Florence Speedway
Big Friday rebound rights Jameson's flagging mood
By Todd Turner
DirtonDirt.com managing editor
Jason Jameson (12) outside Carson Ferguson (93). (Heath Lawson)
UNION, Ky. (Aug. 9) — Jason Jameson’s don’t-mess-with-me facial expression in the Florence Speedway pits looked identical Thursday and Friday.
Jameson’s visage was understandable Thursday after a skirmish with Bobby Pierce and black-flagging left him in 24th and last. Friday turned out much better with the 39-year-old Lawrenceburg, Ind., driver rallying late for a fourth-place finish in the Sunoco North-South 100 weekend semifeature. | RaceWire
But was he in a better mood?
“Not really,” Jameson deadpanned. “I’m still mad.”
Two beats later, he laughed.
Of course the former track champion was feeling better. The beer Jameson drank Thursday night was to “calm his nerves” after a rough night. The beer he drank Friday — he was double-fisting with Michelob Ultras after someone handed him a beer at the trailer and a passerby in the pits gave him another — was celebratory.
The shoulder that got banged up in Thursday’s collision with Pierce was feeling a little better after being sore when he got out of bed. And the ninth-to-fourth run Friday gives him hope of making the $75,000-to-win Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series weekend finale.
“Time heals everything,” Jameson said.
Well, everything except his up-and-down relationship with longtime crew chief Jeff Gullett of the Rattliff Racing team.
“I’m proud of him,” Gullett said out of Jameson’s earshot.
“I just hope Gullett's happy and he ain’t mad at me anymore,” Jameson said a few minutes later. “He’s been pissed off at me all weekend. He said we ain’t running good and I ain’t been running good all year … He’s been whining and crying for the past month.”
After Jameson’s car was loaded up, the driver joked he was “parting ways” and “getting a divorce” from Gullett. It wouldn’t be the first time, Gullett added.
“I’ve fired him three times and laid him off twice,” he said, drawing laughs from bystanders — and maybe even Jameson.
Things were lighthearted at the trailer after Jameson’s solid performance, but there might’ve been a downright celebration if Jameson didn’t come to a virtual stop after getting bogged down in Florence’s treacherous cushion just before the midpoint of the 25-lapper. He’d climbed a spot to eighth but fell back to 11th after getting too high.
“Once you got over (the cushion), it was really, really fluffy, and it just dragged the car down,” Jameson said. “If I wouldn't have made that one mishap there, I might’ve been a contention to win. But that’s part of racing.
“I got passed by four or five cars there and then I had to pass them again. It's tough to do sometimes, doing it right — and not just barn-dooring people and taking them out.”
(Jameson, of course, couldn’t help himself from taking a poke of Bobby Pierce’s Thursday slide job.)
In Friday’s 25-lapper, Jameson was still running eighth with seven laps remaining, but he rolled around the high groove up to the fourth spot, gaining chunks of ground on the competition while turning late laps a half-second quicker than winner Jonathan Davenport in the nonstop race.
“I knew I was gaining on them,” Jameson said, “but I didn't know if they were just in lapped cars and slowing them down for me able to gain on them. But I felt like my car was good enough to win the race. Just, no yellows (make it difficult) if you’re starting ninth or 10th.
“I was riding the bottom for a while, and everybody was down there, so you can't pass nobody following ‘em, so I got up in the middle and I was like, ‘Hey, we ain’t bad.’ Then I got to the top and it's even better. It just so far out there at the time, then once I got my a rhythm going, I was good.”
Jameson loved the track conditions.
“If that track's like that tomorrow night, you're gonna see one helluva North-South,” he said. “Whether I’m in it or not, I think you’ll see one helluva North-South. It’s a driver's racetrack. I think it takes out the million-dollar teams with three good crew guys. It falls down in the driver’s hands when you can get up on a wheel on the racetrack.”
Who, besides Jameson, can do that? Jameson admits that Pierce will be tough to beat.
“That's why Bobby beats ‘em most of the time — he gets up on the wheel and makes it happen,” Jameson said. “You know, he is a good driver. Sometimes he don't need to do what he does, but that’s part of it I guess.”
Hoping for a similar racetrack Saturday, Jameson ended the night feeling better than Thursday.
“I’m just glad we got to finish. That’s a plus,” he said. “Any time you get black-flagged or get ran over, it’s not a fun night.”
