Florence Speedway
Notes: Florence ace can't outrun Lucas Oil's best
By Bryan Ault
Special to DirtonDirt
Jason Jameson (12) led two laps and finished seventh. (heathlawsonphotos.com)
UNION, Ky. (May 3) — Starting inside the second row in front of a national-touring field can be a huge confidence booster, and that was certainly the case for Jason Jameson at Saturday’s Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series-sanctioned Ralph Latham Memorial. | RaceWire
The crowd cheered as the Lawrenceburg, Ind., driver, a former track champion, recorded a solid qualifying time. They cheered again when he won the second heat race over reigning series champ Devin Moran of Dresden, Ohio. And when the tour’s James Essex announced Jameson among the starting lineup for the main event, the crowd roared with approval then, too.
Outrunning Hudson O’Neal of Martinsville, Ind., on the first lap and leading for the first two circuits had the crowd hopeful that Jameson could pull off his first national touring win since a 2018 victory at Portsmouth (Ohio) Raceway Park — but it wasn’t meant to be.
O’Neal overtook Jameson on the frontstretch on the third lap and led the rest of the way with Jameson slowly slipping back to a seventh-place finish in the 50-lapper. He wasn’t sure why his JRR Motorsports entry wasn’t up to the task.
“(O’Neal) is better than me once it gets black and slick, I guess, I don't know,” Jameson said “I just don't see how them (top) five cars or 10 cars, week in and, week out, the same five’s up there, you know what I mean? You think they'd miss a setup every once in a while and they don't seem to.”
In recent seasons, Jameson has been able to mix it up with the sport’s heavy hitters, especially at Florence. At last August’s Sunoco Race Fuels North-South 100, Jameson captured his heat race for an up-front starting spot and ended up sixth, one spot ahead of O’Neal.
“Anytime you get in a race car, it's like riding a bike, you know? The more you ride it, the better you get,” Jameson said. “We don't race a lot, but we race a little bit around the local area. When you run good with these guys, it always makes it feel better, but you always come here to win. Everybody comes here to win. So, I don't know.”
“I always run good here,” Jameson added. “I'm not bragging on me or nothing, but I've got a lot of laps around here, even though (promoter) Josh (King) has changed the track a lot, so you’ve got to drive it a lot different. It kind of evens the playing field, I feel like, for everybody now. It ain't just top-dominant, you run all over place.”
Top-five streak ends
Max Blair rode into Florence with momentum after a podium finish Friday in Lucas Oil action at Circle City Raceway in Indianapolis, Ind., Blair’s ninth straight top-five finish on the series.
Alas, Blair’s streak of top finishes snapped ended Saturday at Florence — by a single spot. The 36-year-old Centerville, Pa., driver posted a sixth-place finish, but still retains his fifth-place spot in the series points heading into the tour’s summer grind.
“The start of that heat race went bad, and that just kind of cost us the rest of the night, honestly,” Blair said. “Track position was kind of a premium there, and we just started at 11th and got to sixth, you know? If I'd have started seventh, maybe we could have gotten up there, but just needed to run first or second in the heat race, not third.”
Blair can’t put his finger on what’s led to his impressive consistency. He’s looking forward to the challenge of the upcoming Illinois Speedweek at track where he has less familiarity.
“We've had some stuff play out our way, and, you know, we've been working hard, so when you finish sixth and everybody's a little bummed out, that's good. That’s a good thing,” Blair said. “So hopefully we can keep the momentum going here. We're gearing up to go to some tracks that I really don't know very well at all. We'll see what happens.”
Shirley’s speed search
Brian Shirley’s eighth-place run at Florence isn’t cause for celebration, but after a tough start to the season, it’s a bright spot. It also gives him two top-10 finishes in his last three Lucas Oil starts that follows an struggling April where he was 20th or worse three times in action overall.
The 45-year-old Bob Cullen Racing driver from Chatham, Ill. is still searching for speed, which is difficult to do against in Lucas Oil competition.
“Unfortunately, we're racing with the best guys in the business, and we're trying to learn to get better,” Shirley said. “And we're just off a little bit right now. As we're trying to beat the best guys out here, and trying to figure out how to find speed, it's not easy.”
Starting 15th at Florence, Shirley was headed the right direction in gaining seven position. He survived issues with a ben nosepiece in the final laps.
“We gotta build a program a little better and we’ve got to build on where we start and where we finish through the tonight, have a better time getting” into the feature, Shirley said. “Like, we're just off on making decisions, things like that.”
Shirley’s two-man crew doesn’t have the same knowledge of some of his touring competition such as the Mark Richards-fielded Rocket Chassis house car team and the Jason Durham-guided SSI Motorsports operation of Florence winner Hudson O'Neal
“You got the top-tier teams with the best depth in the teams, you know, where it's just our team isn't as in-depth as what they have as far as knowledge,” he said. “That's a tough part. Mark's working on (Brandon) Sheppard’s car, you know. Durham's working on Huddy’s. You have all these guys that have years of experience behind them and unfortunately, I got myself and my crew guys try to do the best they can do, but they don't have experience and experience is what helps you when you're going through change.”
Shirley is looking forward to racing in his home state during Illinois Speedweek in a combination of five FloRacing Night in America and Lucas Oil events. Besides two third-place finishes in DIRTcar Summer Nationals competition at Florence in 2012 and ’14, his eighth-place run is his best at Florence in occasional starts over the last 15 years.
“I mean, obviously it's a little easier when you get to race around your neck of the woods, so things are more familiar,” he said. “You know, I never come to Florence. truthfully, during the North-South. My wife and my kid, we go on vacation every year because it's our weekend normally when we're off with the Outlaws. So, you know, to come here and actually feel decent is good. We weren't great, but we wasn't horrible, and we built on building a little bit of a notebook, so we're just not coming next time blind.”
