Kevin Kovac's Take Five
Take Five: Unusual scene looms over GIS finale
In a new feature appearing regularly on DirtonDirt, senior writer Kevin Kovac will offer readers five things worth mentioning from around the Dirt Late Model landscape (index to previous Take Fives):
No. 1: The final eight circuits of Saturday night’s 50-lap Wieland Winternationals finale at Golden Isles Speedway near Brunswick, Ga., offered a decidedly unusual backdrop to the action in turn two: Trey Mills’s wrecked race car. The 17-year-old from St. Augustine, Fla., saw his upset bid for a career-first Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series victory end in heartbreaking fashion as he led on lap 42 when he caught the outside wall in turn one, had his car’s rear end turn toward traffic and received a hit from second-running Hudson O’Neal that sent the teenager flipping through the air. After Mills’s machine came to rest on its wheels on the grass above the turn-two wall and he climbed out uninjured, Lucas Oil officials assessed the situation and decided to leave it sitting there for the remainder of the feature. Lucas Oil Series director Rick Schwallie said Mills’s father and car owner, Stanton, agreed that the best plan was to move the car back slightly from the wall and then remove it after the checkered flag by opening a gate in the catchfence in turn one and bringing a wrecker through it. Nevertheless, it was a bit unnerving for drivers still in the race over the final laps. “It scared me for a second the first time I saw it sitting there when we got back to racing,” fifth-place finisher Brandon Overton said. “I was like, ‘Why’s there a car up above me?’ Then I remembered it was Trey’s car.”
No. 2: Shortly before the start of Saturday’s 50-lap feature at Golden Isles, Blair Nothdurft and his father Troy were in the pits ready to embark on their 20-hour drive home to Renner, S.D., in a good mood following nearly two months on the road for Georgia-Florida Speedweeks. The younger Nothdurft, who turns 25 on March 10, was seemingly ending his odyssey on a high note after winning a heat race to start the A-main from the outside pole. It had been a long and sometimes trying Speedweeks (they experienced some engine trouble during the Federated Auto Parts DIRTcar Nationals at Volusia Speedway Park in Barberville, Fla.), but it had also been perhaps Nothdurft’s best effort in his eight straight years tackling the mid-winter stretch of racing, with Saturday marking his 13th feature start in 20 attempts. But then one lap into the finale Nothdurft had the right-front wheel disengage from his car entering turn one, sending him hard into the outside wall and his wheel flying over the catch fence into the pit area, where fortunately it avoided people and vehicles and only hit a garbage can. That fate certainly changed the vibe for father and son when they fired up the hauler to hit the highway.
No. 3: Before hitting the track for the third straight night as a sub for the ailing Tyler Bruening in the Skyline Motorsports No. 16, Cody Overton of Evans, Ga., put up a post on Facebook of himself wearing a clean white-and-red Skyline Motorsports uniform while standing in front of the car. He wrote that he had been called into the trailer by team members who “wanted to give me my new suit.” Reading that would make one think Overton had been asked to make some more starts with the team, but he clarified that he had actually just donned the Skyline firesuit of Bruening’s teammate Dallon Murty as a “joke” to have some fun. And it did, in fact, look like the suit was a little short on Overton, who scored a solid seventh-place finish in Saturday’s feature.
No. 4: The most welcomed development of the week at Golden Isles? At least for several teams that were parked in a certain portion of the pit area, it might have come Friday when a speaker on a pole was finally turned off. For the first two nights of racing, the Rocket1, Ross Robinson and Dan Ebert teams were among those who found themselves positioned perfectly to be blasted by the loud sound coming from the speaker, which carried the full commentary of the event announcers. It was so ear-splitting that all the team members must have been hearing the voices of James Essex, Dustin Jarrett and Ben Shelton in their sleep. Rocket1 crewman Joel Rogers joked that he “cut the wire” to stop the noise, but he conceded that he just might have done that eventually if the speaker hadn’t been shut off.
No. 5: In the wake of covering the four nights of racing at Golden Isles, I’ll give the week my very highest grade. It was as enjoyable a multiday stretch of racing as I’ve experienced at a single track in recent memory. The early-March weather was superb — no chance of rain with afternoon highs in the mid-70s and comfortable evening temperatures every day — but the racing was consistently entertaining as well. And the shows were well run by Lucas Oil Series officials. When the Super Late Model feature is checkered at an early time every night (the endings came, in order, at 8:43 p.m., 9:33 p.m., 9:39 p.m. and 9:40 p.m.), I’m especially pleased. Give me more events like this one at Golden Isles.
