Ashton Winger, who is driving for Tampa Bay area businessman Jeff Mathews this year, led all thirty laps after starting on the pole to win the feature race Tuesday night for the Lucas Oil Late Model Series event at East Bay Raceway Park near Gibsonton. The win would be the first for Winger in Lucas Oil competition after having won his first major victory last season running with the World of Outlaws Late Model group.
Winger would face strong challenges from Kyle Bronson, Hudson O'Neal and Brandon Sheppard but would maintain his line to lead all laps. The closest he came to losing the lead was on lap nine after a restart when Dustin Mitchell slowed and Bronson was able to nose under him in turn one and grab the top spot temporarily. However, Winger would charge into turn three and make a rare outside pass which would allow him to be scored as the leader of the following lap, after which he dove back to the bottom and refused to yield that top spot at any other time.
It was another spectacular sunny day on Florida's East Coast and for the second night of racing, some of the sitting drivers from Monday night would join the action such as McCreadie, Freeman, Blair, Briggs and Thornton Jr while Owens jumped into a car driven on Monday by one of his buddies from Kentucky. However, there were also a few cars that didn't race on Tuesday after suffering damage during Monday night's show and the bottom line of sixty cars in action, while obviously a very good number, was still ten short of the 2022 field as Davenport and Clanton chose to cool their heels for a second straight night.
The easiest change to note early on was the condition of the track itself. Obviously, track officials have noted the complaints and gnashing of teeth by drivers, crews and fans over the condition of the race track and it's dry state that has led to a lot of one groove racing and a distinct lack of action. For when we arrived on Tuesday, the track was significantly wetter with some heavy equipment being used to till the surface.
All this lead Lucas officials to call for track packing to start a half hour earlier with all cars required to be on the track by 5:30 pm or face the loss of one lap of qualifying. However, they also felt the need to hot lap each session of cars twice(not needed) which drove the starting time of the show back by 30 minutes, no doubt triggering more gnashing of teeth, this time by the tv executives. The track was significantly quicker for qualifying on this night with Dennis Erb Jr and O'Neal being the quickest in their groups, with "Catfish" Erb quickest overall at 14.797 seconds as for the first time this week we would see that the walls needed scraping so the drivers could see them.
The format would be the same with six heats, three B Features and another thirty lap main event on Tuesday. Apparently the pressure on turned up on Tuesday as the first couple of heats saw plenty of contact between some of the drivers with some retaliation under yellow and ruffled feathers.
The program was further delayed when the lights in turn one went out just before the start of heat race number three. The fans sat patiently while the lights were worked on but they went out as soon as they were relit and things went black once again. Eventually track officials brought four banks of portable lights to that corner as I'm guessing these were "pirated" from various now dark corners of the pit area. They did the job and worked just fine but the time lost was somewhere between 60 and 90 minutes(I didn't keep track.). Eventually the program was restarted and went smoothly after that with the final checkered waving somewhere around 10:30 pm.
Twenty six drivers would earn starting spots in the thirty laps main event with Dustin Mitchell and Jason Riggs getting the provisional spots. Winger would get the jump from the pole and lead early over O'Neal who was trying to use the top side of the track to advance. However, it was Bronson who moved up quickly as he found a couple openings on the low side of the track and moved from fifth to second.
He then began to pressure Winger for the lead, which led to the brief exchange of positions on lap nine. However, after he was unable to hold the top spot, he began to fade back some with both O' Neal and Sheppard getting past him.
Thirteen laps of nonstop racing would see Winger extend his lead slightly while O' Neal and Sheppard had a good battle for second, each trying the outside but both eventually gave up on it. Finally, Bronson slowed with mechanical issues, setting up a six lap race to the finish. Winger would get a good jump but O'Neal would pull up beside him and nearly steel away the lead. But Ashton kept his line and failed to bobble while ONeal heated up his tires, faded back just a bit and then dove back to the bottom in front of Sheppard, signaling that his opportunity had failed.
Winger would continue to hug the low line and would lead home the blue cars of O'Neal and Sheppard. Brandon Overton, having another solid run in John Henderson's car, would perhaps up the sale of Warrior chassis as he would finish fourth ahead of the always steady D. Erb. Eight of the starting field of twenty six would not complete the main although there were just three yellows, all for one car incidents.
The attempt to widen the track and open up more racing lines was only successful to a point. The first couple of heats proved to be more fast paced but after the light issue delay, it seemed like the vast majority of the racing after that was right on the bottom with passing tough. It was pointed out to me that perhaps because this is East Bay that our expectations might be overblown on what we could expect for racing and that theory does perhaps hold some credence. Still, following a disturbing trend set over the past ten days or more, there just seems to be way more follow the leader racing and with the way the track is graded now up to the wall, plus what appears to be a tired out surface that doesn't hold water like it used to and seems to turn crumbly much quicker, that the greatest days of East Bay might be in its past as it gets ready for its retirement next year.
Racing will continue on Wednesday night with the top prize upped to seven thousand to win and the return of point racing will be on Thursday night which should trigger a few more entrants also. It was reported that the Monday night crowd was the largest ever for a Monday night at the WinterNationals and the crowd on Tuesday was another huge one, so a record on this night might very well have been set too.
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