One of the coolest weekends in my career came in 2007, during that season we were racing as much as possible, wing and non wing, 410 and 360, just anywhere and everywhere. We saw on the schedule an ASCA non wing show at Prescott Valley Raceway Friday night, USA Sprints winged 410/360 show in Tucson on Saturday night.
After having raced at both tracks before, I was feeling confident going into the weekend. Friday night, a 2nd place run in the heat race put me starting 8th in the ten car inversion. On the start of the main I fell back to the 12th spot. After a yellow flag just a few laps in I decided I was going to move around on the track, get elbows up and hopefully go forward. The rest of the race went without a yellow and I started picking off cars running in on top and really turning the car in the center to get a huge drive off the bottom. Bobby Marcum was leading, and Bryan Swineheart was 2nd. I ran them both down when we got to lapped traffic and briefly took 2nd from Swineheart coming off turn 2 but I didn’t take his line away and he drove back by me. After the checkered flag flew they pulled the top 3 up in front of the grandstands to be interviewed. The red 98 of Bobby Marcum in 1st, the black and white 6 of Bryan Swineheart 2nd, and my red and black 35 car in 3rd. The first thing the announcer said was, “I really don’t like winged cars but I noticed wings sitting next to your trailer. What’s that about?” I told him, “Well I am a winged driver and we just pulled the wings off to run with you guys tonight.”
The next night we pulled into the USA Raceway with high hopes of pulling off another great run. A super heavy track like usual made for no passing in the heat race, and I started and ran 3rd. I re-drew the 6th starting spot for the A-main, and was even more confident going into the A-main. When the green flag fell I picked up a couple positions right on the start, and the race went green to checkered. With the top 5 cars all spread out I ran 4th the entire race.
At the time we never really thought that weekend was a very big deal. Kevin Eckert wrote about it in his end of the year column saying that I was possibly the only sprint car driver to pull off a top 5 with and without a wing on back to back nights. Now looking back that is one of my favorite accomplishments throughout all of my career.
- administrator on Sep 14, 2010
- Article Date: 9/14/2010