Volusia Speedway Park
Notes: Volusia scrape rubs Thornton wrong
By Kevin Kovac
DirtonDirt senior writer
Ricky Thornton Jr. (20rt) and Cody Overton (97). (joshjamesartwork.com)
BARBERVILLE, Fla. (Feb. 10) — Ricky Thornton Jr. wasn’t very happy after Tuesday night’s 25-lap Federated Auto Parts DIRTcar Nationals feature at Volusia Speedway Park.
Or more precisely, the 35-year-old star from Chandler, Ariz., was downright agitated over a run-in with Cody Overton of Evans, Ga., that, while it might not have cost him a victory in the DIRTcar-sanctioned event won by Hudson O’Neal of Martinsville, Ind., certainly left him with a far worse finish than he would have liked.
Despite facing a largely latched-up racing surface for much of the race’s distance, Thornton managed to wiggled forward from the fourth starting spot to overtake Overton for second on a lap-eight restart. But on the 10th circuit Overton attempted to regain the spot with an inside move through turns one and two and contact — his right-rear corner to Thornton’s left-front — sent Thornton up the track as Overton sped away with the position.
Overton, 28, went on to finish second, giving him back-to-back runner-up placings to start the six-night DIRTcar Nationals. Thornton immediately fell back to sixth place from the get-together and finished there with his Koehler Motorsports Longhorn Chassis handicapped the remainder of the distance by bodywork damage and a bent spindle.
Thornton quickly changed into street clothes after returning to his trailer following the feature and then began angrily wiping down his car with a rag. He barely broke stride from his work as he responded to a question about what had occurred.
“Cody Overton is what happened,” Thornton said. “Apparently, he wanted to turn and I was in his way.”
There was no further elaboration from Thornton, who made it clear that any visit from Overton to his pit stall at that moment likely wouldn’t be very peaceful.
Thornton didn’t, however, believe a $7,000 victory was stolen from him by Overton’s move. When asked if he thought he had a shot at O’Neal, who led the feature from flag-to-flag, he snapped, “No.” He felt passing O’Neal would have been impossible under the track conditions, but second place should have been his result with the field essentially falling into line soon after the race’s lone restart.
“Hopefully tomorrow they actually do something and we have a track to race on,” Thornton said, criticizing the surface. “Tonight it was rubber in the heat race, rubber in the future.”
Overton replayed the incident while standing in the postrace inspection area and chatting with third-place finisher Ryan Gustin of Marshalltown, Iowa.
“I don’t know. I really don’t,” Overton said when asked what precipitated the contact. “I didn’t even know I hit him that bad. I didn’t feel like it hit that hard. I guess I’m losing feeling now.
“Well, the rubber was right there, like right in the middle, so I was just making sure I got in it and took off. But I guess I misjudged it on my own. And then he came in there and he got to me and I’m like, ‘Oh s---.’ ”
Overton shook his head over the controversy. He understood Thornton was angry with him and he wasn’t planning on approaching RTJ to discuss things that night.
“I mean, we’re racing in the rubber — my bad,” said Overton, whose Longhorn Chassis sported a crumpled right-rear quarterpanel from the contact. “Man, that's bad. I’m sorry. Just tell him I’m sorry. I don’t like no confrontation.”
Messy situation
Cody Overton’s mechanical headaches during Georgia-Florida Speedweeks with his newly-formed self-owned racing effort have been well documented. Even his good nights haven’t been problem-free as evidenced by the second-place finish he registered in Monday’s DIRTcar Nationals opener despite racing all night with a malfunctioning transmission.
There was more trouble for Overton on Tuesday along the way to his second straight runner-up finish. He had a fresh transmission in his car — the Winters Performance Products reps helped him obtain a new tranny from Canadian Glenn Styres by arranging for a replacement to be sent to the racer who owns Ohsweken (Ontario) Speedway — but concern hit him late in his run to a heat-race victory when he heard a pop from underneath the hood.
“It was the MSD box. It went out,” Overton said, relieved that it wasn’t another engine problem. “We got that changed.”
Then came the moments before Overton lined up for the feature. When he started his motor in the pit area, the oil filter blew out toward the ground, causing a geyser of oil to spew out “to the next-door neighbor.”
Overton described the scene during his post-race conversation with Ryan Gustin, who laughed as Overton offered details.
“You ought to go down there and look at my (pit) stall,” said Overton, who was parked in Volusia’s lower Gator Pond section. “There is f------ oil everywhere. It’s all on the back of my trailer, on the mat. There’s oil everywhere. They’re like, ‘How are you gonna clean this up?’ I’m like, ‘I don't know.’
“I cranked the car to come up here to stage (for the feature), and it blew the oil filter off to Chase Junghans’s trailer. Everyone was like, ‘There’s oil everywhere!’ ”
It was the first time Overton had ever experienced such a problem. He said engine builder Vic Hill told him the oil pump likely had a “scar” on it and was “sticking wide open,” causing the filter to blow out.
“It’s brand new,” said Overton, who made quick repairs and added some oil before lining up for the feature. “I just put it on. I just borrowed it from (older brother) Brandon (Overton), come up and got it from him and it was brand new.
“I’m telling you, I’ve got the craziest luck,” he added with a shrug of his shoulders.
Smooth and steady
Hudson O’Neal knew starting from the pole position was especially advantageous for him in Tuesday’s DIRTcar-sanctioned feature. He saw how the track conditions were developing.
“After watching that (USAC) sprint car feature and we seen (the surface) getting black, we figured just the way our race cars are we're probably gonna lane it up,” O’Neal said. “I wasn't quite sure where it looked like the sprint cars were maybe laying some rubber down up the racetrack, so that kind of was playing through my mind a little bit whenever we rolled out there, about where I needed to be exactly.”
The 25-year-old star figured it all out, including the correct approach to avoid burning up his the three 3-compound tires he used. The track not only took rubber but also made tire wear a serious concern, so when O’Neal was leading he only went as fast as necessary to conserve. At one point O’Neal cruised through turns one and two so gingerly, so straight, it appeared he was barely at speed.
“I was signaling on the back straightaway and he got out to a good lead and I showed him, and he started riding a little more, because this place was hard on tires all night,” said Jason Durham, O’Neal’s SSI Motorsports crew chief. “It was all day — qualifying, heat races, all of it. It was just more abusive on tires today. When it gets those crumbs, it’s hard on tires.
“He was just scrubbing there (with his slow pace) and trying to save his tires.”
O’Neal rebounded from a rather quiet opening night when he finished sixth, rallying from his 17th starting spot in the 25-lapper.
“We tested hard the last few days, and then coming here and getting behind the 8-ball early last night and being able to rebound and have a good night, it gave us some hope that our race car is OK,” O’Neal said. “We just need to put the whole night together and tonight we were able to do that, so hopefully that's more of what’s to come for the rest of the week.”
The $7,000 victory was O’Neal’s second in five starts this season at Volusia following a win in last month’s World of Outlaws Late Model Series-sanctioned Sunshine Nationals. That triumph came in Kevin Rumley’s No. 6, which helped give his SSI team a head start on their season debut in the DIRTcar Nationals.
“Whenever we unloaded yesterday we were pretty much pound-for-pound the way that we were racing here with Kevin,” said O’Neal, who also won twice in Rumley’s car during January’s Wild West Shootout at Central Arizona Raceway. “So yeah, even though the 71 team didn’t come here in January, we’re still able to carry some notes from Kevin’s car to here.
“A lot of it is, we owe a little bit of thanks to Kevin for that, for being such a great team player. And even though he's in it for Longhorn and trying to develop his cars and his team, you know, he’s just as much wanting to help the 71 car and SSI Motorsports as well. So it’s a very, very healthy relationship that I’m super proud to be a part of.”
