Short Night At Volusia As Rain Wins The Feature

 It was bound to happen at some point but for race fans hoping to attend Friday night's DIRTcar Nationals, the hope was that the beautiful and warm weather would continue right through Saturday night's finale for the World of Outlaws Late Models and the Super DIRTcar Big Block Modifieds. 

It was another sunny day for most of the day and temperatures were at their highest point of the week so far but a strong wind was blowing and that was the driving force for a cold front that was moving across the state of Florida as the day wore on. Despite predictions that most of the rain would dry up before it hit the Daytona Beach area, the skies would get very dark by race time and only three Late Model heats would be completed before it started to rain. It didn't rain too hard for an extended period but it never would shut off completely with heavy mist at times making track drying impossible and rather than tear the track up so bad that it would be a poor track on Saturday for the finale for both classes, the program was called sometime after 9 pm. 

Before the rains hit, a field of fifty four Late Models and forty Big Blocks had signed in to race. The program was scheduled to be the same as in previous nights except the Late Models were scheduled to run an additional ten laps. 

Missing from the field on Friday were Late Model drivers Stacy Boles, Doug Drown and David Breazeale with only Boles expected to run again later this week while the only Big Block driver absent was Stewart Friesen who was racing in the Truck Series at the big track. 

The track was just a bit different on Friday night with perhaps the extra heat and wind drying it out prematurely but during qualifying it slowed down significantly quite quickly and was apparently tough to negotiate and a number of drivers found themselves jumping the cushion and turning some bad laps. 

The field was divided into two groups and the quickest two drivers were Brandon Overton and Bobby Pierce with Pierce being the quickest overall at 16.345 seconds. Three heat races, all won right off the pole, went to Overton, Tim McCreadie and Dale McDowell. Heat four was ready to roll on to the track when the rain first hit and they would never see the track again on Friday. 

Big Block qualifying would see Max McLaughlin and Demetrios Drellos turn the quickest laps with McLaughlin being the fastest overall as the first car on the track with a time of  17.971 seconds. The Big Blocks would see no track time after qualifying. 

It did appear that another large crowd was building for the night as despite all the other goings on of the night, there were plenty of folks that wanted to see some dirt track action. 

Saturday night's action will see the Late Models and Big Blocks in their final performance with their longest and richest paying races of the week on tap.