Central Arizona Raceway
Central Arizona drivers adjust to wall-encircled oval
The new wall at Casa Grande. (facebook.com/CentralArizonaRaceway)
CASA GRANDE, Ariz. (Jan. 23) — Late Model competitors at this year's six-race Ernie Mincy Early Thaw will be adjusting to the new outside wall encircling the 3/8-mile oval at the Pina County Fairgrounds oval.
The track previously was wall-free except for the concrete protecting the grandstands, so it's a new experience for racers previously accustomed to running the high groove at the Brad Whitfield-promoter track and flirting with the potential disaster over sliding over the wrong side of the banking.
"I like that he added the wall. It's definitely different," said Tyler Peterson of Hickson, N.D., who practiced Wednesday ahead of Thursday's opening event. "But it just can get tricky with the Late Models. Late Model racing in general can get hard. Like you can follow the leaders, so I hope it's not wide open around the fence. I don't expect it to be, but it could happen with any class."
Last year's two-time Early Thaw winner cautioned, however, that drivers have to be aware on corner entry.
"Last night (in practice) we were hauling ass around there and you can make the bottom work really well too, but you got to just kind of whoa up your entry and not miss it because if you miss it, you're screwed," he said.
Ricky Weiss of Headingley, Manitoba, who now races out of Tennessee and has raced in Arizona winter action for more than a dozen years, gave the new wall a thumbs up after practice.
"I don't know if he did or didn't add any banking, but it might just be because we hadn't been here for a while, but it seemed to race pretty good," said Weiss, who owns five Early Thaw victories over the past two winters. "At the end there I could cruise around the bottom and make some time up and that's a ton of work to add a wall to this place and you know the pit areas, there's a ton of improvements there and hat's off to the guys for working that hard and making this event bigger and bigger."
California-turned-Iowa racer Dylan Thornton has already competed on the track in the modified division in events earlier this month, winning a pair of features, so he's interested to see what the track feels like in the full-fendered division.
"I had actually never been here before without the wall, but I will say with the wall, it races kind of narrow, which isn't terrible," Thornton said before Thursday's action. "We'll see how it does tonight, I guess, with Late Models and stuff like that. The mods, they couldn't really race around the bottom where Late Models kind of have more horsepower so they can run the bottom, but I don't know. We'll see.
"It's definitely cool. We're hauling ass around this place, so having that wall there is just a little different. You can't really quite get as close to the edge of the track as what they say you used to be able to before, without the walls."
Early Thaw entrant Clay Stuckey of Shreveport, La., who came to Central Arizona after competing in the Rio Grande Waste Services Wild West Shootout at Vado (N.M.) Motor Speedway, thinks it could be exciting if there's a cushion on the high side at the Arizona oval.
"It feels a little bit more narrow. The front straightaway feels a little bit more as a dog-leg type of feel. (And turns) one and two definitely seems like it has more banking. And it definitely flattens off when you get to the wall in both corners, so I don't think he'll ever be on the wall, not like a (Vado) style," Stuckey said. "But if he can mainly put a maybe a man-made cushion up there or maybe he gets it wet enough that it does build a cushion, it definitely probably would race better for a Late Model. I don't know about any of the other classes, but at least a Late Model if he can make us go up there and kind of try to run around there like half idiots, at least make a good show out of it."
Editor's note: Reporting by DirtonDirt.com weekend editor Aaron Clay.
