Pete Orr Sportsmanship Award

Winning The Governor's Cup

                            
October 16, 2000

(KNS) You knew it was going to be a night to be remembered. The moon, a few clicks past full, crept into the eastern sky and the ground shook with the deep rumble of 35 thunderous late model stock cars on the eastern cast of Florida. The prize was the Cup. Jimmy Cope proved in the end to have been the one who earned it.

Cope qualified and started in 15th position and immediately began his charge.

Young B.J. McLeod perhaps was lucky after all. His motor developed problems in practice on Saturday afternoon, and had to sit out the race. McLeod was the runner up at 14 year old two years ago.

Billy Bigley Jr.'s # 37 Monte Carlo suffered from a broken fuel line just after the half way mark Bigley had been running in the top five all night after starting 5th. Bigley was the runner up for the NASCAR Slim Jim All Pro Series Championship last year and is leading the way this year for the top spot.


By lap 40 the race up front was dominated by Wayne Anderson with his father Dick Anderson repeatedly making contact with the #84. Several times near the 50 lap mark the contact was fairly hard.

Cope meanwhile had quietly moved into the eighth spot.

It was beginning to look like he had a good one ready for tonight.

Wendell Overstreet, driver of the blue #56 from St Petersburg, got together with fellow Sunshine Speedway racer Billy Mowery in the early going. Overstreet made pretty hard contact with the wall in turn one and ended his first Governor's Cup race.

Wayne Jefferson, driving the white number 1 late model, had a good run for his first Cup race, as did Travis Kittleson in the #88. Kittleson, only in his second year of stock car racing is moving on to at least a partial American Speed Association. Unofficially Kittleson brought his Bob Steele Chevrolet home seventh.

Jimmy Cope sat back and by lap 130 was sitting behind watching Wayne Anderson and David Rogers battle side by side trying to each get by the older Anderson. For the next 15 laps he had the best view of the intense lap after lap battle between the first three cars. Contact was being made on nearly every lap, as the cars came out of two and four the #84 was making contact with the #92 while Rogers #11 kept his position on the outside.

As good as it was it was going to quickly go just as bad.

On lap 153 Wayne made hard contact with Rogers in the middle of the front straight nearly losing control of his race car, as did Rogers. As they both held on and came out of turn two and down the back there was more racing contact with the red RaceCar College sponsored Monte Carlo of Wayne Anderson spinning.

His night was nearly over, but not because of the spin.

Jimmy Cope was about to inherit the keys to 35th annual Florida Governor's Cup. His black Myakka Brokers Monte Carlo must have been smiling.

As David Rogers brought his familiar TM Ranch machine around under the caution, he probably didn't realize his bid for another Cup win was about to fly away for this year. He couldn't have known that the head instructor of Joe Auer's Race Car College was about to teach him a lesson from a different book.

As the popular New Smyrna Speedway regular wheeled his car into turn four and was perhaps moving 35 mph or so, Wayne Anderson, apparently suffering from a severe case of road rage, accelerated though turn three and as he had David Rogers in his sights he accelerated again, the roar of the engine, startling fans. Before the mind could register the meaning of the moment, car parts from the rear end of Rogers' car flew and red sheet metal twisted and crumpled on the red front of Anderson's car slammed the door on Anderson's chances.

He also lost the respect of thousands of race fans.

Cope had moved into second place with less than 50 laps to go.

It took a while to get back to racing though as the former Slim Jim Champion wasn't ready to go this quietly. As the track official that narrowly avoided certain death when Anderson's car slammed into the wall looked on, Anderson showed his skills at extricating himself from a race car. In the blink of an eye he was out of his car and seemed torn between whether he wanted to drag David Rogers out of the car or beat with his fists.