{"id":13663,"date":"2012-09-06T19:36:40","date_gmt":"2012-09-06T19:36:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/?p=13663"},"modified":"2012-09-06T19:36:40","modified_gmt":"2012-09-06T19:36:40","slug":"shirley-hopes-to-continue-memorable-season-with-a-45000-world-100-victory-this-weekend-at-eldora-speedway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/front-page-news\/shirley-hopes-to-continue-memorable-season-with-a-45000-world-100-victory-this-weekend-at-eldora-speedway\/","title":{"rendered":"Shirley Hopes To Continue Memorable Season With A $45,000 World 100 Victory This Weekend At Eldora Speedway"},"content":{"rendered":"

Illinois Star Bidding For Unprecedented Single-Season Sweep Of DIRTcar UMP\u2019s Biggest Race & Points Titles<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"ROSSBURG, OH \u2013 Sept. 6, 2012 \u2013 Brian Shirley is hoping to go where no man has gone before this weekend (Sept. 7-8) at Eldora Speedway.<\/p>\n

If Shirley can find a way to capture the 42nd<\/sup> annual World 100 on Saturday night, he would be in position to pull off an unprecedented DIRTcar UMP hat trick \u2013 winning the circuit\u2019s biggest race, most high-profile touring series (DIRTcar Summer Nationals) and most important points title (national championship) in a single season.<\/p>\n

Shirley, 31, of Chatham, Ill., already has this year\u2019s DIRTcar Summer Nationals \u2018Hell Tour\u2019 crown in his back pocket and he holds a solid lead in the organization\u2019s national points standings with five weeks of points competition remaining. So it\u2019s the World 100 \u2013 the $45,000-to-win Grand Daddy of Dirt Late Model racing \u2013 that stands as the primary hurdle between him and dirt-track immortality.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt would definitely be a dream come true to win all three (major DIRTcar UMP prizes) in one year,\u201d said Shirley, who began driving a dirt Late Model in 2002 after his promising career as an American Motorcycle Association flat-track racer was cut short by an injury. \u201cYou couldn\u2019t ask for anything better than putting your name in the history book like that. We\u2019re just blessed that everything\u2019s gone our way this year to give us an opportunity to do what we\u2019ve done and maybe pull off something no one has ever accomplished.\u201d<\/p>\n

Defeating the most star-studded dirt Late Model field of the season \u2013 at perhaps the most famous and intimidating half-mile oval in the country \u2013 will be a supreme challenge for Shirley, who has not scored a top-five finish in a crown-jewel event at Eldora. But he enters the World 100 with plenty of confidence about his chances for success.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think I\u2019m more focused and prepared than I\u2019ve ever been for the World 100,\u201d said Shirley, who has made two World 100 A-Main starts (sixth in 2008, 28 th<\/sup> in \u201910) and four appearances in June\u2019s $100,000 Dirt Late Model Dream headliner (top finish of 15th<\/sup> in \u201911). \u201cExpectations are definitely high for us. I really want that race. I\u2019m just dying to win it and show people how good we are there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shirley has tasted victory at Eldora, albeit on a smaller scale. He won the 2010 DIRTcar UMP Nationals, the circuit\u2019s annual points-season-ending event that has provided him very valuable tours around the high-banked track.<\/p>\n

\u201cGoing there for the (UMP) Nationals has really helped our Eldora program a bunch,\u201d said Shirley. \u201cWe learn a lot from those extra laps, and it\u2019s a reason why we have been able to make the races at the Dream and the World now on a pretty good program. We\u2019ve won a couple heat races now, and we\u2019ve won a B-Main. We\u2019ve put ourselves in contention. But besides that sixth-place finish (in the \u201908 World 100), we just haven\u2019t done the right things in the feature.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s all about experience,\u201d he continued. \u201cYou can\u2019t explain to people enough that experience means so much when you\u2019re going against the caliber of drivers that are at Eldora. So many of them guys have been racing there so long and understand 100-lap races better than I do. We\u2019re so immature to them. We just don\u2019t run a lot of 100-lap races, so it\u2019s so hard to understand them. You just gotta be in \u2018em and understand the agony of defeat.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shirley lived those words just three months ago during the Dream at Eldora. He won the event\u2019s sixth heat race to earn the pole position starting spot in the 100-lap A-Main, but he was unable to take advantage of the opportunity. After running second to eventual winner Shane Clanton of Fayetteville, Ga., for the first 20 laps, he gradually faded from contention before retiring and placing 20th<\/sup>.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo be honest, I was so heartbroken over the Dream, my confidence just went down,\u201d said Shirley. \u201cI was down in the dumps for a week or so before my wife (Shannon) kicked me in the ass and told me to get up and go show everybody that it wasn\u2019t an accident that we won a heat, started on the pole and ran up front early.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shaken from his Eldora hangover by his better half, Shirley headed out on the DIRTcar Summer Nationals one week later and promptly caught fire. He authored a spectacular assault on the grueling \u2018Hell Tour,\u2019 winning the $25,000 title on the strength of five wins, 21 top-five and 22 top-10 finishes in 28 events.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was because of my wife that we turned things around for the Hell Tour,\u201d said Shirley. \u201cShe gave me the confidence to believe in myself. She made me realize that even though we didn\u2019t do good in the Dream as far as the feature was concerned, there were 80 other people who went home without even making it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shirley\u2019s recollection of the 2012 Dream was soothed even further when he recently found a previously undetected problem with the car he drove in that race, a brand-new Pierce machine that he built with bigger tracks like Eldora and Knoxville (Iowa) Raceway (the site of his career-highlight win in the 2006 Knoxville Late Model Nationals) in mind.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were lucky enough that we didn\u2019t have to use the (new) car this summer on the Hell Tour,\u201d said Shirley, \u201cand when we started working on it (last week) to get it ready for the World we found that we had a right-rear shock broken. We realized we weren\u2019t as bad as we thought we were in the (Dream) feature. There was a reason we didn\u2019t have a handle on the situation in the big race.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat proved to me that sometimes we have to do a better job at diagnosing the situation when something does happen. When you think you have a good car and then, all of a sudden, it goes to hell, you think it\u2019s you and whether you did the right things. You start second-guessing yourself. But really, you have to look into the situation a little better. It\u2019s a race car, and there are thousands of mechanical issues that can happen to cause a problem.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m definitely not saying we would have won the (Dream) by no means,\u201d he added, \u201cbut I think if we didn\u2019t have that shock go bad it definitely would\u2019ve saved us a top five or a top 10, which would have been a respectable finish. That\u2019s a positive we can take back to Eldora.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shirley will head into battle at Eldora this weekend with his car at full strength once again \u2013 and his hopes of holding the coveted World 100 globe trophy riding high.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s hard to describe how much we think about that race daily,\u201d said Shirley, who will bid to become just the second driver to win the DIRTcar Summer Nationals and World 100 in the same season, joining legend Billy Moyer of Batesville, Ark. (1994). \u201cLike any racer, I probably think of races at Eldora more than any other race we go to. There\u2019s just so much prestige there.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re so looking forward to trying to put our name in the record books there. And I\u2019d like to get a World 100 win obviously for everybody in Illinois. An Illinois guy hasn\u2019t won it yet (Moweaqua, Ill.\u2019s Shannon Babb crossed the finish line first in 2005 but was disqualified for weighing in light), so I\u2019d love to be the first and make everybody back home proud.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 42nd<\/sup> annual World 100 weekend begins with Thursday\u2019s rigorous tech inspection of cars to assure compliance to DIRTcar specifications and the draw for placement in each of the two rounds of single-lap time-trial runs slated for Friday evening. The top 84 qualifiers will automatically advance to Saturday\u2019s six heat races, while the balance of the 20-car line-ups for those heats will be determined through three qualifying features on Friday; each paying $1,000 to win.<\/p>\n

The top three finishers from each of Saturday\u2019s six 15-lap heats, along with the two quickest cars from time trials that did not advance, will move on to the World 100. Heat finishers 4-11 will line-up into one of two 20-lap B-Features that will complete the 30-car starting field.<\/p>\n

Although they won\u2019t advance into the World 100, the drivers remaining on the track at the completion of each B-Feature will compete in a 5-lap scramble that pays $1,000 to win and a trip to the historic Eldora stage.<\/p>\n

Tickets for the World 100 \u2013 reasonably priced as low as $40 for the two-days \u2013 may be purchased online at www.EldoraSpeedway.com<\/a> or by calling the track office at 937-338-3815 during normal business hours. Tickets will also be available at the track on race day.<\/p>\n

Fans can also watch the World 100 live on-line this year by visiting www.EldoraSpeedway.com<\/a> and pre-ordering a streaming pay-per-view broadcast of the action.<\/p>\n

For more information on DIRTcar Racing, visit www.DirtCar.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Illinois Star Bidding For Unprecedented Single-Season Sweep Of DIRTcar UMP\u2019s Biggest Race & Points Titles ROSSBURG, OH \u2013 Sept. 6, 2012 \u2013 Brian Shirley is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"publish_to_discourse":"","publish_post_category":"","wpdc_auto_publish_overridden":"","wpdc_topic_tags":"","wpdc_pin_topic":"","wpdc_pin_until":"","discourse_post_id":"","discourse_permalink":"","wpdc_publishing_response":"","wpdc_publishing_error":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[22,3,21,60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured","category-front-page-news","category-upcoming-events","category-world-of-outlaws"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13663"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13663\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13666,"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13663\/revisions\/13666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/karnac.com\/flanews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}