In the Groove, Part Two
Sunday, July 10, 2005
The 360 division was full of action too. In the first heat race, Dan Thornburg had his share of troubles in going the right direction. After looping his machine on the pace lap, he hopped the berm on the backstretch under green-flag conditions. He momentarily wowed the crowd when he kept going, but by the time he got to turn three, he spun and brought out a yellow.
Alan Zoutte and Davey Heskin both had some similar kinds of trouble in the 360 B-Main. First, Zoutte spun in turn two. On the restart, Heskin spun on the frontstretch. A lap later, Heskin spun again in turn two. And a lap after that, Zoutte spun again in turn two.
Perhaps the worst incident of the night came in the third 360 heat race when Peter Crall got together with another car on the start. The contact knocked out the front end and sent Crall head-on into the fence that surrounds victory lane on the inside of the frontstretch. The impact with the billboards knocked Crall’s car sideways and for a moment it appeared the throttle may have stuck open and was preparing to send Crall into the crowded infield area. Thankfully, the car shut down before that happened and a potential disaster was averted. Crall, however, probably had some sore knees after the hard impact, although he was able to walk away under his own power.
The three racing members of the Alexander family provided plenty of story lines in the 360 division on this night. The bad luck came for Terry, who was scheduled to start on the pole of his heat race but had to scratch for the night. In a different heat race, his son, Mitch, came all the way from the back of the field to finish second. The whopping amount of passing points that gave him put Mitch on the pole for the first 360 feature.
Mitch Alexander’s luck ran out quickly though, as he spun in turn three only four laps into the 15-lap feature. A couple of laps later, Eric Mason looped his car in turn two for another caution.
When this race got going, Josh Higday and Jake Peters fought hard to get the lead. With less than a handful of laps left, both went for the same piece of track real estate as they were trying to move around a lapped car. With all three of those cars trying to run the groove which developed right up next to the big white fence, Johnny Anderson used the bottom groove to his advantage and shot by all three cars. Anderson took the win, his second of the year and second overall. Higday quickly fell back to ninth with mechanical troubles.
The second feature saw Jerry Crabb on the pole and John Hall outside the front row. Many times when the feature lineups have such a stiff invert, fans expect the crashing will happen near the front. But in this race, it was three veterans who started near the back who did the initial crashing. Larry Ball Jr., John Kearney and Jake Peters all crashed together in turn two on the start. Ball and Peters both flipped and Ball could not restart the race.
With the green flag out, Hall’s car took off in the early stages and for a minute, it appeared he may finally be able to get that elusive win after about 20 years of trying. But Higday made quick work of cars in the six rows ahead of him and was on Hall¹s tail four laps into the race. At that point, Higday tried a slide job in turn one and nearly took the front end off Hall’s machine. But Hall showed his strength and blew right back by Higday. However, on the next go-around, Higday made the same move and this time found the tools to make it stick.
Hall stuck with Higday for several more laps, but 12 laps into the race, Nate Mosher flipped in turn two to bring out a red flag. After that, the third member of the Alexander racers wrote a story of his own. Getting by Hall for second, Stacey Alexander was trying to find the bottom groove and make it work on Higday. He fell short and eventually was passed by Dusty Zomer, but it was an impressive run nonetheless.
Also in those last few laps, Hall bobbled enough to fall back to seventh, with Zomer, Alexander, Randy Martin, Peters and Anderson all getting by.
Higday made it to the checkered flags first to take the win. Ironically, though Kearney did not flip in the first-lap wreck, he did take a nasty flip on the backstretch just after the checkereds fell. It took track crews a few minutes to get his machine unhooked from the fence.
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