Judging
by the atlas that was spread across Morgan’s lap, the Bristol Motor Speedway
would be coming into sight at any moment. We searched in great anticipation
around each and every curve until finally, as we rounded one last Tennessee
foothill, there it was. What an incredible sight! I have been to, or at least
driven by, some of the largest stadiums in the country, but nothing compares to
Bristol and the fact that these 140,000 seats were now surrounding a .533-mile
red clay dirt track just made it even better.
Friday
night started off with a pair of qualifying heats for the UMP Modifieds that
had qualified from a pair of events held earlier at Bulls Gap and Atomic. Randy
Zimmerman held off Kelly Shryock to win the first one while Randy Boggs ran
away from the field in the second heat. We noticed Mark Noble’s car in the
infield but as expected it did not run as we figured that Mark would be
competing at Denison on Friday night. As it turned out Mark traded another
Denison victory for a back row start in the Bristol event.
After
a bit of track maintenance, one hundred eighty-nine Hav-A-Tampa late models
moved into the infield for two laps of qualifying with only the top 144 moving
on to Saturday night activities. For you trivia buffs the #111 car of Bo
Shirley from Gadsden, Alabama, was the first car on the clock and his first lap
was a 17.759 second run. This was well off the quick time set later on by
Wendell Wallace at 16.200. Out of all 189 cars who qualified only one, Scott
Bloomquist, missed all three exits off of the track and in to the infield,
eventually tripping the timing device for the next car out. You have to give
the HAT officials credit as they penalized Bloomquist for this by starting him
at the tail of the first qualifying heat on Saturday. The final event of Friday
night saw some action after the checkers as well. It was the non-qualifiers
race that we thought was won by Alabama driver Don Farmer, but we were told the
following night that he was light at the scales. The race ended with the first
hard crash of the weekend as Milwaukee’s Frank Smith hit the wall protecting
pit road.
A
heavy afternoon thunderstorm delayed the program by about an hour on Saturday
night leaving the track in perfect shape for a long night of action. Before I
go on, I must say that the people who designed and constructed this “temporary”
track did an absolutely fantastic job. We saw it put to the test in hot dry
conditions on Friday night, while on Saturday night it was cool and moist and
on both nights the track held up perfectly. The six late model qualifying heats
provided the best racing action of the weekend with plenty of high-speed
jousting and late race moves for qualifying spots. Some of the highlights included:
Scott Bloomquist came from twenty-first to tenth in the first twelve lap event
that saw Scott Sexton get by Ronnie Johnson late to pick up the final transfer
spot. Billy Moyer came from ninth to finish second in the third heat. Jason
Smith made a gutsy move on the outside to knock Earl Pearson Jr. out of the
final transfer position in the fourth heat. Donnie Moran made the biggest move
of the night storming from the ninth starting spot to win the fifth heat, while
in the sixth heat it was Davey Johnson by just inches over Mike Duvall for the
final qualifying spot.
Next
up was the Pizza Plus Invitational for the UMP Modifieds and with twenty-eight
of the best drivers in the country set to take the green, I sure did not expect
to witness what followed. Spins and crashes in the middle and the back of the
pack brought out the caution on each of the first three attempts at a start
and, after that, the field only seemed to be able to complete one lap at a
time. After seven yellow flags in the first seven laps, many of the fans around
us were using some pretty colorful language to describe the Modifieds. Thank
goodness that the drivers pulled themselves together and put on a pretty good
race after the lap seven caution. On that restart the leader, Randy Zimmerman,
was caught sleeping and was passed by Kelly Shryock right after the cone. Late
in the race Shryock was able to hold off challenges from both Wayne Brooks and
Jimmy Owens, but a red flag for a rollover by Randle Sweeney with two laps to
go changed that. On the restart Brooks got a nice run as they picked up the
white flag and flew by Shryock on the outside in turn two to take the win.
Shryock held back Owens for second with Zimmerman and Kerry Norris completing
the top five.
Three
Last Chance races for the late models were up next. In the first one, Steve
Shaver found the inside groove to his liking late in the race, just in time to
nip Ronnie Johnson for the final transfer. Earl Pearson Jr. and Terry Phillips
easily qualified out of the second one, while the third race had a little
different type of drama. John Mason was running near the front when he spun
going into turn one and backed up against the wall. Almost everybody was able
to miss him except for Thomas Ware. Ware barely clipped the front of Mason’s
car vaulting the young Kentucky driver up and over between turns one and two.
“The Undertaker” as he is called, climbed out of his car and jubilantly waved
his helmet to the crowd telling one of the officials that this was the first
time that he had gotten upside-down and that he was proud to do it at Bristol
Motor Speedway.
“Track
Prep” was next on the schedule, but it was so perfect that all that was needed
was a sprinkling of the topside to keep the crumbs from drying out. At this
point it looked as if many of the drivers who had stayed away from this event
due to concerns about the toll that it would take mechanically may have been
wrong, but up until now, the most laps that had been run at once was twelve.
The true test was about to come in the Living Air 100. Mike Balzano was the
class of the field early coming from the second row to walk away with the lead.
Shannon Babb came from sixth to pick up the chase in second while Steve Shaver
moved from twenty-fourth to twelfth in just eight laps. On lap twenty-four the
trouble began.
The
incredible speeds began to tear the center section out of wheels and shredding
tires turning the event into a race of mechanical survival from there on. The
casualty list looked like this:
Lap
24: Shannon Babb loses a right rear wheel while running second.
Lap
25: Terry English loses a left rear wheel
Lap
30: The right rear wheel tears off of the Jimmy Mars car
Lap
33: The leader, Mike Blazano, watches his race come to an end as his right rear
wheel passes him unattached.
Lap
59: Billy Moyer shreds a right rear tire while in third
Lap
73: The second place car of Chub Frank loses his right rear wheel and, at the
same time, the sixth place car of Scott Bloomquist shreds a right rear tire
Lap
84: Steve Francis has his right rear tire go flat.
This
list would have definitely been longer had officials not decided to begin
counting yellow flag laps after the halfway mark. Defending HAT champion Dale
McDowell, who assumed the lead when Balzano dropped out, held on for the
victory ahead of Wendell Wallace, Steve Shaver, Skip Arp and Booper Bare. It
was a huge victory for McDowell who is still in search of a major sponsor as he
tries to defend his Hav-A-Tampa title.
Even
with all of the attrition in the feature race, this event was a huge success
with a large car count, a perfect racetrack and an enormous crowd. As of this
writing I have not yet heard any attendance figures, but it had to be at least
50,000. If this is to be held again in 2001, the wheel manufacturers will need
to get busy right now as that is the only thing that will be needed to make it
any better.
Random
Notes from Bristol….Rain delayed the event for an hour on Saturday and during
wheel-packing, the three track-packers entertained the crowd with some rubbing
and bumping of their own. In fact, the packer with number 24 on it suffered a
flat tire on two different occasions after contact with the number 3 and the
number 8, requiring service from the infield tire center….There were three
rollovers during the weekend. Randle Sweeney in a Modified, Thomas Ware in a
late model and one of the Hav-A-Tampa officials took a tumble on his
four-wheeler when he attempted to push one of the errant wheel and tires down
the back stretch. He was a little red-faced, but not injured….The week before,
while watching the World of Outlaws at Lowe’s on TNN, I noticed that the crowd
would all stand up as soon as the green flag waved. Must be a Winston Cup thing
as they did it at Bristol too. At most dirt tracks, the crowds know that when everybody
sits, everybody sees, and at Knoxville the announcers even remind you to remain
seated during the racing. I’m 6’3” so standing doesn’t bother me, but I think
I’ll save this for an entirely different column….With several cautions and
HAT’s rule of giving a driver three caution laps to change a tire the feature
ended at 2:15 a.m. eastern time and that was only with a one hour delay. It was
a long show, but it was worth it this time.
On
our way home Sunday we were able to catch four heats and two dashes for the
World of Outlaws at Terre Haute before an annoying light rain set in and washed
out the feature races. Joey Saldana will try to make it a clean sweep on July
17th.
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