Port Royal Speedway
Notes: Satterlee can't cash in at Port Royal
By Kevin Kovac and Kyle McFadden
DirtonDirt
Gregg Satterlee at Port Royal Speedway. (heathlawsonphotos.com)
PORT ROYAL, Pa. (Aug. 23) — Gregg Satterlee doesn’t typically put extra pressure on himself. So what happens to the 40-year-old driver from Indiana, Pa., at Port Royal Speedway — one of his best tracks — when Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series rolls in for the $50,000-to-win Rumble by the River? | RaceWire
It’s a perplexing situation for Satterlee, who finished third the first year the event boasted a 50-grand winner’s prize in 2022 but hasn’t come close to contending ever since. This year’s event continued the troubling trend as he experienced a bad-luck DNQ in Friday’s preliminary program and had to battle forward from the 17th starting spot to scratch out an eighth-place finish in Saturday’s 50-lap finale.
“We race here enough, I feel like we should come here and this should be a, you know, qualify up front, finish up front in the heat race, and run inside the top 10, I think, with not a lot of drama,” Satterlee said. “It just seems like there’s always the racing gremlins that come and hunt us down on this weekend, and either something on our car breaks or I get out there and look like I’ve never driven a car in my life.”
Satterlee has triumphed in Lucas Oil Series action at Port Royal, but it came in April 2022 in a standalone show. The big-money summer weekend has brought him plenty of frustration, including a 15th-place finish in 2023 and a DNQ last year after his crew chief, Robby Allen, had to borrow a rollback truck to transport Satterlee’s car to the track on Friday because of hauler trouble and battery trouble left him unable to turn a qualifying lap in Friday’s opener.
This year’s edition started miserably again for Satterlee on Friday when a broken fan shroud caused residual problems that forced him to miss time trials. His bid to rebound for a feature berth was ended by a leaking right-front tire in a B-main. Saturday brought more headaches as Satterlee timed only 11th-fastest in his group and lost a transfer spot on the last lap of his heat, but he righted the ship with a consolation victory and an advance to eighth in the feature.
“The amount of room for error against this group of cars is just small, so if we’re just a little bit off in qualifying, it’ll show up more,” the Rocket X1R driver said. “But our car’s good. We didn’t do anything out of the ordinary tonight. We just stayed on track. It started off a little bit bad — I screwed myself up in the heat race and the last restart, I shot myself on the foot there — but overall, good recovery.
“I was able to get really good restarts and pick off a couple cars at a time. The longer runs I would get a little bit snug and kind of lose my maneuverability, but as a whole, a good night. Top 10 with the Lucas cars, that’s a good night.
“I think if we had started closer to the front, I think a top-five isn't out of the question,” he continued. “I mean, the three guys in front of me, I know (Mike) Marlar and Max (Blair) and I think J.D. (Jonathan Davenport) were all kind of right in sight. But obviously the closer to the front you get, the harder they get to pass, so I was kind of peaked when I got to eighth there. I almost got Max on that last restart, but I kind of settled in there.”
A winner three times at Port Royal among nine overall victories this season, Satterlee is performing well in his schedule of regional events. He’s pleased with his campaign, but he just wants to figure out a way to make a run at Port Royal’s $50,000 pot of gold.
“I feel like on a normal night here, I’m really, really comfortable,” Satterlee said. “It’s not like it’s a different kind of comfort, but when we come to these races it’s like, man, we’re struggling to get that balance sometimes. We just didn’t get off course tonight, made good decisions. Robby and I have worked together a long time now and we’re getting way better at making really good decisions. We just need some luck this weekend, too.” — Kevin Kovac
Blair halts skid
Max Blair will gladly take a pair of top-10s at Port Royal Speedway over the weekend on the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series.
His eighth- and seventh-place finishes are the first back-to-back top-10 runs in full-field nationally touring action since he ran seventh in June 7’s Dream XXXI at Eldora Speedway and then third at June 20’s Firecracker 100 at Lernerville Speedway. The Centerville, Pa., driver running an independent schedule this year had his expectations so low over the weekend, his goals were “just to finish a race.”
“I’ve had some terrible luck the last month,” said Blair, who DNF’ed last Saturday at Port Royal Speedway and failed to qualify for Aug. 9’s North-South 100 finale at Florence Speedway. “We had a solid weekend, two good, solid top-10s against his field, so I'll take it. Hopefully maybe we can do a little better at Lernerville.”
Indeed, Blair is full steam ahead toward Lernerville’s debut weekend hosting the 56th annual Hillbilly 100 that since 2016 had been held at West Virginia’s Tyler County Speedway.
“We ran really well at the Firecracker. We ran really well at the Dream, too, so I'm excited,” said Blair, who Saturday at Port Royal gained eight positions from the 15th-starting spot.
While he’s happy with his run Saturday, he believes a top-five finish was possible.
“I think we were a little better than that. (Mike) Marlar was just running a real weird line into one, and it was killing me,” Blair said. “I really wish I could have gone by him. I think I could have got by (Jonathan Davenport) too. I think we were good enough to run in the top five and it didn't play out. We needed to be better earlier in the day to start farther toward the front.”
Blair doesn’t have much experience at Port Royal compared to his fellow Pennsylvanians. His lone victory at the half-mile came in August 2019’s Butch Renninger Memorial.
“I've never raced here a lot, once or twice a year in the last few years, mainly these Lucas races is really all,” he said.
Blair also pointed out it’s difficult to prepare for the Lucas Oil races at Port Royal Speedway because the track typically races differently than a weekly program.
“Yeah, tonight, they got it a little bit wetter tonight,” Blair said. “They come around for the feature. It's weird because if you do come here for a normal race, you race with the 410s, so the racetrack is just a lot different,” meaning that the sprint cars usually widened out the track earlier throughout the night.
Blair’s excited about these next few weeks that include another crack at a lucrative event at Lernerville and Sept. 4-6’s World 100 at Eldora.
“I just think we've had some terrible luck the last six weeks here. I mean, it doesn't matter how good you are against these guys. If you don't have some luck on your side, it just don't matter,” Blair said. “So, we just need a little luck to go our way.
“(Lernerville,) that place always racing awesome. It's, you know, in our area, that's about the best we have to have to offer. It's an awesome place.”
Does Blair feel if all goes right, he could capture either top prizes Friday ($10,000-to-win) or Saturday at $30,000-to-win for what’d be his first full-field Lucas Oil triumph?
“Absolutely, yeah,” he said. — Kyle McFadden
Odds and ends
Lincolnton, N.C.’s Carson Ferguson listed a laundry list of things that went wrong for him in his 12th-place finish and backslide from the pole Saturday at Port Royal: “A lot of driver errors. Every restart, not driving hard like I need to. Too worried about air. I end up underdriving the car and not having the grip I need. Not letting the car work like it needs to. I definitely feel like we had a top-five car. We were pretty good after a few laps. … Choose the wrong line on the first restart, and from there, it was just backwards.” … Last year’s Rumble by the River winner Jonathan Davenport of Blairsville, Ga., ran as high as third for laps 10-18 before settling for a fifth-place finish. … Hudson O’Neal of Martinsville, Ind., who won the $50,000 event in 2023 driver the Rocket Chassis house car, started third but lost two positions on the opening lap and never recovered. He faded to a 10th-place finish in the SSI Motorsports entry. … Fourth-place finisher Brandon Sheppard of New Berlin, Ill., competed in Port Royal’s summer weekend for the first time since 2022, the event’s first year paying $50,000-to-win. He didn’t enter the show the last two years while chasing the World of Outlaws Real American Beer Late Model Series with the Longhorn Factory Team. … Chris Ferguson of Mount Holly, N.C., was running ninth when he caught the outside wall and damaged his car’s right-front suspension, causing him to slow for the feature’s final caution flag on lap 41 and retire. … Rick Eckert of York, Pa., gained entry to the feature with a track provisional (he’s leading the weekly points standings) after his involvement in an opening-lap scramble in his heat broke his car’s left-front tie rod to set back his night. He climbed forward to finish 15th. … Former Lucas Oil Series campaigner Ross Robinson of Georgetown, Del., is gearing up for a four-race week, starting Tuesday at his hometown track’s Camp Barnes Benefit Stock Car Race at Georgetown Speedway and continuing with Friday’s $12,000-to-win Fall Clash opener at Bedford (Pa.) Speedway, Saturday’s $7,333-to-win Butch Renninger Memorial at Port Royal and Sunday’s $10,063-to-win Paul Long Memorial at Selinsgrove (Pa.) Speedway. … After losing an engine Saturday at Port Royal, Daulton Wilson of Fayetteville, N.C., said he’s making an unplanned trip to team owner James Rattliff’s shop in Campbellsville, Ky., this week to regroup before Friday’s Hillbilly 100 opener at Lernerville. … Sun River, Mont.’s Michael Leach continues his busy slate as he’s scheduled to make the Midwest trip for this weekend’s three-race MARS Championship Series swing Friday at Farmer City (Ill.) Raceway, Fairbury (Ill.) Speedway and Banner, Ill.’s Spoon River Speedway. Leach finished 18th Friday at Port Royal and missed Saturday’s main event by one spot spot in the B-main. ... The Port Royal finale ended at 9:40 p.m. … Lucas Oil Series owner Forrest Lucas’s death at the age of 82 was announced at the track and on the FloRacing stream just as heat races began. A tribute video for Lucas was shown on FloRacing.
