Kevin Kovac's Take Five
Take Five: Challenges of racing's last-lap snafus
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: Here’s a strange episode from the weekend: as detailed in a DirtWire today, a scoring mistake made Saturday’s Heartland Late Model Tour feature at Legit Speedway Park in West Plains, Mo., run one circuit past its scheduled 30-lap distance. It might not have been a big deal if it had been a ho-hum, flag-to-flag romp for the winner, but that extra lap — an error series co-founder Trenton Berry admitted his officials didn’t discover until the race’s payoff was underway — produced dramatics with teenager Tyler Kuykendall of Warsaw, Mo., rubbing past veteran Terry Phillips of Springfield, Mo., through turns three and four for the $3,000 victory. Phillips was already agitated by Kuykendall’s physical pass, so you can imagine how he must have felt when he was informed that he was actually the leader when the checkered flag should have been displayed. But Phillips was at least mollified by the actions of Berry, who not only publicly apologized for the error on his personal Facebook page — officials being forced to hand-score the race after the track’s electronic scoring loop was damaged earlier in the program contributed to the flagman not receiving a radio call to display the white flag at the proper time — but made things right with Phillips the following day by giving the 59-year-old a check for $1,500 to cover the difference between the winner’s purse and second-place earnings.
No. 2: The Heartland Late Model Tour’s scoring mistake reminded me of a similar incident I witnessed in July 1988 during the big-block modified Summer Nationals at Ransomville (N.Y.) Speedway. I was 15 at the time watching from the turn-one bleachers, and I was counting down the laps on the scoreboard as my favorite driver, New Jersey’s Billy Pauch, was leading. When he came under the flagstand for what I thought — well, I knew — was the 76th and final lap, I started running out of the stands … but then I looked up and the race appeared to be still going on. Moments later, I can clearly recall Pauch tangling with a lapped car between turns three and four and New Yorker Jack Johnson driving past to seemingly win the race. But in this case, officials quickly realized what had occurred: the starter had thrown the white flag when the checkered flag should have been displayed, so the race ran an extra lap and Pauch’s after-the-fact spin was negated and he was rightfully declared the winner. Officials said the rules dictated that scoring (back then it was all by hand) stops at the advertised race distance and thus a flagging error adding another lap doesn’t factor into the outcome. And there’s the difference from Saturday’s Heartland Tour deal: the series rules include a provision for a racing going one lap too long or too short that stipulates the race is officially over when the checkered flag is displayed and the leader crosses the scoring loop.
No. 3: Today marks the 60th birthday veteran Dale McDowell of Chickamauga, Ga., so here’s wishing him the best at he hits the big 6-0. How long will it take him to win his first feature in his 60s? He hasn’t raced in a month, but he’ll be chasing that milestone triumph in the coming weeks with three straight weekends of action on his schedule: this weekend’s Lucas Oil Series-sanctioned Show-Me 100 at Lucas Oil Speedway in Wheatland, Mo., May 29-30’s World of Outlaws Late Model Series weekend at Mansfield (Ohio) Speedway and June 3-6’s Dream at Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio.
No. 4: Sunday’s MARS Championship Series debut at Coles County Speedway in Mattoon, Ill. — a tight, eighth-mile track that runs micro-sprints as its weekly headliner — was certainly an interesting affair. Brandon Sheppard outdueled Ryan Unzicker for the lead to seize control and head to the $5,000 triumph in his family-owned No. B5, making for an entertaining race. Also notable, though, was that the 40-lap feature ran caution-free on the extreme bullring that’s even smaller than the temporary track built for the annual Gateway Dirt Nationals at The Dome at America’s Center in St. Louis, Mo. Think we’ll ever see the similar-length headliner at the Dome go nonstop?
No. 5: A young driver deserving of a special mention is Lane Snook, a rising teenager from Port Royal, Pa., who turns 18 on May 26. In December DirtonDirt ranked him as one of Dirt Late Model racing’s Top 25 drivers under the age of 25 following a breakout 20-victory season in the Limited Late Model division, and so far this year he’s living up to that billing. He has four Limited Late Model victories so far among three tracks, and his first full season of Super Late Model action is looking good after he scored a pair of top-10 finishes in World of Outlaws Late Model Series events: seventh Thursday at Selinsgrove (Pa.) Speedway (after winning a heat and running in the top-five for much of the feature’s 45-lap distance) and 10th Sunday at Bedford (Pa.) Speedway (after starting 15th). He also won Friday’s Limited Late Model feature at Bedford. Snook, who has just 11 Super Late Model feature starts on his ledger with a top finish of second on April 10 at Selinsgrove, is a kid to keep an eye on.
