Starting Monday night, February 6th, it is Late Model week at East Bay Raceway Park near Gibsonton Florida. This week, one of the most highly anticipated weeks of the season for Late Model fans, kicks off six straight nights of Lucas Oil Series, one class programs here at the "Clay By The Bay", a venue that often provides spectacular racing action on its third mile, getting flatter by the moment, surface.
This year, fifty eight drivers would sign in for opening night action, down from last year's seventy entrants on opening night. However, it should be noted that I spotted at least eight drivers, many among the biggest names in the sport, that chose to sit out the opening night action. Certainly part of this was due to the fact that for some unearthly reason, Lucas Oil officials opted to make the first three nights of the racing here non point nights, even though everyone was already here. Apparently they don't care to provide a program that features all their best drivers even though the fans in the stands are still paying good money to see the race. It certainly must be a disappointment to fans that can only get to, say, a Monday night Lucas Oil program here and then find that McCreadie, Davenport, Owens, Clanton, Thornton Jr and others are not racing, even though their rigs are in the pits and the cars unloaded to work on. And the facts are that while this race is on the bucket list for many drivers, based on the location, time of the year and the reputation that the track has, the racing here does really not pay that well. Compared to many other big money races held throughout the country now, the purses here are pretty pedestrian with Monday night's show only paying five grand to win and the top money on Saturday night only fifteen thousand, a drop in the bucket compared to many other shows these days. East Bay officials must be relying on the February weather and reputation of the track to draw the drivers as most other races paying this kind of money would be met with up curled lips from many teams.
The format for Monday night's show would be a familiar one for Lucas Oil Series fans. The drivers would be split into two groups, with the fastest drivers starting on the pole of their heat races. Six heats were held and then three B Features which qualified twenty for cars for the main event. The two provisional starters would be the quickest timer in each group that hadn't made the feature through the traditional route. Quickest qualifiers were Tanner English and Tyler Erb with English being the quickest overall.
Quite frankly, the heats and B Features were bad. The track was too dry, the outside was crumbly and impossible to pass on and the racing was very one groove. A few drivers tried to advance using the high side but those plans were quickly abandoned as they dove back for the hub. With no apparent track prep strategy change from when the Modifieds raced last week, the results that they obtained were much the same, and that was not a positive result. I could see this coming after watching the Modified races last week but had hoped that there would be some changes made or that the Late Model tires would have perhaps a different effect on the racing surface. I certainly am no expert on reading this track, which is a most unusual one to decipher for anyone, but I could see this coming. In fact, it was locking down so bad that officials called for single file restarts during the B Features and they almost never do that.
Apparently even one of the great tracks in the country can fall into the same trap as many tracks do these days and that is to not put enough water on the track. When East Bay is too dry, it races just as bad as any other track in America and rubbers up just as quickly. After it appeared for the longest time following the third B Feature that they weren't going to touch the track, suddenly a water truck appeared on the track, dumping some H2O on the top side of the track. The truck, by the way, was greeted with cheers by many in the crowd. If track officials or perhaps Lucas officials or perhaps encouragement from the drivers was the prompt that was needed, who ever motivated the move should be applauded as the improved top side provided the drivers the only place to race other than following each other around the bottom and provided the only action of the main. While it still wasn't sufficient to keep the surface good for thirty laps, it did provide enough grip that a few of the drivers could venture up to the top side and put on a show.
As for the feature itself, Kyle Bronson, who should know this track like the back of his hand, would lead the first two laps from the pole before Tyler Erb would slip to his inside and take over the lead. Erb would then lead the last twenty eight laps of the main for an easy win. He was getting maximum traction right on the bottom and never moved up the track, except for the one instance when he shot to the top to block Ashton Winger's charge and screw up his run. Bronson, meanwhile, would make a steady charge backward, finishing out of the top ten.
Hudson O'Neal would move into second but even through five yellow flags, he would never be able to make a passing attempt on Erb who would continue to lead. After following each other around the bottom, even though the top had been juiced up, Brian Shirley was the first to jump up top and make it work. He gained quite a few positions until getting stuck on the inside on consecutive restarts and that messed up his plan.
The next to try the top side was Winger, who had started sixth and he made the top side work for him as he charged up to second and made the most intense attack on Erb. He was up beside the leader in turn four when Erb suddenly shot to the top of the track, an area he hadn't been running at all before that lap as I'm guessing he got a sign from his crew to go into "block mode." Erb cut off Winger who then jumped the cushion, losing several spots. He then got into the berm again, rolled back the nose on his car and eventually would park it.
After that it was Erb and O'Neal that would drive on over the final six lap sprint to the checkered after Winger stalled on the track. The late highlight was the charge of Tyler Millwood who had started twentieth, gradually moved toward the front and when the top side was open late, he took a gamble and went up there and found it to work as he passed numerous cars late to crack the top five, a first for him on the Lucas tour. Brandon Overton, driving the car of John Henderson and Dennis Erb would complete the top five.
Despite a rather lengthy main event caused by five yellow flags, the whole show was completed before 10 pm as officials really got the early part of the program moving at top speed and the way they were rushing around, you'd have thought a storm was coming.
If nothing else, Monday night's program showed that there are plenty of good drivers here and their cars are top notch. Given a track to race on, they WILL put on a show. Now the challenge is for track officials to give them a track that they can perform on and mostly that means putting enough water on the track so that there are multiple lanes to race on.
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