Volusia Speedway Park
Feb. 16: Moyer caps record-tying Speedweeks
By Kevin Kovac
World of Outlaws Late Model Series
Moyer earned more than $30,000 at Volusia. (World Racing Group)
BARBERVILLE, Fla. (Feb. 16) — Billy Moyer put a cherry on top of his record-tying Florida Speedweeks with a victory in Saturday's finale at Volusia Speedway Park's Alltel DirtCar Nationals.
The $10,150 World of Outlaws Late Model Series triumph gave Moyer his sixth Speedweeks victory, three apiece at Volusia and East Bay Raceway Park near Tampa, Fla., as he matched Don O'Neal's 2002 victory mark. Overall, he earned more than $70,000 and nearly $80,000 including the Georgia-Florida Speedweeks that began Jan. 23 at Golden Isles Speedway near Brunswick, Ga. | Feb. 16 prelims
“I don’t know if we can ever top this,” said Moyer, who also won UMP features Monday and Wednesday at Volusia. “In this day and age, with the competition that’s here, it’s a big accomplishment to have a week like this. I don’t know if I’ll ever repeat this again.”
Moyer, 50, of Batesville, Ark., worked harder than he had all week to secure his victory in the second of two WoO events. Though he started from the outside pole, the legendary driver had to outduel Thursday-night WoO winner Josh Richards of Shinnston, W.Va., for the lead and outrun Chub Frank of Bear Lake, Pa., following a late-race restart to put one more flourish on his 2008 trip to Florida.
“What a race tonight,” said Moyer, who swapped the lead four times with Richards between laps 8-15. “That was fun. I can’t see what’s going on behind me, but Josh was on his game and we had a heckuva race. We ran each other clean and didn’t put tire marks all down the side of each other’s cars.”
Driving the Banner Valley Hauling-sponsored Victory Circle M1 Chassis that he helped design, Moyer grabbed the lead from Richards for good on lap 15. His Clements-powered No. 21 flashed across the finish line 0.399 of a second in front of Frank, whose advance from the 11th starting spot in his Lester Buildings Rocket fell one position short.
Richards, who started from the outside pole, settled for third place in the Seubert Calf Ranches Rocket after nosing ahead of Moyer to lead laps 8 and 10-14. He lost the runner-up spot to Frank on lap 43 when he slid high in turn two.
Completing the top five was ninth-starter Jimmy Owens of Newport, Tenn., in the Reece Monuments Bloomquist Chassis and eighth-starter Clint Smith of Senoia, Ga., in his J.P. Drilling GRT mount.
“Everything is falling in line,” Moyer said. “The car has been exceptional, the motor has been exceptional, and my guys have done a great job. I guess all the midnight candles I’ve been burning all winter tinkering on this old car have paid off for me. This gives us that little shot in the arm that we needed.”
Moyer, never outside the top three at Volusia in five starts, mastered the D-shaped half-mile's tricky conditions to push his career-leading WoO win total to 32. Ten of his victories have come since 2004, with the remainder earned during the tour’s first incarnation (1988-89).
“It’s like ice out there off (turn) two, and if you just missed it a little bit you’d get wide that lap,” said Moyer, a three-time WoO LMS champion whose last tour win came on March 24, 2007, at Columbus (Miss.) Speedway. “Josh did that (after exchanging the lead with Moyer) and I was able to get back underneath him.
“Early in the race I was trying to run above those holes, but it got to where it was so sticky in those holes that you had to run through ‘em. You just had to grit your teeth and hang on and beat your car up. If you ran in the smooth part, it was just so much slower then running through the darn holes.
“If you could hit it just right, it was like a slot car,” he added. “If you hit it wrong, you’d push and lose. You had to be on top of the wheel.”
Richards, 19, gave Moyer everything he could handle early in the distance, but he couldn’t match the veteran’s pace to the finish.
“As good as I felt early, I thought we could’ve won the race,” said Richards. “But early in the race he was having the same problem that I had later in the race — he was shoving the right-front a little bit. Late in the race I picked up that problem and started pushing up the track.
“I’m still happy with third,” he added. “It was a fun race. I haven’t had that much fun in a while.”
The run also gave Richards a great jump on his pursuit of a first career WoO championship. He headed home tied for the points lead with Moyer.
The 46-year-old Frank, meanwhile, salvaged a frustrating week with a runner-up finish worth $5,100. A caution flag with three laps left event gave him an opportunity to steal a checkered flag.
“If I wouldn’t have screwed up in turn one on the first corner (after the lap-47 restart), I thought I would’ve had a shot (to win),” said Frank, the tour’s winningest driver in 2007. “I used the hole to turn the car, and instead it pushed that lap. I lost a few car lengths there and that killed me.
“(Moyer) did screw up on the last corner, but I just wasn’t close enough to make a run on him.”
The night brought more heartbreak for WoO regular Shane Clanton of Locust Grove, Ga., who was hoping to erase memories of the broken axle that knocked him from the lead Thursday. He climbed as high as fourth from the 10th starting spot before a broken left-rear wheel ended his bid on lap 35.
Misfortune also struck 2006 WoO champ Tim McCreadie of Watertown, N.Y., who started from the pole position and was running fourth on lap 40 when a cut left-rear tire forced him to pit, and 2007 WoO Rookie of the Year Tim Fuller, another resident of Watertown, N.Y., and also a victim of a cut left-rear tire (while running sixth on lap 47).
Rounding out the top 10 was 15th-starter Darrell Lanigan of Union, Ky.; 18th-starting Darren Miller of Chadwick, Ill.; 20th-starting Brian Shirley of Chatham, Ill.; defending WoO LMS champ Steve Francis of Ashland, Ky., who was hampered for most of the distance by a broken throttle spring; and Dan Schlieper of Sullivan, Wis.
The night's preliminaries were marred by a spectacular crash involving Earl Pearson Jr. of Jacksonville, Fla., the three-time Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series champion. During the first heat his Bobby Labonte-owned car dug into the cushion between turns three and four and flipped wildly, coming to rest upside down. Safety crews carefully extricated a shaken Pearson, 36, from the car’s cockpit and transported him to a hospital in nearby Deland for observation. He was released several hours later, extremely sore but otherwise uninjured after he was checked out with X-rays and a CAT scan.
