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Warm, windy skies greeted a near capacity grandstand as Don Martin’s Lernerville Speedway hosted the World of Outlaws Sprint Cars on Tuesday night May 15. The occasion was the annual First Commonwealth Bank Commonwealth Clash.
The 35 lap, $10,000 to win race is the first of two annual visits by the winged warriors. Tuesday also marked the first visit of the reunited World of Outlaws since the demise of the short lived National Sprint Tour. The combined series’ boasts a traveling contingent of over 25 cars.
With that many regulars following the circuit, drivers agree that even making the show has become a challenge. “The competition’s definitely stronger this year,” says Mt. Vernon Washington ’s Jason Solwold. “We’ve been alright; we’ve been making every race and pretty much running in the top ten every night except for mechanical problems and one or two DNF’s. We always run pretty good when we come out here to Pennsylvania . We look forward to it.”
Hometown favorite and Aliquippa PA native Tim Shaffer agrees that the competition is definitely tighter. “When you’ve got 27, 28 cars pulling in every night; you’re off one bit, you’re outside watching.” Shaffer has the added pressure of coming home to perform in front of the home crowd. “You seem to try too hard. The last couple of times we were here we did pretty good where I just try to do my basic thing. It’s tough. You come home, a lot of people, they all haven’t seen you or you talk to everybody you get to lose some concentration on the race car. But that’s part of it, and I think we’re in pretty good shape for tonight.”
“When you’ve got 25 caliber cars that can win on any given night it’s tough on anybody,” says Nashville TN native Paul McMahon. “They only take 24 in the race. This year is probably the toughest year the Outlaws had in many years. The cream always rises to the top. I don’t think you’ll see guys winning 15 or 20 races like we used to. If you win five or six this year you had a pretty good season.”
Californian Tim Kaeding, substitute driving for Brook Tatnell who was back in his Australian homeland due to the passing of his father, weighed in on the difficulty of making an A-Feature with the high quantity and quality of cars following the World of Outlaws Series, “You’ve got to be on top of your game all night long. It’s a fine line making the show. The biggest thing is you want to be in the top 16 in the first two rows of the heat race to give yourself a chance to make the Dash so you can capitalize on that.
With both organizations joining back up, yea it is a lot harder to make shows nowadays than say it was last year.”
Jason Myers took his Primaerica Financial/Elite Landscaping Maxim to the track for time trials and held off all 45 other entries with a fast lap of 12.959 seconds around the 4/10 mile Sarver PA oval. Four heat races netted wins for Justin Henderson, Jason Sowold, Tim Shaffer and Steve Kinser. A clearly dominate Steve Kinser took the Dash win, putting him on the pole for the A-Main.
The 35 lap, $10,000 to win A-Feature race was unmistakably all about King of the Outlaws Steve Kinser. With only Joey Saldana and Tim Shaffer giving the appearance of any real pressure to Kinser, it was his race from the drop of the green.
Lernerville’s regular crop of hot shoes in the Sprint Car division didn’t fare as well as they’d have liked to. Ed Lynch Jr., the driver everyone looks to repeat his one time upset of the Outlaws finished a disappointing 26th.
Brain Ellenberger, Bob Felmlee and Gary Rankin finished 22nd, 23rd and 24th respectively.
The World of Outlaws will return to Don Martin’s Lernerville Speedway on July 17, 2007 for the Don Martin Memorial Silver Cup XVI. NASCAR Nextel Cup standout Kasey Kahne will serve as Grand Marshal for the $30,000 to win show in the middle of the World of Outlaws “Month of Money”. Tickets are available by calling the speedway office at 724-353-1511. |
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