World of Outlaws Notebook
Notes: Tire choice pays off for Fuller's fourth
By Kevin Kovac
World of Outlaws Late Model Series
Tim Fuller celebrates at Hagerstown. (wrtspeedwerx.com)
Tim Fuller has made plenty of on-the-money decisions during his current World of Outlaws Late Model Series win streak, which swelled to a record-tying four in a row with his sweep of last weekend’s three-race Mid-Atlantic Region swing. But the Watertown, N.Y., star’s shrewdest call might have come before Saturday's 50-lapper at Hagerstown (Md.) Speedway when he made a Hoosier tire choice that ultimately helped propel him to a runaway victory.
Fuller, 41, carefully considered his options before finally going with a softer tire-compound selection that snookered his competition.
“We had 40s (compound tires) ready for the right side and a 1450 and 1425 (compounds) ready for the right side,” Fuller said of his pre-race thought process for the half-mile oval. “We finally put the (softer) 1450 and 1425 on. After we dropped the car down (off the jack), Bob (Wirts of Hoosier Tire Mid-Atlantic) came over to me and said, ‘What did you go with?’ I said, ‘1450 and 1425,’ and then he said, ‘You sure?’ I just told him, ‘God hates a coward.’
“Bob said, ‘You know, you can change (the tires) right now because everybody’s going with (harder) 1600s,’ but I said, ‘I don’t care. I’m going for it.’ We aren’t in a points battle for the championship (Fuller is fifth in the WoO standings, 144 points behind leader Josh Richards), so you gotta know the top three guys (Richards, Steve Francis and Darrell Lanigan) are going a little on the conservative side. They don’t think they are, but they are.”
After decimating the field to equal Rick Eckert’s modern-era WoO consecutive win record of four (set in 2006), Fuller was congratulated by an obviously pumped Wirts.
“He was happy because (Hagerstown) has been known as an American Racer racetrack and he wants everybody to see that running a (Hoosier) 1450 can work,” said Fuller. “Guys haven’t dared (use a 1450) because they thought they’d get beat – and now I win on a 1450, so it’s kind of a selling point for him.”
Hagerstown turnarounds
The performance of WoO title contenders Josh Richards and Darrell Lanigan at Hagerstown Speedway last Saturday night was 180 degrees different than their previous tour appearance there on May 30. For Richards, that was a good thing. For Lanigan, that was bad.
Back in the spring 50-lapper, Lanigan finished second and Richards struggled to a 17th-place finish (one lap down). They basically flipped fortunes on Saturday night — Richards was a solid runner-up finisher, while Lanigan finished 17th (one lap down) after using a provisional to get in the headliner.
“I’m just ecstatic with second,” said Richards, who regained the points lead after Francis blew a right-rear tire running third with six laps remaining and settled for a 10th-place finish. “We struggled so bad with a new car in the last Outlaw race here, so we came in here tonight with our minds clear and did our own thing.
“That last time here was bad, probably our worst night of the year. I felt exactly the way Darrell does after leaving here tonight. We were just out to lunch.”
Lanigan experienced arguably his most frustrating outing of the season. His chief mechanic, Randall Edwards, said the team “got behind the eight-ball at the start of the night, and at a place like this, you’re not gonna catch up.”
Successful relatives
While Randall Edwards’s weekend ended on a sour note with Lanigan’s difficult night at Hagerstown, he received great family news the previous evening when he learned that his nephew by marriage, Brit Miller, enjoyed a spectacular NFL debut playing for the San Francisco 49ers in a pre-season game.
An All-Big 10 middle linebacker at the University of Illinois last season, Miller played in a preseason opener Friday against Denver, promptly catching a pair of touchdown passes.
Miller, whose mother is a sister of Edwards’s wife Lauri, called Edwards on Sunday and said he had watched the telecast of Lanigan’s Gopher 50 victory at Deer Creek Speedway in Spring Valley, Minn., the previous day on Speed. The native of Decatur, Ill., also attended the WoO-sanctioned Illini 100 at Farmer City (Ill.) Raceway along with several of his teammates from the University of Illinois.
Rookie of the Year contender Jordan Bland of Campbellsville, Ky., also had a relative do some big things away from the racetrack in recent weeks. Bland’s 19-year-old sister, Jefra, finished sixth in the Miss Teen USA 2009 pageant July 31 at the Atlantis Resort on Paradise Island in the Bahamas.
With the WoO idle the week of the contest, Bland traveled to the Bahamas to see his sister compete. He said Jefra, a University of Kentucky student and aspiring auto racing broadcaster who gained entry to the national competition by winning the Miss Kentucky Teen USA pageant, threw out a Dirt Late Model reference during the question-and-answer segment on stage.
“They asked her, ‘What’s the coolest thing you’ve ever done?” said Bland. “She said, ‘Watch my brother make the World 100 (in 2008 at Ohio’s Eldora Speedway).’ ”
Big letdown for Eckert
The WoO schedule seemed to favor Rick Eckert with back-to-back events at Bedford Speedway (where he won four consecutive Dirt Late Model championships) and Hagerstown Speedway (where he’s scored many big wins, including two WoO events). But when the weekend was over, Eckert had finishes of 24th at Bedford and 14th at Hagerstown to his credit. He wasn’t a factor at either track, leaving him very frustrated.
“The last two nights were definitely disappointing,” said Eckert, who entered the three-race swing 72 points out of first in the WoO standings and ended it trailing points leader Richards by 138 points (and ahead of fifth-place Fuller by a mere six markers). “We were looking forward to running two places close to home that we know pretty well, but we weren’t any good both nights.”
Using a new-style engine at Bedford, Eckert struggled during qualifying and was an early retiree because of problems under the hood. He won a heat race at Hagerstown and drew the fifth starting spot for the feature, but he tumbled backward with an ill-performing machine and went down a lap to Fuller by lap 36.
Youngsters to watch
Austin Hubbard and Gregg Satterlee — two up-and-coming drivers who are possible WoO Rookie of the Year applicants in 2010 — flashed some of their vast potential during the Mid-Atlantic swing.
Hubbard, a 17-year-old from Seaford, Del., who will soon start his senior year of high school, registered his third top-five finish of the ’09 tour with a fifth-place run on Thursday night at Grandview. He scored his first career WoO fast-time honor on Friday at Bedford Speedway and finished sixth, and then on Saturday he placed a solid eighth at Hagerstown to join Fuller, Francis, Richards and Vic Coffey as drivers with a top-10 finish in all three events.
Satterlee, meanwhile, was impressive at Bedford, leading laps 1-27 and finishing a WoO career-best fifth. The 24-year-old from Rochester Mills, Pa., was only slightly disappointed to slip backward after pacing more than half the distance.
“I’m real happy with a fifth,” said Satterlee, who competed at Bedford with his father as his only crewman. “I went a little too soft with my left-rear (American Racer tire) so the car didn’t stick as good in the turns as the race went on, but I’m still pretty satisfied. I haven’t really run that many 50-lappers yet so we’re still learning.”
Odds and ends
All the cars in action Friday at Bedford carried stickers that read ‘Get Well Soon Mary Ann’ in honor of Bedford co-promoter J.R. Keifer’s wife, who was seriously injured in a highway motorcycle crash on Aug. 9. Drivers collected more than $5,100 for Mary Ann’s recovery when they went through the stands with their helmets. ... Brady Smith of Solon Springs, Wis., was still searching for his first win as a WoO regular in 2009 after lagging through a three-race Mid-Atlantic swing that he called “a trip from hell.” His only top 10 was a ninth at Grandview, and he had to change motors after breaking a powerplant at Bedford. ... The WoO returns to action Thursday (Aug. 20), contesting the rescheduled Pepsi 40 at Muskingum County Speedway in Zanesville, Ohio. Then the tour moves to K-C Raceway in Alma, Ohio, for the $20,000-to-win Buckeye 100 on Aug. 21-22 and runs a rescheduled 50-lap event Sunday (Aug. 23) at Eriez Speedway in Hammett, Pa.
