Crowds shoulder to shoulder in the grandstands. Concession lineups you had to elbow your way through just to get down the concourse to the bathroom. Cars parked on the road halfway back to Komoka. And a thrilling yet controversial race finish.
Yeah...Delaware is officially BACK on the grid!
Delaware Super Stock 50 lap feature.The race starts 24 cars with 3-Perkins on the pole, with 77-Lake alongside. Next is 76-Reid, 2-Prudhomme, 11-Lidster, 98-Morneau, 52-Clark and 99-Nagy. Perkins jumps out to an early lead with Reid and Lidster right behind. The three form up a lead pack and begin to break away. At this point, the field seems to be playing it reasonably safe, so not too much jostling in the early going. Reid looks like he's got something for Perkins and tucks in behind waiting to make a move.
Now we're getting close to the halfway point and the leaders are beginning to come onto lapped traffic - lapped traffic that doesn't want to heed the blue/yellow stripe flag. Perkins is stopped by back markers running side by side, and in the melee, Reid gets by for 1st. At one point the 3 car gets caught in the high lane and gets passed by Lidster and Lake.
At the halfway yellow/checker, its Reid in front, Lidster 2nd, Lake 3rd, Perkins 4th and 52-Clark 5th.
Now a the restart, Reid, Lidster and Lake begin to put a little distance in from everyone else. They're beginning to pull away when 7 Shelds backs it into the turn 2 wall. Caution. Now there's a series of cautions, most minor. When the race gets going, the top 3 are still the top 3, Clark and 51-Rabideau are drag racing and battling each other for most of the race. (Clark won the Time trials and was the fastest car out there...so it looked good on Rabideau to be able to stay on the outside with him.) Next in line is another drag race between Perkins and 24-Richmond, which Richmond would eventually win. All this, entertaining as it was, was just allowing Reid, Lidster and Lake to get away.
So now on lap 36 we have our only major caution, as Sheilds and 9-Dejesus get together on the frontstretch, with DeJesus hitting the front wall hard, and collecting 48-Louie McColl in the process. Now a little bit of drama as an irate DeJesus gets out of his wrecked car and goes after Shelds (also out of the car) to give him a talking to. An animated discussion takes place on the front straightaway. Interviewed on mic shortly after, DeJesus was just exasperated because Sheilds had been involved in a couple spins up to this point and, according to DeJesus, didn't seem to know when to recognize he was in over his head and when he should back out.
So after the restart, the order is the same, with Rabideau and Clark still dueling for 4th. At lap 41, Lidster finally makes the pass on Reid for 1st, leaving Lake and Reid to battle side by side for 2nd, and Lake eventually prevails. This sets up the closing laps, with Lake perma-glued to Lidsters bumper. In the end, Lake can't do it cleanly and ends up a hard fought 2nd.
Final - 1st to Lidster, 2nd to Lake, 3rd to Clark, 4th to Reid, and 5th to Richmond.
All in all it was a good showing for the Super Stock guys. Not too much rough stuff which was nice, and all in all, Richmond Row and the CRO denizens had a pretty respectable showing. Jake Ott, son of JWOracing, looked good out there today keeping a good line and keeping his nose clean. Look for good stuff coming from the 60 team in the future. Richmond looked good and steady, and Perkins also looked good after some pretty crummy "start of season" luck. Lake was fast and could have easily stunk up the show by dumping Lidster at the end, but chose not to. Kudos to the Lake team!
NASCAR Canadian Tire Super Series.Now...a blow by blow account of a 200 lap race is beyond my capabilites, and in the interest of getting to bed before 6am, I'm just going to hit some of the highs and lows.
Note - JR Fitzpatrick was in attendance tonight, but not as a driver. He was actually spotting for DJ. In an interview after, JR said he was more nervous as a spotter than he'd ever been as a driver.
So then...
9-Dilley starts on the pole with 22-Steckly alongside, followed by 17-Kennington and 4-Thompson, then 3-Hathaway and 60-Beauchamp. Dilley takes the early lead with Kennington right on his bumper, followed by Thompson. Kennington makes the pass on lap 12 and begins to put in some distance. In the early going, not too much rough stuff and the field gets strung out a litte bit. Kennington is a rocket and soon has the lead well in hand.
Theres a moment when Kennington slows up a bit and Thompson gets by, but soon Kennington's back out front.
Lap 46 sees Delaware alumni 19 Brad Graham in the pits for a flat tire, but ends up staying there for a good portion of the race, putting him out of contention. At the 50 lap mark, the order is Kennington, Dilley, Beauchamp, Hathaway, Steckly, 12-Gaunt, and 27-Ranger.
39-Whitlock seems to be having a tough go and on lap 56 he's got a tire going down.
At lap 58, the first of a few incidents involving 23-Lapcevich as he's spun around by Thompson. At the caution, Kenningtons pitted, and now the order is Dilley, Beauchamp, Gaunt, Thompson and 13-Lapcevich. And on lap 86, Hathaway's engine lets go. Now all the leaders are in to pit.
At the restart, now its Gaunt in front, and at the halfway mark its Gaunt, 95-Simone, Thompson, Whitlock, and Steckly. Gaunt is looking extremely stout tonight, but at this point in the race, he's also the only one who hasn't pitted yet. On lap 110, theres a backstretch shmozzle that leaves 02 Micks pointing the wrong way, and now Gaunt's in, leaving Simone with the lead.
On the 121st lap, Whitlock takes the lead from Simone, but it is short lived, because on lap 126, Whit is back in for another tire problem.
Now things start to get interesting, and just a little strange.
The first thing is that 21-Jay White gets dumped on the backstretch by 23-Lapcevich. On the ensuing caution, White brings the car around and parks it in the middle of pit road. Now, completely unrelated, Dilley comes onto pit road for some service, except that his crew has gone back into the pits for something, and has left the gas can man to mind the store all by himself. The gas man grabs the jack and begins to crank the car up, while the rest of the Dilley crew comes buffalo-ing up pit road from the turn 4 end - through pit stalls full of other race teams. (Dilley is pitted on the turn 1 side of the start finsh line) He loses a lap or 2 here while his crew catches up.
Now, while this is going on, White has gotten out of his car, irate at Lapcevich. Some shouting and gestures on the frontstretch as Lapcevich goes by, then White begins hauling ass down pit road, either to his own pit or Lapcevich's. Chris Soares, our intrepid interview announcer, is trying to stay with him hoping for a comment, but Chris is on the legal side of the pit wall, and has to go bobbing and weaving through the same crews that Dilley's guys just went plowing through. Chris got his sound byte though, as White was pretty peeved at Lapcevich. Wish I'd been able to make it out, but I understand that White might have uttered a few bleep-ables.
So, once the circus is over and we get back to racing, Steckly's out in front. Kennington is right there and they drag race for the lead for a few laps until Kennington pulls ahead. Kennington begins to take off again, but soon Thompson is in 2nd and beginning to reel Kennington in. The final 10 lap showdown is set when 55-Stacey goes around on lap 190 to bring out another caution.
On the restart from that, 40-Hannsen misses a shift on the frontstretch and 23-Lapcevich plows into him, also catching Ranger up in it too. Lengthy clean up, then the 1st attempt at the green-white-checker. Kennington and Thompson start side by side but Thompson jumps the start. The NCTS has this (in my opinion) stupid rule that you have to maintain a slow speed (I heard 30 mph) and only once you cross the restart line can you get onto it...but the restart line is only 50 feet before the start line. So, Thompson jumps it, they throw yellow and do it over again.
2nd time around Thompson still gets the lead (I thought it looked legal, though some said he jumped it again.) As they get around turn 2, Kennington has a bumper under Thompson and turns right, just enough to spin him.
Now there's another caution, and another (in my opinion) stupid rule. In NASCAR, if you're going to be penalized, they won't even tell you you're being penalized until you're actually under green again. So now the game is, is DJ going to be black flagged or not? We won't know until the green flies again. Because apparently someone thinks a penalized car at the front of the pack, being told to move, on a green-white-checker, is a good idea?
Regardless, In the end the answer was no. DJ was legal and goes on to win. 2nd to Beauchamp, 3rd to Steckly, 4th to Micks, 5th to Simone.
As they cross the finish line, a shower of fireworks ends the show from behind turn 2. Nice touch and an awesome end to a great weekend at Delaware.
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To the Fulltime Delaware Staff and Ownership:
Take a bow, boys and girls. And I hope you get to take a day off tomorrow.
Announce staff: You guys rocked it!
Special message board shout outs to:
AutoAssembler. Great to meet you Randy, and thanks for showing me how a few things look from behind the pit wall. I enjoyed our meeting and hope to see you again. Don't be a stranger here.
Derek: The Photo Man. If anyone has any doubts, Derek works his butt off snapping all those photos for us. Also great to meet you.
Evan: What can I say? After 4 years doing this, its awesome to finally meet our illustrious leader!
All the best, and I hope everyone made it home safe.
Shadow out.
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