Shadow Report – APC United Late Model Series Race 3 - Delaware
Hello all and welcome. Now I have to see if I can remember how my old disclaimer goes. Its been a while.
Basically: this is an unofficial account of how the races went as written by a fan watching from the stands. It is bound to be riddled with errors and shoddy writing. (You get what you pay for.) If there’s anything really glaring that you need addressed, please write your beef down on a 20 dollar bill and send it to my complaints department, and we’ll look into it. Eventually.
Gotta tell you all, if you missed this one then you missed a doozy that lasted till just after midnight. We had a little bit of everything….great racing, bad crashes, general mayhem, and a little bit of lads-will-be-lads extracurricular festivities to cap it all off. We knew after tonight that when the APC United Late Model series rolls into Delaware Speedway, you better batten down the hatches…cuz stuff’s gonna happen.
39 cars, by my count, pulled through the gate today. It was apparent during practice that there were a lot of top dogs in this field. They said they would start 32, and we’ve had 32 car fields before. But it’s been a long time, if ever, that we’ve had a field this deep in good runners. Just walking around the pits you could feel the guys were stoked.
Unforunately the night ended before it even started for Nick Goetz, the bright yellow 24 car from Southampton. Nick was crazy fast in practice but toward the end of the second practice round he lost it in 3/4 and hit the tire at the end of the pit wall dead square and full tilt boogie. Youch. Nick had to get medical attention trackside and I believe he ended up getting trucked off to the hospital. (If youre reading this man…I hope you’re on the mend and that it wasn’t too bad.)
So qualifying was done right at the beginning of the show at 730. Making the long story short, Cole Powell set the fast time at 18.391. Mark Watson was 2nd, and Dale Shaw was 3rd. Congrats to Cole on winning the pole, and setting a new track record.
So when race time came Powell had the outside pole and Mark Watson had the inside, then it was 83-Shaw and 51-Bentley, then 22-Cox and 81-Gresel, then 17-Stade and 72-Thompson, then 10-Kennedy and 9-Brandon Watson.
Now, we had a little bet up on Richmond Row as to how many laps before caution flew. In past years at big LM races with 30+ car fields, we’ve had some problems. But this is field full of top talent and I’m glad to say I won the bet. The first quarter of the race went caution free.
At the green flag, “Downtown” Mark Watson (or “The St Thomas Express”…not sure when they changed his nickname but…whatever) Jumps out to an early commanding lead. He’s on rails and he opens up a few car lengths between himself and 2nd place Shaw. Powell got loose and up out of line at the outset and drops back to 5th.
Now around lap 6, he’s got Shaw, Powell and Cox in line behind him and closing the gap already. They form the lead pack and start to run with Stade, Kennedy and Thompson in the second pack a few car lengths behind.
By lap 12 Shaw is already pushing Watson hard, trying a few times to make the pass but not quite doing it. Cox bobbles and falls back, leaving Watson and Shaw on the run all by themselves.
Now as Cox falls back, Kennedy shoots up into 4th, and now the running order is Watson, Shaw, Powell, Kennedy, and Cox running nose to tail. Thompson in 6th and closing in fast.
First caution flies at lap 26 when Lloyd Rawlings goes around in the grass off turn 2. No big damage and we quickly get going again.
On the restart, Shaw tries a pass on Watson. No go. By lap 33 your lead string is Watson, Shaw, Powell, Kennedy, Thompson and Gresel, with Pritiko slightly behind but ready to jump into the fray at any moment. Closing in on the halfway now, Pritiko is up into 7th.
At the crossed flags, it’s still Watson and Shaw out front, then Powell, Kennedy and Thompson. Kennedy is starting to pressure Powell now and almost makes the pass a couple times. But disaster strikes on lap 51 when Lloyd Rawlinga and Pilkey Jr tangle coming out of turn 4.
They line up for the restart and its Watson, Shaw, Powell, Kennedy, Thompson, Gresel, Pritiko and Cox.
When the green flies, Thompson bobbles out of line and falls back to 7th. Up near the front, Kennedy is starting to get aggressive on Powell, giving him a few hurry-up nudges, and looking like he’s setting him up for the big pass. But further back, Thompson is back alongside Gresel. They come together, and Gresel is in the turn 3 fence hard. On the slowdown you can see that Gresel is hopping mad at Thompson, but the 81 car is done for the night.
(Remember that…you’ll need it later.)
Restart doesn’t go a whole lap and Mat Box is around in 2 to bring out the caution again. But in that half a lap you can see Thompson’s getting antsy and pushy.
Now on the next restart, its still Watson and Shaw out front, but now Kennedy is alongside Powell trying for 3rd. They drag race but Powell manages to hold on and keep the spot. Pritiko is up into 5th now.
Then at lap 63 Shaw makes his move and gets around Watson to take the lead. Watson suddenly looks like he’s got a handful of race car to control, and Shaw streaks away all by himself. But now theres a caution for 51 Bentley spinning in turn 3.
This is where things start to get ugly. Lucky lap 66. Now they’re throwing the black flag at Brandon Watson for leaking fluid. He pulls it in and the crew goes to work, but now there’s fluid on the track. Out comes the clean up crew, and they throw the red flag so the guys can lay down the speedy dry. The cars are sitting on the backstretch
When they get going again, Brady Smith-39 can’t get it fired and needs a push. Then they discover he had a bad leak too and he’s left a trail when they pushed him. So out comes the clean up crew again. They move the whole field around to the front straight and start all over again. Now there’s basically a line of speedy dry all the way around the track.
They get then fired again and they do a lot of caution laps to disperse the speedy dry, and air above the the track is starting to look like a dust bowl. So round and round they go under caution.
Now the game changer for this race happens here. They take green and when they get around to 3 and 4, all hell breaks loose. There’s cars everywhere…and it’s a lot of the front runners. Powell is off, Shaw is up and into the fence, Cox is off, Shwartzenberg, McWhirter…huge bunch of cars out of commission. On mic Shaw suggested that they hadn’t cleaned up the track well enough. I wasn’t driving so I don’t know, but I’ve seen guys drive through that stuff plenty of times before without incident.
So now its red flag once again.
They eventually clean up, and once it gets started it looks like Pritiko is out of gas. Pritiko brings it in under caution and his guys go to work filling it, but now they can’t get it fired.
White flag comes out and the lights go out on the pace car, and Pritikos guys are pushing the 21 down pit road as the field goes by…and still can’t get it fired. So they take green without Pritiko.
But more disaster as McGlynn, Demelo and Colliver all make hard contact on the frontstretch without even having gotten a lap in. McGlynns car was messed up pretty bad. Red flag again….and bear in mind…its still lap 66 on the board.
So when the green flies this time, Pritikos up in it now, and the order is Watson, Kennedy and Thompson. Twice now Thompson’s gotten a run on Kennedy and Watson and actually nosed into the lead, but they keep going back to the last completed lap, so he keeps getting put back to 3rd.
There’s one more caution involving Ron Beauchamp and 22 Mitchell. Restart.
NOW is when the race goes back to awesome.
Kennedy now takes the lead from Watson on lap 85 and Thompson manages to muscle into 2nd. Now its Kennedy, Thompson, Cox and Pritiko with 10 to go.
Thompson goes to work on Kennedy. Thompson.s got something for him tonight.
Lap 92, coming out of 2 Thompson gives Kennedy the rub. Kennedy gets squirrelly, and Thompson shoots underneath. Kennedy slams the door on Thompson. They’re both almost sideways, half on the grass, and Kennedy STILL hangs onto 1st.
White flag lap, Kennedy and Thompson are going at it and Watson goes around in 3. Yellow flag? No sir…no douchey Delaware ending for THIS race. Thompson gets alongside Kennedy, they’re neck and neck coming out of 4 and its KENNEDY by a nose hair. And Pritiko comes in 3rd.
How do you like that…all you people that went home early?
So now it victory lane. The three podium finishers come around to the frontstretch. Thompson’s car actually appears to be on fire. And when he’s done looking at that, some of Gresel’s boys decide to crash the party. And fists are swinging, and the victory lane announcer is going “holy crap”, and there’s actual fireworks going off behind turn 2.
It was a magical moment.
I couldn’t hear jack of what Thompson said because of the fireworks going off during his interview, but Kennedy was pretty gracious considering their history. Jesse just says basically “nah we’re good, I woulda ran him the same way if the roles were different, and we both know that”
So that was pretty cool
What a hell of a show though I’m telling ya.
In the pits later, I overheard a certain announcer saying something to the effect of “man last year they bitched about the restarts…what are they gonna talk about this time?” Well I know what I’m gonna talk about. I’m gonna talk about how awesome it was to watch a race transpire somewhat naturally without having to resort to contrivances. Yeah this one was a bit of a freak show with the huge delay in the middle…but that’s racing. Shit happens. Guys get mad, races go long. Sometimes it’s a snoozer and sometimes you get a wham bang awesome ending like this one…without any help from the people up top.
What I saw tonight was real.
And bless APC for making something like this series happen.
Shadow out
Linkback: https://www.canadianracingonline.com/smf/index.php?topic=21330.msg113800#msg113800
