FK Rod Ends Arizona Speedway
Notes: Breazeale's unusual route to Arizona
By Todd Turner
DirtonDirt.com managing editor
Wild West Shootout trophies. (photofinishphotos.com)
QUEEN CREEK, Ariz. (Jan. 6) — With one mode of transportation or another, David Breazeale of Four Corners, Miss., was determined he wouldn’t miss Saturday’s first round of the Wild West Shootout at Arizona Speedway. He and wife Jennifer left home driving but ended up flying to make sure they made it in time for Saturday afternoon’s hot laps. | Complete Wild West coverage
“There was a (logging) job I was trying to finish, and I had to finish the job before I left, so we couldn’t plan any flights,” Breazeale said. “So it was 3 (p.m. Friday) before we ever left Mississippi. So we just didn’t have any flights or nothing, so we just started driving. … We were going to be pushing it.”
As they approached the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, they debated whether to continue with an all-night drive that would get them to the Phoenix area a few hours before hot laps, or to go online and find DFW-PHX tickets.
“It was going to put us here, if we drove straight through, no problem, it was going to put us here about 1 o’clock, and that was no sleep for either one of us,” Breazeale said. Instead, “we stopped in Dallas and got us a good night’s sleep and got up and come on this morning … It’s still hurting us today, because I wasn’t here for last night for practice. So we’re playing catch up right now.”
Breazeale was glad to have “piece of mind that the (logging) job was finished,” a project that meant long hours, including working throughout the New Year’s holiday. And while he failed to make Saturday’s feature lineup in his Billy Franklin-owned Rocket, he’s looking forward to competing through next weekend.
The Breazeales will have to fly back to Dallas to pick up their car after the Wild West Shootout, but they’re convinced they made the right decision to stop at the airport — they got two of the final tickets for Saturday's 8:30 a.m. Southwest flight — instead of driving all night.
“We looked at each other, and said, ‘If we do this, this will be one of the top 10 ignorant things we’ve ever done,’ ” Jennifer said.
“Five years ago, we probably would’ve done it,” David added.
Jennifer replied: “We’re a little older now — and we found a flight.”
Western standout
Garrett Alberson lost his regular ride when Childress Motorsports shut down its operations in 2017, but the Las Cruces, N.M., driver can always count on his original car owner Dave Deetz with providing him a ride at the Wild West Shootout.
Alberson is literally driving the No. 01 Late Model that Deetz plans to field this season, and he posted an impressive top-five finish in Saturday’s 40-lap opener won by Ricky Weiss. Alberson put his name in a top five that included World of Outlaws Craftsman Late Model Series champion Brandon Sheppard, two-time Knoxville Nationals winner Mike Marlar and Iowa standout Chris Simpson.
“I’m pretty excited about that. We all want to win and stuff, but when you’ve got Brandon Sheppard, Marlar and Simpson and those guys running like that, it feels pretty good,” said the 27-year-old Alberson, who has relocated to Louisiana and works for Stuckey Enterprises and Black Diamond Chassis. "First night out on that car. I got to learn a lot riding behind Sheppard. He’s just so good at picking lanes, so I got to follow him and learn a little bit. So I’m pretty happy all in all.
“It started off searching for the brown, then once that brown (went away), it seemed like you were just trying to find the clean spots. Then that top kind of cleaned off and got some rubber on it. I was glad I was watching Sheppard, because he kind of showed me that. Otherwise I’d still have been sitting in the bottom.”
Alberson is confident he can continued to contend in the five remaining races on the miniseries.
“I just need a little bit more (traction),” Alberson said. “If we can find a little bit more, I think we can race with those guys.”
Better start for Duty
Justin Duty of Mulino, Ore., got off to a better start at this year’s Wild West Shootout than last season, giving him hopes of a productive miniseries in Arizona.
“It was a lot better start than we had last year when we came here,” said the hulking, floppy-haired 20-year-old driver. “Last year, we missed the feature on the first night, but we won that Pro Power Dash (for non-qualifiers). Then the second night we rolled it over. So that was a rough start to the week.”
And while Duty’s 20th-place finish in the 40-lap opener was respectable, he knows it could’ve been even better without a self-described choke during preliminaries. Duty took the lead from polesitter Mike Spatola on the second lap of an eight-lap heat and appeared to be cruising to victory when he slapped the turn-four wall on the final lap, allowing Scott Ward to sneak past.
“We just slipped up a little bit there. As they say, the white flag is your worst enemy. But it was all right. We made a small mistake. But the car’s pretty good,” said Duty, whose father John is driving a second Double Duty Team car. “I think we got a good piece (with) this new XR1 Rocket we got from Mark (Richards) and Steve (Baker) and them has been awesome, so it’s a good piece for us and we’re starting out better than expected. So we’ll go from there. I think it’ll be a good rest of the week, hopefully.
“I think it was actually that I went too low. There’s a pretty big lip in the racetrack that’s slicked off and I didn’t see it and caught it with the right-rear (tire), and it shot up the hill and from there it was just correcting it. In order to get back to the line, I needed to straighten up so quick that we got up into the fence. It is what it is. At least we made the race. It would’ve been nice to win it.
“This has been a little better for the confidence with how things are going so far. Hopefully we can keep it that way.”
Odds and ends
Clint Smith of Senoia, Ga., won the Pro Power Dash for non-qualifiers, electing to take the $1,000 winner’s purse instead of a starting spot at the tail of the feature field. Smith is fielding Oregon driver Rob Mayea’s backup car. … The opening event with more than 130 race cars was a lengthy one with hot laps starting about 3:30 p.m. and the final checkered flag falling nearly seven hours later.
