Lernerville Speedway
Notes: Firecracker seeks dry weather for finale
By Kevin Kovac
DirtonDirt senior writer
Wet conditions Friday at Lernerville Speedway. (heathlawsonphotos.com)
SARVER, Pa. (June 20) — Rick Schwallie didn’t need to monitor any weather apps on Friday at Lernerville Speedway. Everyone else did it for him.
“I probably got 20 screenshots on my phone (of future radar forecasts) as the course of the day went on,” the Lucas Oil Series Late Model Dirt Series director said with a laugh while standing in Lernerville’s soggy pit area following the cancellation of Friday’s scheduled doubleheader. | RaceWire
The showers that so many racers had warned Schwallie were coming — as if he didn’t know — indeed arrived, forcing the cessation of hot laps for Thursday’s postponed preliminary program and ultimately axing the entire night of competition. A second straight rain-plagued evening prompted track and series officials to throw in the towel on the planned prelim action comprised of two twin 25-lap, $5,000-to-win semifeature shows and shift all their attention to salvaging the weekend on Saturday with a one-day affair still topped by a 100-lapper with a $50,000 first-place prize.
It was a disappointing turn of events for Schwallie in his tour’s fourth year sanctioning the Firecracker 100, especially considering the forecast for Friday seemed promising with only a slight chance of an isolated shower when he went to sleep Thursday. But he awoke to more questionable weather possibilities as it was clear showers and thunderstorms were still dancing around the region and would threaten the track.
“I felt like as the day went on, we had a really good chance, and then come about 4 o’clock, I felt like, well, you could see something out there now,” Schwallie said. “And then you start to get worried. By the time we conducted the drivers’ meeting at 4:30, it looked like there was a good chance we’re going to get wet here.
“We got some light rain just hot laps were going to start (at 5 p.m.), so we were waiting it out thinking, Well, we’ll just bide our time here through this a little bit. Then it stopped and we let them hot lap, but then and then it started getting heavier (after a couple hot-lap groups) and it’s like, all right, send them all in. Then it got really heavy.
“They tried to work on the racetrack (after the rain ended around 5:45 p.m.),” he added, “but ultimately, it was probably wetter today than it was yesterday.”
The decision to call off Friday’s racing came shortly after 7 p.m. when it became apparent that the track crew was fighting a losing battle to reclaim the surface. In addition, the chance of more rain remained.
“There was some more (precipitation) on the radar that was at Cleveland (Ohio), and as it comes this way, the future radar shows it dissipating, but then another radar model that they were looking on a big computer up there (in the tower) shows it wasn’t,” Schwallie said. “So we’re like, maybe the only thing we’re gonna do is just put everybody through this and maybe get the track ready by 9 o'clock and then it’ll hit us again.”
In fact, another round of showers and thunderstorms did strike Lernerville. Rain began to fall around 9:15 p.m. and soon developed into a full-blown deluge that dropped heavy rain for 90 minutes, creating streams of muddy water through the pit area and further soaking the already drenched grounds.
Saturday’s forecast does look better with clearing skies and a high temperature reaching into the mid 80s. Plenty of racing is on the docket with both the Lucas Oil Series and supporting RUSH Crate Late Models contesting time trials, heats and B-mains before the features, but Schwallie said officials are ready to spin off the program similar to last season at Pittsburgh's Pennsylvania Motor Speedway in Imperial, Pa.
“The neat thing about this is, in the end, this is the exact same schedule of events that we ran at the Pittsburger RUSH starting from 6 o'clock to the end,” Schwallie said. “So, like, this is all doable. We’ll get done in a timely fashion tomorrow and go through it all.
“That’s a large, large commitment on the racetrack’s behalf,” he added, noting that Lernerville management is still posting the full payout of roughly $200,000, including more than $150,000 for the Firecracker 100, despite having to refund two days of ticket sales (the Crate race remains $20,000-to-win as well). “And they have a strong contingent of campers out there that’s been supportive all week and they’ve had stuff all week to make this a grander, all week affair, a bigger event. Saturday night’s event is culmination of all that, and we just want to see that they’re hopefully rewarded for it.”
Reduced presence
Typically the Firecracker 100 weekend has a section of the pit area that can be considered Chub and Boom Nation — that is, the contingent of racers including cousins Chub Frank and Boom Briggs and their various relatives.
Not this season. The group has shrunk to just two entrants: Bear Lake, Pa.’s Frank and Ashton Briggs, a Crate Late Model driver who is Briggs’s cousin.
Frank, 63, isn’t even pulling double-duty this year. He’s sitting out the RUSH Crate Late Model portion of the event to focus on the Firecracker 100, a race he’s entered every year since its launch in 2007 and only failed to qualify for once (last year he missed transferring by one spot in a B-main).
The primary reason for the clan’s reduced presence is the conflicting World of Outlaws Real American Beer Late Model Series doubleheader at Federated Raceway at I-55 in Pevely, Mo., where two-time Firecracker 100 winner Tim McCreadie of Watertown, N.Y., is spending the weekend driving for Boom Briggs. McCreadie would certainly have been at Lernerville if he hadn’t committed to the WoO tour and likely so would have Briggs, who is with McCreadie at Pevely.
The WoO competition has even robbed Frank of his chief mechanic Gannon (“Pickle”) Jaquay, Briggs’s nephew and the younger brother of Logan Jaquay, a McCreadie crewman who also might have entered Lernerville’s action if he wasn’t on the road. Gannon wanted to travel with McCreadie for the next several weeks so Frank is racing at Lernerville with assistance from Shane Winans, Briggs’s longtime crew chief who isn’t traveling this year.
“I go where I’m needed,” Winans said while working on Frank’s car, a former Cade Dillard-piloted Longhorn Chassis that McCreadie drove a couple times in April when he made the switch from Rocket to Longhorn.
Focused on the Crate
Mason Zeigler of Chalk Hill, Pa., is in the pit area as he usually is for the Firecracker 100 weekend. The difference this time, though, is that he doesn’t have a Super Late Model along to compete in the headlining portion of the event.
The 32-year-old decided to focus on the RUSH Crate Late Model action, leaving his Super Late Model home despite carrying plenty of momentum with a pair of Selinsgrove Ford Appalachian Mountain Speedweek victories this month at Path Valley Speedway Park in Spring Run, Pa., and Bedford (Pa.) Speedway.
“It’s $20,000 for this (Crate race) and $50,000 for that (Firecracker 100). We feel we have a better shot at the $20,000,” Zeigler’s crew chief Bryan Liverman said when asked about the team eschewing Super Late Model racing at Lernerville.
Liverman said the decision to concentrate on the Crate was made after Zeigler’s victory Friday at Bedford.
“On the way home from Bedford I called him and said, ‘What do you think about just running the Crate next week (at Lernerville)?’ ” Liverman said. “He said, ‘It doesn’t matter to me.’ Two cars is a lot of work, so we wanted to just put everything into this car.”
Zeigler hasn’t entered a Crate Late Model event this season with his family-owned Rocket Chassis, but he drove the car to a third-place finish in December’s $100,000-to-win Crate race at All-Tech Raceway in Ellisville, Fla. He also finished fourth in the machine in the Bill Emig Memorial during last year’s Firecracker 100 weekend.
It’s unusual for Zeigler to be absent from the Firecracker 100 roster. He’s entered the event every year since 2013 except one (’18), and he’s made eight starts in the 100-lapper with a top finish of eighth twice (2021, ’24).
Odds and ends
Josh Rice of Crittenden, Ky., was in the first practice group for Thursday’s program, but he didn’t get on the track Friday for his first-ever laps around the 4/10-mile oval because his car’s starter went bad as he attempted to fire it up. His crew changed the starter and battery to have the machine ready for a resumption of action that never came. … Among other first-time Lernerville visitors itching to go racing after two days of rain: Lucas Oil Series regulars Donald McIntosh of Dawsonville, Ga. and Dan Ebert of Lake Shore, Minn., along with Bruce Kane Racing entrant Wil Herrington of Hawkinsville, Ga. … Before arriving at Lernerville, Ebert participated in Monday’s test session at Sharon Speedway in Hartford, Ohio, that most notably saw five-time national champion Josh Richards of Shinnston, W.Va., climb in a Rocket Chassis house car to turn his first laps since November 2022. Other drivers at Sharon for the test included Brandon Sheppard of New Berlin, Ill., Chub Frank and Boom Briggs. … Charlie Sandercock of Belleville, Ontario, is entered in the Firecracker 100 for the first time in his career as he attempts to become the second Canadian driver to start the event’s finale, joining Ricky Weiss of Headingley, Manitoba (three starts from 2019-21). … Gary Stuhler of Greencastle, Pa., is in the Firecracker 100 field for the second time in his career. The 70-year-old veteran, who failed to qualify in 2021, surpasses 63-year-old Chub Frank as the weekend’s oldest entrant. … The only former Firecracker 100 winners entered are Ricky Thornton Jr. of Chandler, Ariz. (2023-24) and Brandon Overton of Evans, Ga. (2017, ’21). … Dave Hess Jr. of Waterford, Pa., considered taking a shot at his first Firecracker 100 feature start since 2014, but he elected to skip the event because he just got back his team’s lone open-competition engine and doesn’t want to risk it at Lernerville with his focus being on Stateline Speedway in Busti, N.Y., and Eriez Speedway in Hammett, Pa. He’s running the RUSH Crate Late Model show, however, in a car fielded by Alex Anderson.
