With four new drivers signing in for Thursday night action, fifty eight UMP Modifieds would be racing in another one division program here that keeps the drivers and crews hoping and provides the spectators a quick evening of dirt track entertainment.
And for the first night of this series, we saw East Bay Raceway Park in all its glory. The first two nights saw a track that was quite dry and didn't allow a lot of rim riding action but on Thursday, all that changed. This was the East Bay Raceway that most people remember. The track was noticeably wetter to begin the evening and it stayed that way all night. Drivers were slipping and sliding around as the groove seemed to change almost every lap and drivers were scratching for traction, not because the surface was dry slick but because there was so much humidity in the air that at times the surface almost looked like it was being rained on. By the end of the night virtually every car was so dirty that their numbers were hard to read and just about every car in the field had at least some body damage to repair for Friday night.
Unlike the first two nights when the track slowed down as time trials commenced with the quickest qualifiers coming out very early, on Thursday the track got faster the more drivers ran on it and the quickest qualifier of the night was Lucas Lee at 17,194 seconds. Lee was the fifty first driver to take time on Thursday but produced the quickest time so far this week. All twelve preliminary events were won off the front row but there was more scrambling within the fields with more drivers coming from deeper in the pack to manage qualifying positions.
With the program moving along at a very quick pace once again, it was shortly after 9 pm when the field was presented for the thirty lap main event. Twenty four cars would again take the green, with no provisional starters and they would be racing for an additional five hundred dollars to the winner, thus the five additional laps.
UMP veteran Denny Schwartz would take the early lead from the outside pole as the outside line had been the best through most of the early action, allowing the drivers to keep their momentum up better than on the inside line. Kyle Hammer, driving a Brian Shaw second car, would quickly move into second as pole starter Zeke McKenzie would slip back. A lap six yellow for a spin would bunch the field but would be followed by the longest stretch of green flag racing of the event.
Schwartz would continue to lead but he was being challenged hard by Hammer and then Lucas Lee with them going nearly three wide off the corners on several occasions. Nicely began to move too at this point as after starting ninth on the grid, he drove up through the field and cracked the top five by the halfway point of the race, trailing Schwartz, Lee, Drake Troutman who was also on the move and Hammer.
The battle for the lead got especially intense as the front part of the pack caught the slower cars. In heavy traffic down the front chute, Lee squeezed under Schwartz for the lead and then Denny ran out of racing room in the heavy traffic and slid straight up into the wall, triggering a yellow and ending his great run to that point.
This gave Lee the lead but he would have Troutman and Nicely right behind him for the restart and back under green, Nicely would make a bold move to the outside of Lee and drive by him to gain the lead on lap twenty three. Two more quick yellows would keep the field bunched and give Troutman a clean shot at the leader as Lee would slip back just a bit at the end.
Trout was all over Nicely the last five laps but just couldn't get the momentum to get under Nicely as Tyler was running just a bit higher on the track and giving the inside line to Troutman but the track was just slippery enough and different than the first two nights that the preferred inside line from earlier this week just wasn't good enough on this night as the East Bay surface kept the drivers guessing and searching right up to the checkered flag. Nicely would cross the line at the checkers a couple of car lengths ahead of Troutman.
One driver who found a line that no one else was using and made it work was 2022 track champion here Bryan Bernhardt. Bernhardt, who has been struggling so far this week, was lucky to just make the show here on Thursday as he had to come from seventh just to qualify out of a B Feature.
But he did so and then decided to run right up against the wall, all the way around the track. No one has been able to make that work for an entire race so far this week and especially with the slick conditions on Thursday. However, Bernheadt did indeed make it work as he gradually charged through the field and first appeared in the top five only on the last yellow with just four laps to go. However, he continued to charge with reckless abandon and appearing to be the fastest driver on the track at the end, roared up to third at the finish and simply ran out of laps to make an even more impressive gain. Hammer and Lee would complete the top five with last night's winner Travis Varnadore being an early exit from the event.
However, despite all the banging and contact of the race, only five drivers failed to finish the event although most looked like they had been in a war, and lost, by the finish.
The final preliminary night of the Winter Nationals will be on Friday night as this grueling week of racing continues. All drivers will be looking for a good finish and no damage to repair for the Saturday night finale.
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