World of Outlaws Notebook
Notes: Clanton finally finds Firecracker success
By Kevin Kovac
World of Outlaws Late Model Series
Shane Clanton takes the checkers. (stivasonphotos.com)
Shane Clanton’s frustrating pursuit of victory in the Firecracker 100 presented by GottaRace.com ended on Saturday night at Lernerville Speedway. Darrell Lanigan’s, meanwhile, rolled on for another year.
Clanton and Lanigan — both of whom were major players in two of the first three Firecrackers 100s — decided the fourth edition of the World of Outlaws Late Model Series mega-event between themselves. Locust Grove, Ga.’s Clanton reached the finish line first for a triumph worth $30,500, leaving Lanigan to lament his third consecutive runner-up finish in the race.
The 34-year-old Clanton’s win came after he experienced heartbreaking outcomes in both 2007 and 2008. He might have had the fastest car in each 100. In ’07 he appeared primed to sail by eventual winner Scott Bloomquist to take the lead on lap 88, but Bloomquist’s sixth-sense decision to move to the top of the track in turn three the very lap Clanton was making his run broken Clanton’s momentum and he finished sixth. One year later Clanton was battling for third place early in the distance with Josh Richards when the two drivers tangled and spun out of contention, causing some tense moments between the two.
Lanigan, 40, saw his Firecracker 100 misery continue in a different fashion. After controlling most of the 2008 and 2009 installments — he led laps 1-69 in ’08 (before Brian Birkhofer swept by for the win) and 13-93 in ’09 (before being overtaken by Jimmy Mars) — he didn’t pace a single circuit on Saturday. It appeared Lanigan might be turning his storyline upside-down when he reached second place on lap 82, but he couldn’t get close enough to Clanton to even attempt a late-race pass.
Clanton’s day wasn’t entirely perfect, however. What should have been a smile-filled trip home to the Peach State for Clanton and Co. took a rough turn on Sunday morning when his hauler was involved in an accident on Interstate 75 near Cleveland, Tenn. He said his rig was traveling at about 40 mph when it rear-ended a car at the top of a hill.
“We didn’t even feel it much in the truck,” Clanton said of the crash, which delayed his return to his shop by several hours. “It tore up the front bumper of the truck pretty good. We’ll get it fixed at S&S (in Nebraska) when we go out west (for four races from July 7-10).”
The chase continues
Josh Richards was nearly perfect in the pair of 30-lap WoO preliminariess that kicked off the Firecracker 100 weekend — he was victorious on Thursday night and finished second on Friday evening — but he was never a factor in the extra-distance finale.
The 22-year-old Richards started and finished seventh, racing quietly at the back end of the top 10 for the entire race. He said his car was superb on Hoosier LM-20-compound tires in the prelims, but bolting on a harder LM-30 right-rear for the 100 changed the machine’s handling characteristics too much for him to contend. As a result, he remained without a victory in a 100-lap event — the one missing link on his impressive resume.
“I guess we’ve been pretty good in the 50-lappers and 30-lappers, but we just gotta get a handle on these 100-lappers,” said Richards, who matched his best career finish in the Firecracker 100 (2007). “Once we get a balance, I think we’ll be OK. We’ll just keep trying to figure it out and win one of these things.”
T-Mac’s close callsTim McCreadie survived a pair of potentially disastrous run-ins to finish a career-best fourth in the Firecracker 100.
The first came on lap 19 when Scott Bloomquist moved inside him to challenge for second. The left side of McCreadie’s car met the right-front corner of Bloomquist’s machine on the homestretch, causing Bloomquist to wobble and lose a couple spots before slowing to bring out a caution flag on lap 21. McCreadie marched on to take the lead from Brady Smith on lap 20, while Bloomquist pitted on the 21st circuit and could only rally to eighth at the finish.
“I thought he was gonna give me a little room,” McCreadie said of the incident, “and we just met in the middle.”
Later, with less than 40 laps remaining, McCreadie held a short lead on Clanton when he ran into Bub McCool in turn three while trying to lap the Mississippi driver. The encounter smashed in the right-front door of McCreadie’s Sweeteners Plus car.
“That was nobody’s fault but my own,” said McCreadie, who noted that his subsequent fall from the lead to fourth at the checkered flag was a product of his setup going away, not the damage his car sustained when he hit McCool. “He was running a line and I didn’t realize he was diamonding the corner. When he did that, I was already so far in deep I thought, ‘Oh no, I’m gonna hit him and spin out.’ So I kinda throttled up and hit him. I went over and apologized to him (after the race).”
Mirror images
Brady Smith, who started from the pole and led laps 1-20 of the Firecracker 100, and 2007 WoO champion Steve Francis were hampered by virtually identical mechanical problems — stuck carburetors.
Smith’s trouble began just after the first caution flag, on lap 18, and contributed to his tumble to 10th in the final finishing order. Francis began to experience the same headache a few circuits later and managed only a ninth-place finish.
“I hate to keep talking about excuses, but after that first caution I couldn’t get the carburetor to idle back down,” Smith said. “It was stuck at about 4000 RPM, and I couldn’t do anything to get it to stop. I could barely get it out of high gear coming into the pit area after the race.”
“My carburetor hung open at about 4000 RPM,” said Francis, who swapped tales of his woes with Smith following the 100. “With the track being so slick it made it so hard to drive. I was kind of along for the ride.”
Super sub
Coleby Frye’s primary focus this year is his job as a full-time mechanic for Hubbard’s Beitler Motorsports effort, but the 25-year-old from Dover, Pa., hasn’t entirely put his own driving aspirations on the backburner.
Of course, while Frye won two features in his family’s Dirt Late Model earlier this month (an Appalachian Mountain Speedweek event at Bedford Speedway and a show at Susquehanna Speedway in Newberrytown, Pa.), he never expected to have an opportunity to enter two WoO races during the Great Northern Tour. But with the blessing of his boss Dale Beitler, Frye ran the June 20 event at Cornwall (Ontario) Motor Speedway in Clint Smith’s backup car and accepted an offer to run Vic Coffey’s Sweeteners Plus No. 32c on Friday and Saturday at Lernerville.
Frye turned heads at Cornwall, setting fast time and finishing ninth. But he found the going more difficult at Lernerville, where he was a late addition to Friday night’s field after Coffey determined he wasn’t able to compete due to an off-track knee injury he suffered the previous evening. Frye failed to qualify for Friday’s preliminary and was a DNQ on Saturday as well after Coffey decided to return to the cockpit but also field a second car for Frye.
