9th Annual Fall Nationals (15 Pictures)

[Jamie]

Here are a few of my favorite pictures from the 9th Annual Fall Nationals from Southern New Mexico Speedway in Las Cruces, NM. I flew out for the 3-day, $10,000 to win with $70,000+ in total purses, show. Over 80 modifieds made the trip with over 125 vehicles actually participating.

 

I want to thank everyone that chimed in with their advice as this was a new challenge to me as I had never shot daytime racing before. These are going to go from the first to the last day and will vary from night time flash to daytime and back to night time shots. Any and all C/C is appreciated in advance as I plan on making this a semi annual trip.

 

I'm not really not one for story telling but will a few of the pictures I will try and explain the shots.

 

R.C. Whitwell

 

Jason Hughes (winner of the $10,000 feature)

 

Jeremy Payne

 

McCurdy Jr. This car was very photogenic.

 

Driver from Minnesota, Nelson 44, with Jeff Taylor of Jeff Taylor Motorsports on the outside. Nelson is a big time fellow from his area and Jeff Taylor is known nationwide in the modified division as a premier driver. He started in the back of the 24 car field and worked his way to the front on the outside actually challenging for the lead before his motor began to let go. He was doing great until he got ran off of the back stretch and finished 6th, one spot out of the qualifying position.

 

 

A continuation:

 

Jason Hughes and Jeff Taylor battling it out in the final laps of the main for the night. You can clearly see Jeff's motor smoking right before it was about to let go. BTW the motor ended up making it through the whole race.

 

O'Neil. Unknown driver with an AWESOME wrap on his car.

 

Just a shot with 4 cars in the frame. I was using a 70-200 on the first two days and realized that it wasn't wide enough. I ended up using a 24-105 on the final daytime shots and gots some awsome shots with it.

 

Tommy Weider. He finished 2nd and is an employee of Jason Hughes of Hughes Chassis. As they raced I wondered if the student would "dump" the teacher for $10,000. As it turned out Tommy never really got a chance to get close to Jason except on the restarts and Jason would pull out to a 2-3 car lenght advantage coming out of four to the start finish line.

 

 

All of my pictures can be seen in this gallery.

 

9th Annual Fall Nationals

[NickHolt]

Some awesome work there Jamie!

 

Nick

[Jamie]

Nick thanks a bunch. I really feel like this is actually some of my best pictures I have ever taken. It definitely doesn't hurt that 98% of the cars are super photogenic and the ability to get about 5-8ft off of the racing surface and be safe. I think I am actually going to make this a semi annual trip as they have the "Winter MeltDown" in March.

[Boerneracehounds50]

great shots Jammie, that track sure took the rubber and the mountains in the back round are awesume.

[Jamie]

great shots Jammie, that track sure took the rubber and the mountains in the back round are awesume.

 

Thank you very much. As a matter of fact during the three days they actually tore the track up during the show to make sure they had a multi line track. The one time I thought they should have done it for sure, the A Main, they didn't and one of the top five finishers made the comment that the track "rubbered up" about 3 laps into the race. That made for a very fast train race that had Hughes lead wire to wire. I really thought that was an outstanding thing to do for the fans but to not do it before the Main race has me still scratching my head.

[Jamie]

Here is a link to the A-Main from the second qualifying race.

 

A-Main