Volusia Speedway Park
Health woes put Lanigan in hole for WoO chase
By Kevin Kovac
World of Outlaws Late Model Series
Darrell Lanigan's car is ready for his only action at Volusia. (thesportswire.net)
Darrell Lanigan’s blueprint for capturing the World of Outlaws Late Model Series championship that eluded him by just four points in 2010 will be a little more difficult than he anticipated.
Health issues forced the 40-year-old driver to miss the tour’s 2011 season opener last Thursday night during the 40th DIRTcar Nationals by University of Northwestern Ohio at Volusia Speedway Park in Barberville, Fla., putting him in an immediate points hole that he knows will be a challenge to overcome. | WoO notebook
Lanigan had his new hauler parked in Volusia’s pit area on Feb. 14 for the DIRTcar UMP-sanctioned event that kicked off the six-night full-fender portion of the DIRTcar Nationals by UNOH, but he surprisingly decided to leave the track by himself during the afternoon and fly back to his home in Union, Ky.
He told his crew members, Randall Edwards and D.J. Callon, that he wasn’t feeling well — the lower-back pain and general malaise that had plagued him throughout the off-season seemed to resurface after he spent a day testing his cars en route to Florida — so he wanted to get checked out by his own doctor before the WoO lidlifter set for Feb. 17. Lanigan figured he would take it easy for a few days and return to Volusia on Thursday to reunite with his team and begin his pursuit of a second career WoO title.
Unfortunately, after heading to the airport on Thursday morning as scheduled, Lanigan was unable to board a plane because he found that his blood pressure had become elevated. He headed to a hospital for immediate medical attention and was admitted for tests and observation, preventing him from entering the evening’s action at Volusia.
Lanigan’s absence from the Volusia field was impossible to overlook, not only because he’s coming off a near-championship 2010 season that saw him win a career-best seven series races, but also because he was one of the original 12 drivers signed to follow the WoO when the tour was reincarnated under the World Racing Group banner in 2004. Thursday night’s opener, the 282nd WoO race since ’04, marked just the second tour event he did not enter in his eight years as a regular (his other no-show came on July 3, 2007, at Missouri’s Lebanon I-44 Speedway) and represented the seventh feature he did not start (he was a non-qualifier twice in 2004, once in ’05 and twice in ’07).
Lanigan was released from the hospital on Friday and by Saturday morning felt much better, so he took a morning flight to Florida. While preparing for hot laps to start that evening, he said doctors suggested his high blood-pressure reading might have resulted from a reaction to antibiotics he was prescribed for the initial treatment of a cyst found at the base of his tailbone, the apparent source of his lower-back discomfort.
There would be no storybook run to victory in Saturday night’s 50-lapper for Lanigan, but he looked far from rusty in his first appearance of 2011. After timing 16th fastest, he made a powerful outside move to pass Jimmy Mars for third and was challenging Tim McCreadie for second when his car’s battery shorted out exiting turn two on the final lap, dropping him off the pace.
Lanigan’s car came back to life rounding turn four, just as third-place Mars slowed with an expired engine, and he nearly recovered to grab the final transfer spot, but he settled for fourth and qualified for the headliner by winning the B-Main.
Lanigan started 20th in Saturday’s 50-lapper and was never a factor. He pitted during a lap-five caution period to loosen up his car and change the left-rear tire, but he ultimately was lapped on the 40th circuit and finished 15th. The race was the first WoO feature in which Lanigan was running at the finish but not on the lead lap since Aug. 15, 2009, at Hagerstown (Md.) Speedway.
While Lanigan received 60 hardship points for the Thursday-night event because he is a contracted WoO driver, he still left Volusia tied for 30th in the points standings, 120 points out of first place. On the positive side, however, he’s 96 points behind the highest-ranked driver who plans to follow the entire tour (Austin Hubbard) and he’s 76 points behind two-time defending champion Josh Richards.
Lanigan, who hopes to be 100 percent by the time the WoO returns to action with the inaugural Cash Cow 100 on March 18-19 at Columbus (Miss.) Speedway, knows his margin of error will now be very small on this year’s tour. But considering that last year he fell as many as 78 points behind Richards midway through the season and rallied to briefly grab the points lead before settling for second in the standings, the Bluegrass Bandit certainly isn’t out of the hunt.
