By Bill Foley
Tim Sears Jr. is the current point leader in the big-block Modified division at the Brewerton Speedway and paces the 358 standings at the Fulton Speedway.
A few years ago, Sears decided to branch out and commit to the Super DIRTcar Series.
He’s had podium finishes, but he has also been snake-bitten more than once while running in a contending position late in the race.
SummerFAST came to Brewerton on Monday night, and Sears was in familiar surroundings.
At the end of the 60 laps, he settled for third place behind Mat Williamson and Matt Sheppard to be able to celebrate on the front stretch along with his legion of fans.
Talking to Dirt Track Digest afterwards, Tim said, “It’s not bad. I mean, these guys that beat us do it for a living, and we just do it as a hobby after work. We take a couple days off here and there to go chase the series. So it’s definitely something you can’t really hang your head about. ”
It was a long night that ended with a good result.
Reflecting on the evening, Tim said, “Tonight we were struggling early with the track, and it was a lot more slippery than I thought it was going to be early. They moved all the tires out. They moved them out past the brown, so it was really slippery and too hard to roll around the tires like we usually do as there was no brown strip down there. So that hurt me a little in the beginning because we were kind of set up for that brown strip early. We just ended up losing it at the start, and as the race went on, we ended up getting back pretty good. We were able to bounce back.”
He’s been on the podium before, but he really would like to win one at his home track.
Looking back, he explained, “I think this is my third or fourth one here. We finished second to Matt Sheppard once, and we finished second to Matty (Williamson) once. I finished third behind Pat (Ward). We’ve been there a lot. We’ve had a lot of really good runs, but we just haven’t been able to close the deal.”
Continuing, he said, “I mean getting the podium finish behind those two guys. Like I said, it’s hard to hang your head. All they have to do all day is think about race cars, and we have our family business. We put in the hours, and then we go home, and I’ll spend from five or six o’clock all the way until midnight every night down in the garage all week working on these things, getting them ready for the weekend. There’s always something to do, and we just never have enough time. You can never spend too much time on these. The more time you spend, the better your results will be.”
He had a front-row seat in the late-race jousting between Williamson and Sheppard.
Tim noted, “Actually, it was a pretty good seat. Mat was definitely rolling the top pretty good there at the end, and Sheppard looked like he was kind of in the same boat I was. He was really free in, and he had good drive off, but Mat was just really good all around there at the end, so he was definitely moving around there.”
Could he see them inadvertently taking one another out?
Sears noted, “Well, yeah. I saw them bounce off each other, and I was like, ‘hey this might work out in my favor as long as I don’t get caught up in it.’ But they’re professionals. They were going to race each other hard, and they might rub a little bit, but they’re not going to make that kind of mistake.”
It was a different track surface than Sears is used to running on, and he noted, “It reminded me a little bit of Weedsport because we’d get some really slippery spots when we started. Then there’s spots that are black that have a little more grip. So it was definitely a little different than what we’re used to here. Every week we are able to slide around; it wasn’t that way tonight.”
