Volusia Wednesday Night

FLORIDA STOCK CAR RACING KARNAC's FLORIDA STOCK CAR RACING
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Guess I might have to bite the bullet and go to Volusia for tonight’s show (if the weather clears up) after seeing the qualifying results for the All-Stars last night…
Check it out… Steve Kinser, Greg Hodnett, Chad Layton, Cody Darrah, Danny Lasoski and Brad Sweet didn’t even crack the top 25 in qualifying last night!
Swindell wins - he’s always been good at Volusia…
Only 39 cars (I say ONLY because there used to be 75-80 cars down every February up until a few years ago) but an absolutely incredible list of names all in one place…
The dirt shows, both Sprint and LM, still seem to draw all of the big names for Speedweeks while the World Series at NSS has very few recognizable names and really has to depend much more now on “locals” to fill the field… At least the ACT will help there some this year and maybe some of those guys will stay around for the rest of the week… From the pre-entries, looks like the Tour and SK Modified fields may need to be combined again just so it looks like there are some cars on the track…
Also at Volusia last night… Clint Bowyer wins the Modified feature ahead of Ken Schrader… what a great thing to promote with guys like these two plus Kenny Wallace, Ty and Austin Dillon - all racing for FUN… Also about 80 Mods there it looks like.
Actually, the real reason in going is for the CURLY FRIES!!!

Qualifying (Best time of two laps): 1) 1Z-Stevie Smith 13.525 2) 51-Fred Rahmer 13.607 3) 63-Chad Kemenah 13.609 4) 6-Kraig Kinser 13.639 5) 83X-Tim Shaffer 13.677 6) 89G-David Gravel 13.727 7) 15H-Sam Hafertepe Jr. 13.746 4-Danny Smith 13.772 9) W20-Greg Wilson 13.777 10) 2-Dale Blaney 13.777 11) 27-Daryn Pittman 13.859 12) 14Z-Jessica Zemken 13.868 13) 1-Sammy Swindell 13.885 14) 14-Jason Meyers 13.932 15) 5W-Lucas Wolfe 13.940 16) 15-Donny Schatz 13.940 17) 7S-Jason Sides 13.964 18) 24-Terrt McCarl 14.005 19) 7-Craig Dollansky 14.011 20) 83-Paul McMahan 14.017 21) 9-Joey Saldana 14.020 22) 17-Tyler Walker 14.021 23) 30C-Lance Dewease 14.034 24) 22-Brian Ellenberger 14.042 25) 2B-Ben Gregg 14.107 26) 11-Steve Kinser 14.127 27) O4-Cap Henry 14.137 28) 1J-Bronson Maeschen 14.148 29) 91-Cody Darrah 14.191 30) 25-Aaron Ott 14.237 31) 55-Chad Layton 14.279 32) 39-Greg Hodnett 14.313 33) 49-Brad Sweet 14.329 34) 33-Danny Lasoski 14.356 35) 7M-Mark Smith 14.492 36) 80-Spud Gustin 14.514 37) 3-Pete Miller 15.033 38) P51-Jeff Carlson 15.328 39) 6N-Brad Wickam 15.404

TALK ABOUT A LOADED FIELD - It ain’t Knoxville, but it’s as good as we can get down here…

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Dave, I really enjoyed the races at VSP last night, but I’m also very much looking forward to the World Series at NSS. As it turned out, the Volusia surface was in excellent shape last night. It was wide and smooth, so cars were running from the rail to the wall. Terrific…but its a fact that this is not always the case. Some nights the track dioesn’t come in and the races reflect it.

Gotta NSS credit, the pavement there is consistently good and lends itself to lots of passing, repassing and side-by-side action. We’re lucky to have the choices that we do during February.

I’ll wait and see how things go, but I think it is premature to judge a show that hasn’t happened yet based only on the pre-entires.

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I’m not bashing NSS Boney… but I sure miss the “old” World Series… You either had a Modified (no Florida/IMCA) and tried your best to beat Evans, Bodine, Spencer, Ruggerio etc or at Late Model (No LLM, Crates, Semi-Lates etc.) and tried to beat Trickle, Shear, Hanley, Miller etc… Everything else ran with the “Thunder Cars” which had a potpourri of various cars… Those were fun weeks in Feb.
Also, the years CASCAR and the Pro-4’s ran were great shows… Even saw Supermodifieds there in the early 70s… After Shampine’s bad crash which was the same night Bill Knox got hurt real bad, Clyde never let them come back…

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Yeah, there were some damn good years. I’ll never forget my first ever visit to New Smyrna. It was during the World Series in 1977. Gary Balough and Geoff Bodine were the big fued in the modifieds that year. By the time the feature rolled around that night, the tension was pretty thick, and be darned if they didn’t wreck each other in the first lap. Then Gary B. did something I’d never seen before that night, or since. He climbed out of his car and insisted that Geoff Bodine climb in!

Our racing heritage is fun to remember, but you know the old saying, “these are the good old days”.