Batesville Motor Speedway
Notes: O'Neal's luck runs short at Batesville
By Joshua Joiner
DirtonDirt.com staff writerLOCUST GROVE, Ark. (Aug. 16) — Don O’Neal’s luck finally ran out. A week after surviving a spin to win $50,000 at Florence (Ky.) Speedway’s Sunoco North-South 100, O’Neal of Martinsville, Ind., was fastest in Friday’s time trials for Batesville Motor Speedway’s Comp Cams Topless 100 only to come up light at the scales.
A night that started with signs pointing toward another possible big-money payday on the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series for O’Neal and the MasterSbilt Race Cars house car team quickly turned sour when the No. 71 machine came up 25 pounds light, handing fast time honors for the $40,000-to-win event to Mike Marlar of Winfield, Tenn. | Marlar gets Topless pole
O’Neal’s night went from bad to worse in his heat race. Starting from the tail of the 10-car field, O’Neal was up to fifth by the end of the first lap. He was looking under Eric Jacobsen for fourth two laps later when a mistake by O’Neal caused contact between the two drivers in turns one and two, sending Jacobsen into the wall and O’Neal spinning with heavy rear-end damage.
“For the lap we turned in qualifying, then to get it taken away like that, it’s just disappointing,” said O’Neal, whose lap of 13.651 seconds was one of only three qualifying times under 14 seconds. “Then we started on the tail of that heat race and was just a little impatient and it costs us. I think we beat ourselves tonight.”
O’Neal survived to finish sixth in his heat, well out of a transfer spot for Saturday’s main event. At best, he can start 20th in the feature if he advances from his fifth starting spot in the first of three consolation races on Saturday, but he’ll likely settle for a series provisional and the 25th starting spot.
Even with the poor starting spot, O’Neal is confident he can turn his luck around in Saturday’s 100-lapper.
“We’ve got a good race car,” O’Neal said. “Knowing we’re in the show, we just need to be patient and put it back like we had when we were hot lapping late Thursday when we were the best. It’s a long race; we’ll have a shot to get up there.
“Whether we can win it or not, I don’t know. But I think we can be there toward the end and at least salvage a good finish.”
Returning to form
After a slow start to the season and parting ways with car owner Al Humphrey, Jesse Stovall believes he’s finally back on track after recently reconnecting with former car owner Steve Rushing. It sure looked like it in Friday’s Topless 100 prelims, when Stovall of Galena, Mo., qualified second-fastest in his group and led every lap of his heat race.
“It’s been a hard time, but I’m finally getting back to where I need to be,” Stovall said. “It’s great to be back with these guys. I think the world of Steve and Bill Swafford. And Scott Baily is unbelievable. I really feel like we’ve got a good program.”
Part of the team’s strong program is the combination of a Victory Circle Race Car on loan from Humphrey and Rushing’s engine. It’s the same combination that Stovall used to win more than 10 races last year on his way to the MARS DIRTcar Series championship.
“This is the car and motor combination I ran really, really well with last year,” Stovall said. “So I wanted to put this back together and try to make the best of it. It’s seems to be starting out pretty well, so hopefully that’s a good sign.”
On Saturday, Stovall will use his proven combination to start the 100-lap main event from the fourth starting spot. He’s had success before in extra-distance races, winning the Pelican 100 at Ark-La-Tex Speedway in Vivian, La., last season. But he’s still looking to break through in a major event.
“I won a 100-lap race there in Louisiana, but I really wanna win one of these big ones. If I keep winning these heat races and running good, I’ll keep learning more every time I get to make a 100 laps about how to do it. That’s just what it takes. It’s definitely a tough game, but hopefully we’ll get it done one of these days.”
Stovall knows that being a contender at the end of Saturday’s race will require the right combination of patience and hard driving.
“These 100-lap races, especially at places like this that wear on you, it’s just a big mind game,” Stovall said. “You’ve gotta be comfortable in that car. You’ve gotta lay back and relax, but go like heck.
“Jimmy Owens once told me that there’s no relaxing in a 100-lap race anymore. There’s really no setting back and waiting. They’ve got tires, cars, shocks, motors and drivers, everything’s good enough that they can go like gangbusters for 100 laps.”
Alberson’s Batesville debut
Racing for the first time at Batesville, it didn’t take long for Garrett Alberson of Las Cruces, N.M., to realize the high-speed 3/8-mile oval is far different than any track he ever race on out West.
“The track’s cool. You just carry so much speed around it,” Alberson said. “It’s really different than most the place we race at back around home. Casa Grande kinda has some banking like this and Tucson’s kinda round like it, but none of them are really this wide open.”
After a solid night in practice on Thursday, Alberson struggled during Friday’s prelims, managing just a seventh-place finish in his heat race.
“We had a broken part in practice, and we were hoping that fixing it would pick us up,” Alberson said. “We were a little bit off (Thursday night) but not terrible. But I guess we were so used to that part that I guess had been broken for a while, fixing it just put us way off tonight.”
Alberson will look to rebound Saturday night as he also looks to gain more experience for future trips east.
“We want to eventually get to a point where we can run with MLRA and MARS some and be competitive with those guys,” Alberson said, whose Dave Deetz-owned team recently added a new MasterSbilt Race Car. “Hopefully with the new car and the stuff we’ve learned, we can get up to speed with those guys.”
