The Winter Nationals series at East Bay Raceway begins to wind down with the fifth straight night of racing held on Friday night, January 29th. It was a sunny day in the Tampa area but cool once again and a night that would eventually require the same heavy clothes that one would wear this time of year much farther North. The warm weather has apparently departed along with the rain but what the heck, we are still racing in January while much of the North is digging out from yet another snow storm.
The hardest working people in racing, laboring for the fewest dollars, the pit crews, have done it again as after Thursday night's marathon with double feature races and plenty of wrecked cars, they have done their magic once again and the car count is at seventy seven for night five, only down one race car from the week's high count. Many of the crews do remarkable work getting their teams' cars back on the track, sometimes when it looks like there is no way the machines can be repaired and especially at the track and not at their shops. But they somehow always seem to get it done.
Things did seem a bit more tense in the pits before the races started tonight. Nearing the end of the week, drivers not doing well are feeling the pressure to produce more and some big name teams have struggled all week. The highest money of the week is also on the line for these last couple of nights and for teams that have struggled to even make a main, the racing budgets are starting to feel a little bit tight as the frustration for many increases. And that is when drivers take chances that they normally might not.
The motor issues for Zach Dohm were just too much to be fixed at the track so his week has come to an end while the team focuses on his father Tim's new ride which he will try to qualify again on Friday. The worst thing about this is that we never got to see both race at the same time during Winter Nationals 2021.
The track appeared to be a bit wetter on Friday night as the prep crew is clearly trying to provide a race track the doesn't rubber up to the extent that it did on Thursday night. However, their efforts would again only be partially successful and the last twenty laps or so of tonight's feature would again be run on a rubbered up track that made passing nearly impossible.
However, the evening started out promising with some lively action in the heat races including one big "dust up" between Tyler Erb and Mason Zeigler that we will talk about just a bit later. However, the incident did result in Erb being "sat down" for the remainder of the evening.
The format remained the same for night five with six heat races after qualifying, the B Features and the main event, up to fifty laps on this night. Action was hard and fast in the preliminaries but the pattern of the up front starters winning held as all six heat races and two of the three B's were won right off the front row with the lone exception being the win by Jonathan Davenport from row two. However, as testament to the continued strength of this field, drivers such as Davenport, Moran, Eckert,Richards, Scott, O'Neal, Sheppard and others all had to run B Features on this night.
The track did start to develop two grooves during the B Features and there was hope that it would widen out further for the main event. There was also the hope that we would get more clean racing in the main tonight and not be so bogged down with a series of yellow flags as we were still looking for that clean race where they could go green to checkered.
And for the first twenty laps of the main, that's exactly what we had with Brian Shirley maintaining the top spot but Bobby Pierce was knocking down the outside wall repeatedly as he tried to get by for the lead. Boom Briggs was having a great run with Tim McCreadie and Mike Marlar close behind.
Then we got the first of five more yellow flags during an eleven lap period which several times broke up what were some great battles as the lead was swapped between Jimmy Owens and Mike Marlar. Pierce's strong run ended when he got a flat tire on the left front and tried to run it that way and he was OK as long as he restarted on the top side but once he got stuck on the bottom lane, he was done.
Marlar made a great run on the cushion to take over the lead, then inexplicably chose to race on the bottom following another yellow and he was passed easily for the lead by Overton who had gradually worked his way to the front. Once he took over the top spot, the track started to take on rubber and the whole character of the race changed. While several battled for second, Overton pulled away from the field and the race was over. Drivers like Marlar, Shirley and Briggs put their cars in reverse and dropped like rocks in the field.
Overton's only challenge at the end was heavy lapped traffic but those drivers moved out of the groove a bit more easily than some earlier in the week and he drove home for an uncontested win. Tyler Bruening had a great run, showing consistency as he gradually worked his way forward and at the end, while he was considerably behind the winner, he got his first ever podium finish with Lucas Oil, no doubt pleasing all his Hawkeye state fans. What was ever better was that teammate Shane Clanton also made the top five so it was a very good showing for the team. McCreadie finished fourth and Moran gained a lot of positions to finish fourth.
While a considerable amount of equipment was torn up earlier in the evening, the feature race itself saw only a half dozen or so drivers not go the distance. One that didn't finish the event was Chase Junghans, who ended up on his roof in turn four after tangling with Zeigler which led to tense words between the two with the action quickly separated by series officials.
Speaking of action, the biggest "dust up" of the week so far occurred during heat race number five when an aggressive pass by Zeigler knocked Tyler Erb out of the groove and cost him a qualifying spot. Erb responded by slamming into Zeigler's car on the cool down lap, which resulted in him getting disqualified for the rest of the night. This set the crowd into motion and they came alive unlike any other moment of the entire week. Erb is on thin ice with series officials for both major series right now and no matter his feelings, he needs to rein himself in if he plans to continue driving Late Models and touring the country, It's just that simple. And while series officials get stern looks on their faces when such a thing happens, secretly inside they must be rejoicing as every group needs a villain and Erb right now, whether he realizes it or not, has taken on that persona. Let's face it; over the years a number of drivers have used that tactic as their "gravy train" and have made a lot of money by working off that plan.
And if Erb is now public enemy number one, Zeigler must be close behind. He was involved in two overly aggressive actions on this night too, and has also been guilty of bending up his quarter panels at least twice earlier this week leaning on other people. There have been several other times when rough driving has been the order of the night and it seems like everyone is pushing each other around more than the normal amount. Probably at least part of that has to do with the large and competitive field and of course the character of this track, which has action as a part of its name, particularly when they can provide the racers with a wide and racy surface with which to do battle on. And candidly I would have to say that while the field of cars has been great all week, the track conditions have been a bit disappointing with the drivers really not able to show totally what they can do because the track just hasn't been real racy from beginning to end of each night. However, everyone will be back to give it one last shot on Saturday night in another fifty lap feature that will close down the Late Model portion of the racing at East Bay but they have still a solid two weeks of racing left for various divisions.
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