On Saturday night, the sixth and final night of the Lucas Oil Racing Series East Bay Raceway Park Winter Nationals were concluded on a lovely night for dirt track racing in January. And for Tyler Erb, the current lightning rod of public opinion in the world of dirt track Late Model racing, it was a very satisfying night indeed. Twenty four hours after he was shut down after attempting a little post race payback after he felt he had been unfairly roughed up by another driver in making a pass that left him out of the feature, Erb came back to win the final fifty lap main event here on Saturday night and take home the biggest check of the week as he earned fifteen grand for the win.
Erb drew plenty of comment, both pro and con, after the victory but he was quite calm and non controversial as he accepted congratulations for the win and explained how he pulled off the victory. Erb was one of three different leaders in the event with Brandon Sheppard leading the early laps until a reoccurring handling problem the the team has been fighting all week saw him push up the track and leave the bottom side open for Erb, who was able to find the slick line through heavy lapped traffic to take the lead.
Shortly after, Tim McCreadie, who had gradually worked his way into contention, made a great move on a restart and rode the turn one banking as he blasted past Erb to take over the lead. Once in front, he opened up a considerable lead over Erb and a charging Jonathan /Davenport. But that big lead was wiped out by another yellow and on the restart, Erb used the same move to drive around McCreadie on the restart and then dive back to the bottom and pull away. Strangely, while the cushion didn't seem to work for anyone but Sheppard, the top side seemed to be the best way to get a good run on a restart and it was used twice in that manner to change the driver out front.
Once Erb was out front, he had relatively easy going until during the last ten laps Davenport began to cut significantly into Erb's healthy lead. It didn't appear that Davenport would be able to pose a challenge but he was really flying at the end and on the final lap opted to try the high side and drive around Erb. And he very nearly pulled off the stunner, as he got to within a car length of the winner and another lap or two could have produced a very different finish.
But as it was, Erb sweated out the win over Davenport with Sheppard muscling the Rocket house car home for third using the high side as he finished ahead of McCreadie and Hudson O'Neal. All cars on the track were on the lead lap at the end and twenty one took the checkered flag.
Seventy one cars signed in to race on the final night of the series as the impressive car counts held for the whole week, despite the normal wear and tear on the machines with eighty six different drivers racing the track at some point this week. Even the final night of the series produced one new entrant as Richie Stephens from Phenix City Alabama showed up for the finale.
Several drivers did pull out early and head for home or repairs before they attempted more racing this month but the strangest scratch of the night involved Delaware driver Ross Robinson. After discovering a problem with their primary car, they opted to roll out their back up machine to race. However, during the unloading process, Robinson some how managed to wrench his back to the extent that he was in too much pain to get into the car and race so the team was forced to scratch out of the action. Their participation at Bubba Raceway Park next week will depend on Robinson's healing process.
Mason Zeigler and Chase Junghans both pulled out back up cars to race on Saturday due to mechanical difficulties with their primary machines. For Junghans it was an especially frustrating wrap up to this series. After rolling his car on Friday night, he rolled out the back up, only to be involved in a tangle just laps into his heat race and he quickly called it a night and a series.
Many veteran fans and observers were calling the crowd on Saturday the largest ever for this event as spectators were literally parked on both sides of the highway leaving the track for up to at least a mile and the line to get into the grandstands when the gates opened was biblical in nature. In fact, crowds all week have been very large and perhaps this bodes well for the rest of the Florida racing events and the start of the season in other parts of the country.
Thanks to everyone at East Bay Raceway Park for their help along with the officials of the Lucas Series and others. It is a marathon undertaking to administer and run this six night extravaganza and everyone helped to make things go off very smoothly all week. I would also like to thank those strawberries that gave it their all to supply me with the most tasty strawberry shortcake around.
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