rebelracewriter Posted April 22, 2009 Report Share Posted April 22, 2009 World of Outlaws Late Model Series News & Notes: Wrapping Up The Doubleheader At Fayetteville Motor Speedway and Virginia Motor Speedway CONCORD, NC - April 20, 2009 - HEARTBREAK: Vic Coffey was so close to his first-ever World of Outlaws Late Model Series triumph last Friday night at Fayetteville (N.C.) Motor Speedway, he could taste it. So when the 2008 WoO LMS Rookie of the Year relinquished his race-long lead thanks to a flat right-rear tire coming down to the white flag, the sweetness of victory turned immediately into a sick feeling in his stomach. “I wanted to throw up,” Coffey said when asked how he reacted when the worn-through tire caused his Sweeteners Plus Rocket to slow with just over one lap remaining in the 50-lap A-Main. “To lose it at the bitter end like that – man, it's just hard to take. “These things (WoO LMS events) are hard enough to even put yourself in position to have a shot at winning. A lot of times you're just happy to qualify, so you hate to see a chance to win slip through your fingers.” Coffey, who scored one of his two WoO LMS career-best finishes of fourth last year at Fayetteville, fell to 22nd in the final rundown because he didn't make it to the checkered after tangling with Josh Richards in turn two. The 37-year-old from Caledonia, N.Y., said he got a bit low in turn two while fighting to maintain control of his car and collected Richards, who ended up hooked together with Coffey and tumbled from third place to 23rd. DRAMATIC CHANGE: Richards went from a commanding points lead to playing catch-up in the blink of an eye at Fayetteville. Yes, the four-tenths-mile oval's wild final lap was a shot in the gut to the 21-year-old star from Shinnston, W.Va. A solid third for the entire distance, Richards, who entered the event leading the WoO LMS points standings, backed off in the closing laps to conserve his tires in hopes of maintaining the show position. With many of his championship rivals struggling, he saw a golden opportunity to pad his 16-point edge. But then Coffey slowed in front of Richards with the white flag flying. Richards tried to go underneath Coffey in turn two but ran out of room, leaving the two cars stricken on the inside of the corner as the race ended. “I slowed down to get under Vic, but he was going so slow and we just got caught together,” said Richards, shaking his head. “I was just out there trying to save my tires at the end because I knew we could take advantage of a lot of guys (in the points battle) having bad nights, but it didn't work out.” If Richards had cleanly passed Coffey to finish second, he would have pushed his points lead to nearly 40 points and put many drivers in deep holes. Instead, he fell to third in the points standings behind Shane Clanton and Darrell Lanigan, and the rankings tightened to the point that just 66 points separated first from eighth. Richards's weekend didn't get better on Saturday night at Virginia Motor Speedway. After a heat-race tangle with Coffey damaged his car's nose and forced him to use a provisional spot to start the A-Main, he finished a quiet 13th and headed home third in the points standings, 24 markers behind Lanigan. FRONT-ROW SEAT: Former WoO LMS regular Dale McDowell benefited handsomely from Fayetteville's last-lap mayhem, vaulting from a likely sixth-place finish to runner-up money. The jam-up caused by Coffey's slow car allowed McDowell to sneak NASCAR star Clint Bowyer's machine by Chris Madden and Dennis ‘Rambo' Franklin on the backstretch. He hesitated for a moment rounding turns three and four thinking a caution was out, but he realized that the race would end under a caution/checkered condition because the last lap had begun and the Coffey/Richards incident did not present a safety issue. “I'd actually backed off in three and four, but I saw (the starter) waving the caution and the checkered so I went ahead and throttled back up,” said McDowell, whose. “I know the rule, but I just wasn't thinking. Madden got up alongside me, and we both throttled up and drag-raced to the finish. “We just got a little luck, but we also had bad luck drawing seventh (for the A-Main) so I guess everything evened out.” FAST AT FAYETTEVILLE: Jeff Smith's home in Dallas, N.C., is a three-hour drive from Fayetteville, but he's an adopted son of the 39-year-old track. “This track has been so good to me over the years,” Smith said after taking advantage of Coffey's misfortune to register his first career WoO LMS victory. “I don't know if I have a niche here, or if I'm just lucky, but we've won a lot of races at this track – and this one ranks right up there at the top.” Smith, 43, is off to a good start in his first full season driving for Star Leasing's Mark Menscer, whose grandfather, Big Al Menscer, is a former racer who was one of the 50 original members of NASCAR. The number 18 on Smith's car is the same one used by Big Al during his racing days. HE'S SMILING: No one had a better weekend than Chris Madden, who followed his third-place finish at Fayetteville with a dominant victory at VMS. Madden, who has five career WoO LMS wins (at least one in each of the past four years), was hampered during February's Alltel DIRTcar Nationals at Volusia Speedway in Barberville, Fla., by the broken hand he suffered in a late-January incident at Golden Isles Speedway in Brunswick, Ga. But since he healed up, he's been rolling. “This is the best I've ever started a season in my career by far,” said Madden. “Usually I don't win races until late-April/early-May, and I think I've already won five this year. “It's all about hard work – the guys working hard during the week and being prepared. And having Scott (Bloomquist, the dirt Late Model legend and car builder) in my corner is a great advantage.” Madden ran the first half of the WoO LMS in 2007 and proved to be a serious contender wherever he raced, but he had to drop off as a regular following the premature birth of his son (now a healthy toddler approaching the age of two) and other issues. He still hopes to put together a program to take on the tour fulltime in the future. “Right now I don't have the financial backing and the guys that it takes to do it,” the 33-year-old Madden said of the WoO LMS. “The guys who help me have jobs, so it's hard to just up and leave and stay gone for three weeks or a month at a time. “But I've only been doing this for 13 years, and a lot of these other guys have been racing for 25-plus years. So I still have time to do (the WoO LMS) someday.” BATTLE OF CHAMPIONS: The last two WoO LMS titlists – Steve Francis (2007) and Darrell Lanigan (2008) – spent the second half of VMS's A-Main in a close-quarters race for second place. At one point the action got too close; late-race contact between the pair left a deep gash in Lanigan's right-side door. Francis held on to finish second, just over a half-second ahead of third-place Lanigan. The podium finishes helped both drivers forget disappointing outings at Fayetteville. Lanigan had the better finish – 13th after using a provisional to get in the A-Main – but Francis was faster, running fifth until a flat right-rear tire on lap 39 relegated him to a 19th-place finish. OFF THE PACE: Rick Eckert's hopes of making a bid for victory at VMS were dive-bombed by ignition problems that plagued his Raye Vest Racing Bloomquist car for virtually the entire distance. “On lap four I was going through (turns) three and four and my car just died,” said Eckert, who started ninth. “Brady (Smith) hit me because I just stopped dead in front of him. I quick switched to the second ignition and kept going, but something was wrong with that one too. My motor was just popping and carrying on the whole race.” With the problem leaving Eckert's car underpowered on six cylinders, he nearly decided to pull in. But he pressed on and salvaged a 12th-place finish. TOP ROOK: The only WoO LMS Rookie of the Year contender to qualify for an A-Main during the doubleheader was Brent Robinson of Smithfield, Va., who used his knowledge of Fayetteville to make the A-Main through a heat race. Robinson, 21, went on to finish 11th – the best finish by a rookie this season. With some momentum finally behind him, Robinson was confident about his chances at VMS, the track where he started his dirt-racing career as a 14-year-old in the Limited Late Model division. But he was hampered throughout the night by problems with a crank trigger and failed to qualify. ETCETERA: * VMS's A-Main began with a “bang” on Saturday – four ear-splitting, grandstand-shaking blasts of a Civil War-era cannon that was detonated on pit road by the Civil War reenactors who later joined the Victory Lane festivities. “When we first rolled out on the track and I was lining up, that big cannon shot off and I went, ‘Holy crap!'” said Chris Madden. “I jumped in my seat.” * When Shane Clanton took over the points lead after Friday's stop at Fayetteville, it marked the first time he had been atop the WoO LMS standings since following the April 14, 2007, event at Virginia Motor Speedway. His stint at the helm lasted just one race, however, because Darrell Lanigan took over after Saturday's visit to VMS, giving the tour three different points leaders in as many races. * Brady Smith walked around gingerly all weekend, suffering from a sore back that he tweaked away from the track. * The pace laps for Fayetteville's A-Main left the pole position open in a “missing man” formation for the late Ed Gibbons of Manning, S.C., a Fayetteville standout who lost his life on Feb. 1 in a highway accident. The 46-year-old Gibbons finished fifth in last October's WoO LMS show at the track. * Shannon Babb reported that he was scheduled to stop at Rocket Chassis in Shinnston, W.Va., Illinois to pick up a new car on his way home to Illinois. The new machine will likely be at Babb's disposal by his next WoO LMS appearance, the Buckeye 100 on May 1-2 at K-C Raceway in Alma, Ohio. * Jonathan Davenport is another driver with a trip to Rocket for a new car on his upcoming itinerary. The Blairsville, Ga., racer, passed along the news after setting fast time and finishing fifth at VMS – 24 hours after scratching from Fayetteville's program due to a broken rocker arm during hot laps. After the mechanical trouble, Davenport accompanied his D&L Rumley team back to their shop in Greensboro, N.C., and they worked until 2 a.m. to install a new engine. * WoO LMS rookie contender Jordan Bland visited the medical crew at Fayetteville to have his left eye flushed after a piece of debris flew up off the track during a preliminary race and hit his helmet shield. * Gettysburg, Pa.'s Jeremy Miller was unable to repeat his emotional victory in last year's WoO LMS event at VMS. Still learning his new Victory Circle by Moyer car, he qualified through a heat race on Saturday but finished 24th after retiring on lap 17 because he “made the wrong adjustments.” * WoO LMS regulars Chub Frank and Tim Fuller had similarly distasteful weekends. Frank salvaged a 10th-place finish at Fayetteville (he picked up a couple spots in the last-lap scramble) after securing the last transfer spot in the B-Main when local Chris Blackwell slid high rounding the final corner, but he finished one lap down in 16th at VMS; Fuller finished 17th in both events. * Fuller actually would have used a provisional to start both races if rookie candidate Russell King hadn't been penalized for jumping a last-lap restart in VMS's second B-Main. King slipped by a slowing Fuller at the finish line to grab the final transfer spot, but his jumping penalty moved him back two positions and left him a DNQ. * Clint Smith went through the weekend down one crewman after the recent departure of Jonathan Owensby, who has taken a job in Georgia away from racing. Smith, who would have likely scored a pair of top-10s if he hadn't blown a tire on lap 37 at Fayetteville, said he's planning to press on with Darrell (‘Don Vito') Cooper as his sole mechanic. “Money's tight, so I'm not hunting anybody right now,” said Smith. * Fayetteville, N.C.'s Lance West didn't qualify on Friday night after suffering mechanical trouble during heat action. He then headed home for a few hours of sleep before hopping on a plane to begin a 16-hour flight back to his job in Iraq, where he has four more months left on his contract as a mechanic for a U.S. contractor. * Longtime WoO LMS technical inspector Walter Burson has stepped off the road this season to receive treatment for cancer, which doctors diagnosed earlier this year. He has been weakened by the treatments, but his spirits remain high and he's hoping to travel from his Ohio home to visit with friends at the track next month. Notes of cheer can reach Burson at 609 McKinley Ave., Brewster, OH, 44613, or by e-mail at katzaz@sssnet.com. For more information on the WoO LMS, visit www.worldofoutlaws.com. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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