Tuesdays with TMAC – Royal Runs!
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
by Bill W - This past week saw the Biggame Treestands #24 towards the front of the pack every night out. It’s a good time of year for such a run, and TMAC hopes to keep it going!
Doty Disappointments
If you looked at the box score from the Brad Doty Classic last Wednesday night, it wouldn’t look too impressive for McCarl, but there was more to the story. Despite getting upside down, he feels he had the fastest car on the track. “There’s nothing I hate worse than when someone runs second and comes up to me after I’ve won, and told me that they ‘had me’,” he says. “No, I say, because I have the trophy and the check! But at Lima, the car was so awesome for the feature and the heat…I just don’t think we would have lost that race. My car felt like it does at Huset’s a lot of times, and my car would just go anywhere!”
After qualifying 16th quick and winning his heat from the pole at Limaland Motorsports Park, he finished sixth in the dash to start outside row three for the 40-lap slugfest on the high-banked ¼ mile oval. TMAC had gotten some local help earlier in the night. “Dale Blaney told me how he ran the track during Speedweek and that helped a lot. I was so good through the middle of (turns) three and four. I thought I might be too tight to run the cushion in turns one and two, but when we went up there the car was great there too.”
TMAC’s move forward started as soon as the green flag fell. “We definitely had a car to beat. We started sixth and ran up to third. I could see Steve (Kinser) was loose compared to my car. We had a great car that night, and it was definitely disappointing the way it ended,” says TMAC.
On the 13th go-around, he was chasing down Kinser who ran second. Kinser slid in front of two lapped cars in one and two, dramatically slowing the trio of cars. TMAC had a ton of momentum coming off the high side of the track and had nowhere to go with a blocked racetrack ahead. He got on his head, destroying the Eagle chassis. “The car was junked. I was coming off of two so strong and those cars slid up out of the middle. It was definitely disappointing, but we had a new car we had to put together.”
Fast at Eldora
The Friday “Knight Before the King’s Royal” at Eldora Speedway turned into a second place run to the “King”. Many concurred with TMAC’s viewpoint on a racecar that was put together for the first time prior to the event. “We were the fastest car that night. We drove by Donny Schatz in the heat, and the way he’s going now, you don’t drive by him in the open very often.” Going from fourth to first in the heat is hard anywhere, and can be almost impossible on the high-banks of Eldora, where most passing is done in the first corner. After registering the heat win, TMAC came home fourth in the dash, setting up another feature run from outside row two.
TMAC takes us through the early laps of the feature. “We started fourth in the feature and ran (leader) Kinser down. The car was just awesome again. I was a little worried after junking that car at Lima, because with a new car you never know, sometimes you have to work out the bugs.”
On lap five, TMAC ducked under Kinser for the lead, but it was not to be. “We drove by Steve, and coming out of two the yellow came out,” he says. “Steve’s a 20-time champion, and a very smart man. You don’t want to give him a second chance. He was a little loose, and on the yellow I could see he didn’t have his wing back. Before we went to green, I watched him pull the wing all the way back. He definitely changed his car for the better, but I still think we were a bit better. I got a little bit excited with my driving too. We got up beside him two or three times after that.”
“I saw some lapped cars running pretty good through the middle, so I thought maybe there was a little rubber being laid down there in three and four,” says TMAC. “I was trying to be smart, and kept driving to the middle in three and four to try and pick up some rubber, and it was really never laid. I went back to the top later on, and he had put a couple of lapped cars between us, and that was it for me.”
King’s Royal Rumble
The strong run on Friday set TMAC up for the $50,000 to win King’s Royal on Saturday night. With confidence in a new car on board, he registered the 11th quick time of the night despite a quickly drying surface. With an invert of five for the heat races, he started fourth.
Paul McMahan, who was starting seventh, took desperate measures to gain ground entering turns one and two, and slid into second in front of the field coming out of turn two. “I was just happy to finish the heat without flipping,” says Terry. “Paul put a really bad slidejob on everybody and Stevie Smith got the worst end of it. Thank God it was Stevie, because Stevie is a really good racecar driver and a friend, and if it wouldn’t have been him, I probably would have ended up upside down. My rear bumper ended up beat up and full of his yellow paint! The left rear wheel had that Circus color paint all the way around it too! The bottom line of that deal was, I was ticked off at Paul at first, because it scared me more than anything. But I understand why he had to do what he did. He’s driving for Tony Stewart and Bass Pro Shops and qualified horribly, and if he didn’t make that move on the start right then, he would have been done. I don’t mind when I can understand why people are overaggressive. When it’s a battle for 17th in the feature is when I get angry.”
TMAC was able to maintain third after the jumble, and on lap four, cruised by McMahan for a second place finish in the heat. “After almost being crashed, we were good enough to get up to second, so that was good. I figured with Donny on the pole for the dash, and being the sixth heat winner, that we would start outside row four, since we were second in the fifth heat. The order was reversed to 1-6, so we ended up starting 11th! Oh well!”
Despite a start back in row six, TMAC wasted little time moving into the top six, and passing the defending King, Joey Saldana. “I would have to say that we ran a somewhat flawless race,” says TMAC of his run. “One mistake we may have made was after the (lap 23) caution when the tires had cooled. I took off through the middle. I should have probably driven it up along the wall until they heated up. Jason (Meyers) and I were battling and that let (Jason) Solwold get away from us. By the time we got by the R19, Meyers had gotten away a little. We ran him down towards the end, though.”
In the end, he had surged to an extremely solid third place run. He was very complimentary of the track conditions. “The track was perfect to run anywhere. The best car started on the pole, so there was no race for the lead. There was plenty of action back around us though! I don’t like the format of leaving the lapped cars in on the restarts, I would have liked to have seen if we had any shot. You never know!”
Terry feels like he is one of the strongest competitors when it comes to the high-banks. “We had a great car all weekend long, and I want to show people we can run there. When people talk about Eldora, they don’t mention my name, but I want them to, because I think we’re one of the best there.”
Swanky Addition
Long-time crew chief Tyler Swank has joined TMAC Motorsports team. In recent years, Tyler has worked with Donny Schatz, Shane Stewart, Ricky Logan, and most recently, Chad Hillier. Terry is pleased about Swank being on board. “Tyler worked for me in 1995 when he was 17 years old and Troy Renfro was my mechanic. Tyler’s from Newton and Bill McCroskey had his shop there. I’m excited to have him along. He’s from my area, and we’ve known each other for a long time. He’s a real hard worker, he’s positive and always smiling. We’re excited to have him. I think he can help us out a lot!”
Five Races in Six Nights
The big races keep coming. Tonight is the Don Martin Memorial Silver Cup at Lernerville Speedway. It will pay $30,000 to the winner. Next up will be the Williams Grove Speedway Summer Nationals near Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania. That show will be contested over three nights from Thursday through Saturday. On Sunday, the WoO heads north to the Lebanon Valley Speedway near West Lebanon, New York.
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