BARBERVILLE, FL – Feb. 15, 2010 –
BREAKING THROUGH: Before the start of Saturday night’s DIRTcar Nationals by UNOH finale at Volusia Speedway Park, Brady Smith stood by an Arizona Sports Shirts merchandise trailer behind the track’s grandstand and talked about his winless 2009 season on the World of Outlaws Late Model Series and his hopes of ending the dry spell in 2010.
Several hours later, Smith’s frustrating pursuit of his first checkered flag as a WoO LMS regular was over. He dominated the tour’s 50-lap A-Main, rolling to a victory that clearly showed he’s ready to be a title contender in his second campaign on the road with the Outlaws.
“We finally put a whole night together,” said Smith, who scored three runner-up finishes (and lost one sure-fire win to a flat tire on the last lap) during the 2009 WoO LMS season. “We swept the night — fast time, won our heat and won the feature. We had the Bloomquist car dialed in all night.
“Last year it seemed like we would qualify well and then not heat-race well, or not qualify well and then heat-race O.K. and start at the back of the feature. You have to be consistent all night if you want to race races against this kind of competition, so we sat and talked over the winter and got ourselves focused on putting whole nights together.
“That’s something we did here the last two nights,” added Smith, who won a heat and finished third in the 2010 WoO LMS season opener on Thursday night. “We qualified well enough to start on the front row of our heat both nights, and we were able to win both heats. That put us up front in the feature and we took advantage of it.”
One year ago, of course, Smith got off to a disappointing start in the WoO LMS lidlifter at Volusia, failing to qualify for the Thursday-night A-Main after a heat-race tangle sent him into the turn-four wall. He rallied to finish second in the Saturday event, but he still left Florida in a major hole — 19th in the points standings, 71 points behind the leader — and never climbed higher than sixth in the rankings before settling for an eighth-place finish.
Now Smith, 32, of Solon Springs, Wis., is the WoO LMS points leader for the first time in his career — and the possibilities for 2010 seem endless.
“It’s pretty early to start thinking about points, but after the way we started out here last year it’s a lot better to come out on top,” said Smith, who sported a new sponsor, Michaletz Trucking of Owatonna, Minn., on the quarter-panels of his car at Volusia. “We’ll just take it and keep working.”
WHAT A COMEBACK: As Tim McCreadie sat buckled into his backup car awaiting the start of a B-Main on Saturday night, his hopes of chasing the WoO LMS championship for the first time since he won it in 2006 seemed to be disappearing in the cold Florida air.
“I could almost cry right now,” said McCreadie, shaking his head.
McCreadie, 35, of Watertown, N.Y., knew his chances of charging from the rear of the field to grab one of two transfer spots available in the 12-lap B-Main weren’t good, so he was resigned to absorbing a crushing DNQ to end a difficult day. There was already a somber feeling running through his team — on Tuesday one of his teammate Vic Coffey’s close friends, longtime Sweeteners Plus employee Leo LaVerdi Jr., passed away suddenly at the age of 46 (Coffey skipped Saturday’s show to attend the funeral), and on Saturday his crewman Mike Amell’ mother, 19-year-old daughter and girlfriend were involved in a highway accident near the track and rushed to a local hospital — and the driveline problems that sidelined McCreadie’s primary car during heat action continued the run of bad news.
But a funny thing happened when McCreadie pulled out of the B-Main during an early caution period. He was informed by WoO LMS director Tim Christman that Saturday night’s A-Main included a provisional starting spot for the highest-ranked driver in the week’s DIRTcar Nationals by UNOH Late Model points standings who failed to qualify — a position that would go to McCreadie provided Wisconsin’s Dan Schlieper held on to a transfer spot in McCreadie’s B-Main.
When Schlieper secured a second-place finish to qualify for the 50-lap A-Main, McCreadie had new life. He took full advantage of the unexpected opportunity, thrilling the chilled crowd with a memorable drive from the 28th starting spot to a third-place finish.
“I thank the (World Racing Group) organization for making the (starting) field bigger tonight,” said McCreadie, who was short on manpower on Saturday night because Amell left the track to be with his loved ones at the hospital (Amell’s girlfriend and his daughter’s friend were treated and released, but his mother and daughter remained there on Monday undergoing treatment for back injuries). “When you have a big Speedweek like this with so many cars and the track this size, I dont think there’s anything wrong with starting 30 cars. It helps more guys make a little money to get home, so kudos to the organization for adding a few more spots to the feature.
“It definitely helped us,” he continued. “Having a chance to race definitely salvaged our night. It’s just nice to finish (the week) on a strong note. It makes me feel like all the hard work we put in produced something.”
With McCreadie’s spectacular outing sending him home sitting fourth in the WoO LMS points standings (he also finished fourth on Thursday night), the odds of him running the tour fulltime jumped exponentially. He stopped short of committing to an all-out assault on a second title, but he’s certainly considering it.
“I’d like to do the series,” said McCreadie. “These last two runs definitely make me think I can do it. We’ve struggled a lot (during his season-opening trek to Georgia and Florida), but at least now I know that with the guidance I got from Mark Richards (of Rocket Chassis) and other people this week, I feel like we can contend with these guys.
“It would be fun to do (the WoO LMS) again, so we’ll see. We’re gonna go home, take a couple days, and see what everybody says.”
NICE START: Josh Richards proved no one knows opening night on the WoO LMS like he does when he captured the tour’s lidlifter at Volusia for the fourth consecutive year on Thursday night, but he once again fell short of pulling off a historic sweep of Outlaw action during the DIRTcar Nationals by UNOH.
A third-place starting spot in Saturday night’s A-Main — light years better than the 17th-place starting position he was saddled with on Thursday night — wasn’t enough to make Richards the first driver to sweep the two WoO LMS events that are traditionally part of the DIRTcar Nationals by UNOH. (Since 2005 a pair of Outlaw shows have been contested at Volusia every February except in 2007, when rain washed out one scheduled event.) The soon-to-be 22-year-old from Shinnston, W.Va., settled for a fourth-place finish in Saturday’s 50-lapper, leaving him tied for second in the points standings with Earl Pearson Jr. of Jacksonville, Fla.
“The track was a lot drier,” said Richards, comparing Saturday’s surface to the Thursday conditions he mastered. “We had the same tires McCreadie had on, but for me (the compound) was way too soft. I had to bury myself against that bottom and just ride. I couldn’t run that top like McCreadie could.
“I think the car was way better than what it showed though, so I was tickled with a fourth.”
ON THE MEND: WoO LMS regular Shane Clanton was credited with a pair of last-place finishes at Volusia — 29th on Thursday, 30th on Saturday — but not as a result of any bad racing luck.
Clanton, 34, of Locust Grove, Ga., traveled to the half-mile knowing his name would appear at the end of each evening’s finishing order. Still recovering from a serious strep infection that materialized after he cut his left thumb in his team’s race shop and forced him to spend a week in the hospital, Clanton had no choice but to simply enter each WoO LMS event and use emergency provisionals to gain entry to the A-Main fields for points-chasing purposes.
It was a tough situation for Clanton, who could do nothing more than slowly circle the track during the pace laps in RSD Enterprises teammate Tony Knowles’s car and quietly drive into the pits as the race began. He was unable to race competitively because a PICC line remained in his left arm so he could receive IV bags filled with powerful antibiotics every eight hours in order to rid his bloodstream of the strep bacteria that had spread from his infected thumb.
“It’s no fun being here and not racing,” said Clanton, who will have to make an unprecedented rally to win the 2010 WoO LMS title after leaving Volusia tied for 29th in the points standings, 112 points behind leader Brady Smith. “I wanted to step on the gas when I was out there, but I knew I couldn’t.”
Clanton said doctors hope to remove the PICC line from his arm next week if his recovery progresses on schedule.
IN A HOLE: Steve Francis has some catching up to do in the WoO LMS points standings after a 28th-place finish in Saturday night’s A-Main ended what he termed a “frustrating” season-opening trip to the Southeast.
Back driving his own equipment after spending the last two seasons with Maryland car owner Dale Beitler, Francis managed just one top-five finish in 10 starts at three tracks in Georgia and Florida. His highlight was a fifth-place run (from the 19th starting spot) in Thursday night’s WoO LMS A-Main at Volusia.
“This was not necessarily what we wanted to start with,” said Francis, who parked his under-performing new Rocket car after a subpar DIRTcar UMP-sanctioned outing on Wednesday night at Volusia and brought out a Rocket that he prepared for NASCAR star Ryan Newmans limited dirt Late Model appearances last year. “Everybody worked hard, but sometimes things go right and sometimes they go wrong — and everything that could go wrong did go wrong this week. That’s why they call it racing.”
After a busted oil-pump belt eliminated Francis just three laps into Saturday night’s A-Main, he headed out the pit gate mired in 15th in the points standings, 60 points behind leader Brady Smith.
“We’ll go back and regroup,” said Francis, who will marry Amanda Ferrell on Feb. 27. “I’ve left here in worse shape than this before.”
ETCETERA:
* Sporting a new, silver-dominated color scheme on his No. 29, 2008 WoO LMS champ Darrell Lanigan appeared primed for the start of the tour schedule after winning Monday night’s DIRTcar UMP Late Model A-Main at Volusia. But he was never a factor in WoO LMS action, only managing quiet finishes of 11th (Thursday) and 12th (Saturday).
* Rick Eckert’s pair of WoO LMS were opposites — on Thursday he started seventh and faded to a 13th-place finish, and on Saturday he started 12th and improved to seventh at the checkered flag. The veteran from York, Pa., who is fielding his own team this season after his longtime car owner Raye Vest’s passing last year, thought he could have climbed even higher on Saturday if his car’s engine hadn’t been plagued by an oil-pressure problem.
* Tim Fuller’s hopes for a fast start in the 2010 points battle weren’t realized. Racing at a track where he’s never enjoyed much success with a dirt Late Model (his best WoO LMS finish is an eighth in 2009), he struggled en route to finishes of 14th and 21st. He’s tied for 16th in the points standings (-64 points); last year he left Volusia seventh in the points races, 36 points behind.
* As far as Chub Frank is concerned, his visit to Volusia Speedway Park never happened. He experienced no memorable moments during the DIRTcar Nationals by UNOH, finishing 17th and 18th in the WoO LMS A-Mains and failing to qualify for both DIRTcar UMP Late Model events that were run earlier in the week.
* Clint Smith had to make an engine change after suffering a blown powerplant during Wednesday night’s DIRTcar UMP program, but a solid heat-race effort and 13th-place finish in Saturday night’s WoO LMS show had him feeling like he’s “headed in the right direction” with his new Rocket car.
* It wasn’t a good week for 2009 WoO LMS Rookie of the Year Russell King, who used an emergency provisional to start both Outlaw A-Mains. He did not finish either event, scoring a pair of 24th-place finishes.
* Teenage sensation Austin Hubbard made his WoO LMS debut behind the wheel of Dale Beitler’s familiar No. 19. The 2010 Rookie of the Year candidate qualified through a B-Main for both WoO LMS headliners and registered finishes of 10th and 21st.
* Other drivers on hand at Volusia who are contemplating ’10 WoO LMS Rookie of the Year assaults were Jill George of Cedar Falls, Iowa, and Tony Knowles of Tyrone, Ga. Both racers failed to make an A-Main cut.
* Tim Dohm of Cross Lanes, W.Va., who earned the $500 WoO LMS ‘Bonus Bucks’ cash on both Thursday (finished eighth) and Saturday (16th), said he’s considering following the national tour with team owner Tracy Seymour.
* Brent Robinson missed a couple days of classes at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va., to run the DIRTcar Nationals by UNOH. He failed to qualify for an A-Main in his No. 3, which carried a new color scheme.
* Jordan Bland, the runner-up in the 2009 WoO LMS Rookie of the Year battle, said he plans to follow the tour’s schedule this season as long as it’s financially feasible for him. He reported during a Wednesday Media Day press conference that his father decided to retire as a team owner during the off-season, but the elder Bland did leave Jordan all the necessary equipment to go racing and told him, “Now it’s up to you to try to make it on your own like Scott (Bloomquist) and Billy (Moyer).”
Bland turned heads with strong DIRTcar UMP runs early in the week, running second until a sealed-up tire (Monday) and a spin (Wednesday) ended his bid. He failed to qualify for a WoO LMS A-Main.
* Tyler Reddick, who last year became the youngest A-Main starter in WoO LMS when he qualified for the tour’s opener at Volusia, was unable to make the cut for a feature this year. The 15-year-old from Corning, Calif., missed transferring through a B-Main by three spots on Thursday and five on Saturday.
NEXT UP: The WoO LMS will be silent for one month before returning to Florida on March 19 for the first-ever tour event at Ocala Speedway. A visit to Screven Motor Speedway in Sylvania, Ga., on March 20 will round out the early-season weekend in the Southeast.
For more information on the WoO LMS, visit www.worldofoutlaws.com.
The World of Outlaws Late Model Series is brought to fans across the country by many important sponsors and partners, including Arizona Sport Shirts (Official Apparel Company), Armor All (Official Car Care Products), Hoosier Racing Tires (Official Racing Tires), STP (Official Fuel Treatment), SuperClean (Official Cleaner-Degreaser) and VP Racing (Official Racing Fuel); in addition to contingency sponsors Eibach Springs, Integra Shocks, MSD Ignition, Ohlins Shocks, Pink Carburetors, Pro Power Engines, Quartermaster, Rocket Chassis and Wrisco Aluminum.