Eldora Speedway
Illini drivers try to end lockout from World 100
By Joshua Joiner
DirtonDirt.com staff writer
Jason Feger (left) and Shannon Babb are top Illinois contenders at Eldora. (thesportswire.net)
Ask Shannon Babb about the quality of Dirt Late Model racers in Illinois, and he’s quick to defend his home state: “The drivers from around here are really good — plain and simple,” Babb said of his fellow Land of Lincoln racers.
Few would argue Babb's point. Illinois has long been a hot bed for Dirt Late Model talent with drivers like Bob Pierce and Kevin Weaver carrying the state's banner in the 1990s before drivers like Babb, Dennis Erb Jr., Brian Shirley and Jason Feger took over during the past decade. And with young Illini drivers Brandon Sheppard and Bobby Pierce emerging among the most promising up-and-coming drivers from any state, there is little room to argue the state's record for producing talented drivers. | Complete World 100 coverage
But for anyone keen on knocking Illinois' place in the order of talent-producing states, there is one point that even the staunchest Illinois defenders can’t argue: no Illinois driver has ever won either of Eldora Speedway’s crown jewel events, the World 100 or the $100,000-to-win Dream.
A strong contingent of Illinois drivers will attempt to erase that inauspicious stat this weekend when the half-mile oval in Rossburg, Ohio, hosts the most prestigious race of all the sport’s crown jewels, the 43rd annual World 100. But for now, the state that’s home to some of the sport’s top talent remains 0-for-42 in the World and another 0-for-19 at the Dream.
“It’s surprising when you think about it,” said veteran Illinois driver and frequent Eldora competitor Dennis Erb Jr. of Carpentersville, Ill. “We’ve had a lot of good drivers from this area that run well at Eldora. It really is hard to believe that nobody’s won one of the big ones over there.”
While Illinois drivers have found success in other Eldora events (Erb, Shirley and Feger have all won Eldora’s UMP Nationals and Erb won a preliminary feature at the Dream earlier this season), they’ve only come close to winning the ones that matter most.
None have come closer to winning an Eldora crown jewel than Babb. In fact, Dirt Late Model fans from Illinois would be able to boast of one World 100 victory if only Babb’s car had been nine pounds heavier when he crossed the scales following the 2005 World 100. The then 31-year-old Babb led the final 50 laps of the 100-lapper that year, taking the checkers well ahead of Dale McDowell.
But engine woes after winning his heat race forced Babb to swap engines before the main event. The engine swap ended up being Babb’s undoing with the lighter backup engine ultimately leading to Babb’s shortcoming at the scales, which gave McDowell his first World 100 victory as the Globe Trophy made the third of its four trips to Georgia.
“It’s something that really don’t sink in till later on,” Babb said, looking back on what he called the most disappointing moment of his career. “It was really tough to swallow then, and the more time that goes by, it just gets worse.
“It’s hard to win any race, but to win that race, the one you spend your who career trying to win, to have a screw up like that and to be only 9 pounds light, I just couldn’t believe it — still can’t believe it.”
Babb almost redeemed himself the following year at Eldora when he led 79 laps at the World and held off challenges from Chris Madden, Josh Richards and Jeep Van Wormer throughout much of the second half of the race, only to succumb to Earl Pearson Jr.’s late charge. Babb settled for second, while Pearson took the oversized winner’s paycheck south to Florida.
“We had a couple of golden opportunities there for sure,” Babb said. “It’s hard to get in those positions. Heck, it’s hard enough just to make the race over there. To be as close as we’ve been, it’s just really tough to think we were that close and don’t have anything to show for it.”
Since his back-to-back disappointments, Babb hasn’t been the same at Eldora. After driving Rayburn Race Cars with swing-arm suspensions to top 10 finishes in seven out of 10 World 100 features from 1998 through 2007 (counting his disqualification in ’05), Babb has just one top-10 finish while starting three of the past five World 100 features since switching to four-bar setups in 2008.
The good news for Babb is he’s finally catching up on the four-bar setups at Eldora, and at 39, he should have plenty more chances to tame Eldora’s high banks. While he has just one top-10 finish in either the World or Dream since 2011, he’s made all five major-event feature races over that stretch and feels that’s he’s returning to the level of performance that helped him get so close to World 100 victories in ’05 and ’06.
“Once we got in the four-bar stuff, it’s just taken a while to get that place figured out,” Babb said. “We’ve been off most of the times we’ve been over there, but I feel like right now we’re as close as we’ve ever been in a four-bar car. I’m confident I’ve got this thing narrowed down finally, and I really do feel good about our chances when we go over there.”
Babb wasn’t the first Illinois driver to run up front at Eldora, and he wasn’t the only one to experience the disappointment of falling just short of a crown jewel victory there either.
In the 1990s, both Bob Pierce of Oakwood, Ill., and Kevin Weaver of Gibson City, Ill., weren’t only two of the best drivers from Illinois; they were also frequent contenders at Eldora.
Weaver finished among the top 10 in four out five World 100 features, starting in 1994 and ending with a career-best second-place finish in 1998.
The runner-up performance could’ve perhaps been a victory if only the race had seen a late caution. After coming from mid-pack, Weaver was chasing down leader Billy Moyer late in the race. But Moyer had been out front since lap 21, and had built a lead that was too much for any late charge to overcome.
The caution never appeared, and Weaver was forced to settled for second, while Moyer took the fourth of his record six globe trophies back to Arkansas.
“Any time you get that close, you think 'Man I wish I could’ve done just a little bit better or I wish I’d done that different,’ ” said Weaver, who has just three World 100 starts since his runner-up finish in ‘98. “People afterward kept telling me ‘All you needed was a caution because you were running him down.’ It would’ve been nice to restart behind him; I think we had something for him.”
Pierce chased an Eldora victory for more than 20 years. And just like every other Illinois driver, he always came up short. Pierce, the now-retired National Dirt Late Model Hall of Famer who owns and operates Bob Pierce Race Cars with son Bobby as his house car driver, scored his best World 100 finish with a third-place finish in his first World 100 start in 1984. He added three more top-fives in the World and a fifth-place finish in the ’98 Dream before making his last crown jewel start at Eldora in the ’03 Dream.
Although it didn’t result in his best Eldora finish, Pierce’s closest brush with victory came in the ’99 World, when he led 55 laps and was pulling away before the lower bracing on his car’s left-side door worked loose and allowed the sheet metal to flap up and hamper his car’s aerodynamics.
Pierce had built a comfortable lead after taking the lead on lap 16, but the loss speed helped Steve Francis quickly erasing the gap. Pierce eventually faded to fifth, while Francis became the third Kentuckian to win the World.
“That was the first car in forever that I didn’t bolt the bottom of the doors,” recalled Pierce, whose son Bobby made his Eldora debut at this year’s Dream. “A pop rivet broke loose and when the bottom of the door peeled up, it was just like a parachute. I had really driven off before that happened, but it slowed me down ...
“It’s a bummer now thinking back about it. At the time, I thought we’d have another good shot or two. But yeah, now I look back and it’s really disappointing to think about it and how close we were over there.”
So what is the problem for Illinois drivers when it comes to Eldora? The state’s drivers have proven they can win big races with victories in other crown jewel events such as the Dirt Track World Championship, the Knoxville Late Model Nationals and the North-South 100. But aside from the aforementioned cases of poor luck, what is it that keeps Illinois drivers from winning the sport’s two biggest races?
For starters, Eldora’s high-banked, high-speed half-mile oval is far different from the quarter-mile bullring that’s typical of nearly all the notable Illinois tracks. The bent-sideways, cushion-banging, tough-nosed racing that wins in Illinois doesn’t necessarily translate at Eldora, where the smooth and steady approach is what typically gets a driver to the end of 100 laps the quickest.
For drivers bred on the style of driving that’s made Illinois’ weekly UMP racing and Summernationals tour famous, the transition to Eldora can be a difficult one to make.
“These tight tracks around here, you just don’t get up to speed like you do on the bigger racetracks like Eldora and some of the tracks guys come up racing in other places,” Erb said. “Over here, you throw it in the corner and the corners are tight. At a place like Eldora, you have to drive through the corner. You really have to drive it different, and there’s a lot of adjustments that have to be made when you go from a small track to a big track like that.”
With the busy annual summer schedule of any region in the country, Illinois drivers also have a tough time keeping their equipment fresh for Eldora. While it shouldn’t be much of a problem at the Dream, drivers who follow the Illinois-based UMP DIRTcar Summernationals tour often enter up to twice as many races between the Dream in early June and the World 100 in September as their counterparts from other areas of the country.
In 2012, Erb, a veteran of the month-long Summernationals tour who left the series this season to follow the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series, entered 45 races between the Dream and the World, while World 100 winner Brian Birkhofer of Muscatine, Iowa, entered just 22 races over that same stretch. That’s more than twice as many races and nearly twice as many laps on Erb’s equipment than Birkhofer’s, not to mention twice as many days on the road and twice as much grueling work during the hot summer months.
Babb dropped off the Summernationals before the tour’s final week this season and later took two weeks off in the middle of August specifically to avoid overdoing it before the World. Still, he’s raced 31 races since the Dream, while Brandon Sheppard and Bobby Pierce logged more than 40 starts apiece over that stretch. Meanwhile, Lucas Oil Series points leader Jimmy Owens and World of Outlaws points leader Josh Richards will enter the weekend with 19 and 24 starts respectively.
“We just race so much through the summer that I do think that’s one thing that hurts us Illinois guys,” said Babb, a three-time Summernationals champion and the tour’s all-time winningest driver. “Without a doubt, that’s what happens to me every year. We really hit it so hard in June and July, we’re wore out. The equipment’s wore out and everything just needs attention.
“Even myself, mentally and physically, I’m just wore down by the time September rolls around. And to race at Eldora, you’ve gotta have you stuff in tip top shape and mentally, you’ve gotta be ready to go after it.”
While history may not be in their favor when it comes to winning big at Eldora, there’s plenty of reasons for Illinois race fans to be optimistic for the end to their home state’s dubious streak, especially with the promise shown by the state’s young talent.
Weaver may not be the every-year contender he once was at Eldora, but he still enters the World most seasons. He sees plenty of upside for drivers like Brandon Sheppard and Bobby Pierce, who both have shown flashes of talent to match the support and equipment they have at their dispense.
“I think the young guys coming up really have a pretty good chance,” Weaver said. “You look at Bobby and Brandon, they’re both in good equipment, and they’re getting out and traveling some, so they’re already getting used to running on the bigger tracks and not just the tight quarter-miles. I think that’s really gonna help those guys when it comes to running over there.”
While the success of young guns like Sheppard and Pierce gives Illinois a promising future, recent strong performances also give hope that one of the state’s drivers could break through sooner rather than later.
Just last season, four Illinois drivers finished among the top 11 at the World 100 with Feger leading the charge in fifth. Sheppard followed in seventh with Babb ninth and Shirley 11th.
While Erb missed last year’s World 100 feature lineup, he’s also given home state fans plenty of reason to believe he’s capable of ending their state’s long Eldora dry spell. While he has just two top-10 finishes at the World 100 since 2002, Erb has finished among the top five at Dream both of the last two years. After winning a preliminary feature at this year’s Dream, he made a late charge to finish second in the main event.
The strong Dream performance gave Erb so much confidence that he boldly claimed he would eventually win at Eldora during his post-race interview. As he prepares to return to Eldora for the first time since that impressive run this weekend, Erb still feels confident he can get the job done.
“We’ve been going there a long time now,” Erb said. “We’ve been getting a lot better lately and we’ve won some races over there, which helps. We’ve come a long way. You just take it one race at a time and just keep getting better there. You hope it eventually pays off.”
Of course Babb would also like to finally break through for his home state, not only to redeem himself from his disqualification eight years ago, but to also finally give Illinois fans their long-awaited Eldora crown jewel winner.
“It would be special, both for me and just for the Illinois fans that go over there,” Babb said. “I think Illinois definitely deserves to win one. I know there’s a pretty good chunk of fans that go over there and there always has been. It’s going to happen eventually, I’m sure. I’d just really like for it to be me that finally gets it done.”
