Racing action continued on Thursday night, February 13th at Volusia Speedway Park as the duo of World of Outlaws Late Models and DIRT Car Big Block Modifieds ran their third consecutive program in tandem. It was not the most dramatic of nights as both Jimmy Owens and Larry Wight led from wire to wire to win their respective feature races. Interestingly, both started on the outside pole, got an immediate lead and then rolled to relatively easy victories.
While much of the country continues to shiver under a cold blast including minus thirty or so wind chill temperatures recorded in my home area, here in Florida I actually had the audacity to complain about it being too hot today! High temps topped out at least 89 degrees with a good deal of humidity in the air also, in fact even enough to cause a few pop up showers to form late in the pm and sprinkle at the track for a few minutes. It was nothing to worry about and for those of you not feeling too sorry for me, the other shoe is soon to drop here too, with an over night cold front set to sweep through, squeezing out a few showers while dropping the temperatures between twenty and thirty degrees and producing a biting wind too. Oh well, back to reality.
With both racing divisions having been nestled at the track for a few days now, there are not much in the way of changes or surprises in the fields entered. The Late Model field was actually the same as last night with the exception that G.R. Smith took the night off and actually may be done for the week with motor problems while Tyler Erb arrived from Texas to drive the second car from the Blake Spencer team.
The Big Block field slipped to thirty three with Tyler Thompson leaving with terminal motor issues and Matt Stangle ending his week in the wall last night. Ralph McBride, who's car has been here since the start of the week, arrived to drive it on Thursday but by the way it was smoking at the end of the Last Chance race, he may be done almost before he got started.
Thursday night's program would be identical to the previous nights in terms of number of races and length with the only difference being that the Big Blocks would start things off and run their feature race before the Late Models would finish things up.
Much pre race discussion continued over the disqualification of Dennis Erb from his win on Wednesday due to the fact that he failed to properly report for post race inspection. They are checking the cars on the infield slab for the new "droop rule" and then the leaders must report to the WoO trailer parked outside turn two where tire samples are taken. Both sides(the officials of WoO and Erb) are telling slightly different stories and unless you would actually ask both directly, it's near impossible to get the "straight scoop." and quite frankly, many of those defending Erb are coming more from the sympathy angle of a driver who hasn't won in a long time losing a hard earned win. The bottom line is that rules are rules, and a veteran driver like Erb should have known what the procedures were, especially after he finished in a teching position just the previous night. Erb didn't pout however, and he was back on Thursday once again to race as after all, that's how he makes his living.
After qualifying, heats and Last Chance races, it was feature time. Thirty cars started the Late Model feature with the emergency provisional drivers starting to accumulate. There were four of them on Thursday after Ivedent Lloyd decided not to exercise his right to also use one. Truly, some of these guys have made a career out of starting at the back of WoO fields, forfeiting most of their pay just to take a provisional and then being the first cars to get lapped, night after night. Hmm.
Owens got the jump right from the start over Brandon Sheppard as if there is any weakness on the #1 car, it seems to be on starts and restarts where he just doesn't seem to take off as well as some of the other drivers. Owens would walk away from the field on this night and never really be challenged as the drier the track got, the better his car seemed to handle and the faster he got in the low groove.
Josh Richards had a good battle with Sheppard before passing him and getting up to second. Before that, Richards and Kyle Bronson had some close moments on the front chute as they battled. Bronson seems have that knack of getting into scraps with nearly everyone he races with.
A late restart saw Dale McDowell get past Richards for second and that's the way the top three finished. Jonathan Davenport made a nice drive from fourteenth to finish fourth with Mike Marlar completing the top five. Only four cars didn't go the distance and all were on the lead lap at the end.
Wight won for the second straight night in the Big Blocks as he pulled away right at the start and put distance on the field. Stewart Friesen and Erick Rudolph drove up into second and third but they had nothing for Wight who kept both comfortably behind him.
There was only one yellow on lap fourteen for a stalled car, that of opening night winner Matt Williamson. However, Wight pulled away on the green from Friesen and that was the last the field saw of the winner as he drove away into the night. Just like Owens, Larry was able to put his car just where he needed to as lapped traffic was not an issue and he had considerable distance and three lapped cars between himself and Friesen at the finish. Friesen will now take Friday night off to run his truck at the big track so someone else will have to step up if there is to be a challenge to "Lighting Larry." There was only one car in the twenty six car field that failed to finish as this was a very smooth event, if not very compelling.
Perhaps I have been here just a little too long and have the same cars race just a little too much but a couple of the things I have seen haven't sat too well. For instance, Darrell Lanigan, the Late Model quick qualifier on Thursday, was found to be sitting too high when he was checked following his lap under the new "droop rule." His punishment was to set him back three places in the time trial finishing order so instead of starting on the pole of his heat race, he started on the outside pole! Not much of a punishment if you ask me. Isn't illegal just that. Not now under this new rule which has various levels of punishment depending how high in the air your car sits above the required level. So why is this rule wrote this way when cars are disqualified if they weigh in too light? Shouldn't there be the same levels of punishment for that rule then too? This is all just getting to be way too complicated, just like the cars themselves are.
For the second straight night the Big Blocks all lined up on the front chute for individual feature race introductions while the Late Models just roll on to the track and race. Aren't the Big Blocks the support class here? Why should they get special treatment two nights in a row while the main class just races? Especially on a night when the racing was running quite late due to a late start with a medical emergency in the grandstands?
Speaking of emergencies, there was quite a severe crash on the highway right in front of the track entrance that tied up traffic considerably. In fact the main highway was forced to detour right through the parking lot of the track until the damaged vehicles were removed. One report stated that everyone was OK but my source indicated that while the people in one vehicle were OK, the driver of the Jeep that barrel rolled several times and was ejected from the car was not so lucky.
As the racing vacation for many starts to draw to a close, racing will continue on Friday night with the same two classes in action. I suspect that this night will see the tougher fans in attendance as it is not going to be nearly as nice as the previous few nights have been.
No comments:
Post a Comment