By Bill Foley
Larry Wight was chasing Tim Sears Jr. for the big block modified crown at the Brewerton Speedway on Friday night, but he was also putting on a pretty crowd pleasing run in his Empire Super Sprint No. 99L.
In the end, it was a night of sort of mixed results as he captured the final modified main of the 2023 season and rallied for a fifth in what was a problem-plagued Sprint night.
Throughout the early part of the night, the No. 99L Sprint was being pushed off with its engine covering off. There was something that just wasn’t right.
Larry told Dirt Track Digest, “That’s a fresh motor we put in. At first, we thought we had something in backwards and finally found out that we had a couple fuel lines that were swapped. So we swapped, and it ran better, but it was still not quite right.”
Continuing, he said, “I’m not quite sure what we were missing, and I’m not familiar enough with the injection stuff to really know. However, I think it’s something simple that we’re just missing. Even in the feature, I couldn’t go more than half throttle without it breaking up and stumbling. So to go from 20th to fifth, I’m happy with that.”
Mid-race, he appeared to be moving, but got to around eighth and faced a long battle with Chuck Hebing.
Wight explained, “It was more me than him. I just couldn’t get down for the bite, and I didn’t have any throttle to help me get the bite. I just had to make up all of my time in the corners.”
So he settled for fifth and moved on to the modified
The past few weeks, the question around Larry’s choices of cars has been, “Is it a Teo or a Bicknell?”
Well, it was the Bicknell in victory lane.
Larry said, “We just wanted to try something. You know, I feel like everybody’s pretty much got the same bag of toys. We wanted to venture out and try something. I feel Teo definitely has something in the works. It works at Orange County with Brett, and I think I just need to fine-tune it a little bit for the shorter tracks.
Continuing, he explained, “You know we’ve still got it (the Teo). I think we just need to figure out what it needs. I am not abandoning it. It was more so just knowing what else is out there.”
Looking back at the feature win, he said, “The car was phenomenal. We’ve been struggling here, and it seems we get a good run, then a couple of bad runs, and last week I think we just missed it by a little bit. It just loosened up more than we thought it would last week. I really couldn’t tell you what the car had in it tonight because I was focused on the sprint car all night. Jake and Cole did all their work on the modified. I went out, and the set-up was all them.”
Early on, he had a little difficulty getting past early leader Alan Fink.
Asked if he was surprised, Larry said, “No, the small blocks have been so good here. You know, when there’s just a little bit of traction through the middle, the small blocks can roll in there, grab it, and pull off the corner a lot better than the big blocks. Just by being down on power, you can hook them up easier. So I knew that the small blocks were going to be tough on that track.”
Continuing, he explained, “Once we got rolling there on the bottom, I was just eating them up so bad down the backstretch. I knew that the middle of the top had finally gone away.”
Larry has been in a big block slump as of late, and of the victory, he told DTD, “It means the world. You know, going into the big race season now and closing off the year here with the second in points, and a win on the last night, it’s big. It’s just momentum for the next race.”
Even though he won on the final regular season night, the bragging rights for the track crown went to Tim Sears Jr.
The duo are serious rivals, and Larry explained, “Oh, absolutely. You know, we grew up together. We’ve spent a lot of time at the track together, whether it was playing with Matchbox cars or playing with big cars. And, you know, there’s definitely a rivalry there when you get my dad and his grandfather go drinking together. If Tiimmer beats me, the old man Sears jabs my dad, and it pisses him off, and if I win, then my dad pisses him off and jabs him. So it’s back and forth. That trickles down to us. We catch the crap side of it, and then we have to go out there and do it all over again.”
And when Tim Sears and Larry Wight go out there and do it again, they provide more than enough excitement for their fans.
