After winning all 6 of the prior All Star races Danny Lasoski and team came in 3rd Friday night and when they called team owner Tony Stewart at Daytona he said "well I guess I need to get over there!" and sure enough Stewart flew in after happy hour for the Daytona 500 to mechanic his car and Lasoski to another win, but this one was a well earned victory....

Lasoski who won the dash for cash said that the track was real fast and it would take all he had to pass the guys who were starting in front him. His hands would be full this night as Craig Dollansky had shattered the track record the night before with a blistering 12.183 seconds a little over a 104 mph average around the EastBay 1/3 mile.

When the green flag dropped it was Terry McCarl who jumped out to the early lead and by lap 4 had started lapping the field while Lasoski who started 5th had moved up to 3rd and was in a heated battle with former "World of Outlaws" star Joey Saldena for the 2nd spot. Several cautions bunched the leaders up for restarts but everytime it was McCarl who jumped out and pulled away, his car was hooked up and flying! With lapped cars between him and Saldena and Lasoski it looked like McCarl had this one in the bag when 77 Craig Rankin and the 88w of Travis Whitnety hooked up literally coming down the front stretch causing a wild crash sending Whitney flipping end over end into the turn one wall collecting Rankin and McCarl. All the drivers escaped ok and amazingly McCarl was able to borrow a wing from the 1a of Robbie Smith during the clean up and get back out onto the track but unfortunately his car was to banged up and after 5 or so laps he retired his former front runner. This left the battle to Saldena and Lasoski. Lasoski was using the whole race track trying to get by 92s of Saldena finally getting by him and never looking back to take his 7th win out of 8 races Saldena got a hard earned 2nd, #1z of Greg Hodnett hung on for 3rd,track record holder #7d of Craig Hodnett took 4th and rounding the top 5 was the #18 of Dean Jacobs.

A beaming Tony Stewart who in just 12 hours would be buckling up for the Daytona 500 was in the winners circle shaking hands and giving hugs as Lasoski was giving his victory speech.

After 16 solid days of some hard core racing the banged up EastBay Raceway provided some exciting racing for people from all over the country. Hats off to Stan Kolan and Tom Hall and their fantastic crew it was a winternationals that will be long remembered......From EastBay...Rick Anges

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