EASTABOGA, Ala. (Jan. 6) — Perhaps Bobby Mayse will forgive me, but count me among his doubters before Sunday's Ice Bowl XVII Super Late Model feature at Talladega Short Track. Slideshow | Race story

Although Mayse was on the pole position, the unheralded driver was piloting a non-descript 6-year-old car, he was facing 50 laps on a sun-baked surface and among the standout drivers lining up behind him were two-time race winners Shane Clanton and Danny Peoples along with Mike Boland and Todd Morrow.

And that was before his fiasco in hot-laps. In the final warmup session of the afternoon, Mayse nearly lost control in turn four after coming up to speed, then spun by himself on the other end of the track. A repeat performance on the first lap of the feature would ruin the 2008 season opener for just about everyone in the 25-car field.

The gray-bearded driver with oval eyeglasses pulled into the pits, then accidentally killed the engine trying to back into his pit stall at his modest tarp-covered open trailer. As crew members rolled the white No. 22 back, the fuming Mayse complained of steering problems as he removed his helmet and frustrations mounted.

But his 22-year-old son, Kyle, wasn't sweating it. "Jack it up," he said with no-nonsense authority, and the team soon diagnosed what caused the problems in hot laps: a broken servo on the steering rack.

A diagnosis is one thing, but a solution is another for a low-budget team that had hopes of winning its biggest-ever special event. Mayse had no spare steering rack to make repairs.

"The servo went down on that other rack," Mayse said. "It just went down at the wrong time, you know. ... I knew then we were done for."

Fortunately, the 2004 Cleveland (Tenn.) Speedway track champion knew plenty of Cleveland regulars were at Talladega, and he was able to borrow a steering rack from friend and fellow racer Dewayne Powell, who failed to make the Ice Bowl field. The team made the rack swap, but even when Mayse rolled on the track as the shadows began to fall on a bizarrely mild 70-degree January afternoon, he wanted to make sure nothing was amiss.

"I was a little bit worried," he said. "But when we went down there in the first corner there before the race started, it felt good, and I knew we'd be all right."

Mayse was more than all right. He showed any doubters that he was capable of capturing a major regional event by leading every lap with nary a challenge. Runner-up Anthony Hill wasn't even on the same straightaway at the finish as Mayse grabbed a $6,000 paycheck that topped his previous biggest win by $4,500.

Mayse admitted, however, that even he might've had a few doubts about achieving success on a level a few notches about his normal weekly events at Cleveland and surrounding tracks.

"I didn't sleep much last night," Mayse said after his victory. "I was just thinking about what to do to the car, you know? I really wasn't nervous. It's really just another race — but it isn't another race. So you want to make sure you've got everything right. These guys here checked every bolt, every nut and everything they could check on this thing to make sure nothing fell off of it. I was just going through my mind what I was going to do on that first lap, and it all worked out."

While some teams brought out shiny new equipment for the January special, Mayse brought out a 2002 GRT Race Car that's "been good the last couple of years," he said. He didn't have a fresh engine, however, until just a few days before heading down for Thursday practice at Talladega, so his crew — which includes his father-in-law and sons Kyle and Jason, 17 — installed the Race Engine Design piece and headed South.

And that confident crew kept the car in shape throughout the week. Mayse wanted badly to drive a race worthy of their effort, and when he took the double checkered flags, a joyous celebration was set off in the infield as teammates and family members shared hugs and high-fives. A whooping Jason was so overcome that he wept — perhaps overjoyed that his father's right rear tire didn't go flat until victory lane.

"It's unreal," the elder Mayse said. "Right now, you don't know how good these guys feel, all of them. ... I couldn't do it without none of these guys here.

"This is the biggest win we've ever had. I've been racing since" — Mayse pauses and appeals to his wife Rebecca — "when was Kyle born? '85?" Indeed, and Mayse began racing the next year. He's considered giving it up in recent years, but his boys encouraged him to stay behind the wheel.

The high-profile victory as the first winner of 2008 meant plenty of people were asking Mayse about his plans for the season. But it was too early to worry about all that.

"We're just going to go home and enjoy it, I guess," he said.

No doubt.