Kevin Kovac's Take Five
Take Five: Rice limping to end of Speedweeks
In a new feature appearing regularly on DirtonDirt, senior writer Kevin Kovac will offer readers five things worth mentioning from around the Dirt Late Model landscape (index to previous Take Fives):
No. 1: When I walked up to Josh Rice in the pit area after heat-race action during Friday’s Wieland Winternationals program at Golden Isles Speedway near Brunswick, Ga., he was sullenly leaning against his JRR Motorsports team’s pit cart. The 27-year-old from Crittenden, Ky., had the look of a Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series rookie who was beaten down from nearly two months on the road and ready to go home. He agreed that he was looking forward to Saturday’s Georgia-Florida Speedweeks finale and a return to Kentucky for a reset, though he did note, “I actually feel pretty good right now. I’m getting comfortable in the cars.” It’s his rough fortunes at Golden Isles that have him limping toward the finish line. In Thursday’s feature, a broken J-bar and driveshaft caused him to slow and take a hit from Daniel Hilsabeck; his Randall Edwards-led team brought out their newer car for Friday’s show and, when Rice “smoked” the wall in his heat, the J-bar and driveshaft broke again Rice didn’t qualify for Friday’s A-main after the machine was repaired for the consolation.
No. 2: Cody Overton of Evans, Ga., was in street clothes sitting on his pit bike and talking on his cell phone near the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series operations trailer after Friday’s Golden Isles action when I caught him for a review of his second night as subbing for the ailing Tyler Bruening of Decorah, Iowa, in the Skyline Motorsports AK Race Cars No. 16. He couldn’t have had more mixed emotions. His feature run ended disastrously when, as he ran a solid fourth, the car’s front bumper mounts broke off the frame and caused him to veer right on a lap-11 restart, collect several cars and smash the wall, but before that he was absolutely thrilled with the vehicle’s performance. He told team owner Greg Bruening afterward that it was “best car I’ve ever driven.” Overton couldn’t rave enough about the machine: “It was perfect. I’ve never been that confident in something. When (the leaders) got to traffic, I was like, ‘I’m going to catch up, man.’ That’s why I got to quit talking to myself while I’m in (the car). Every time I think something good’s about the happen, s--- goes down.”
No. 3: Tyler Bruening’s crew chief Zeb Holkesvik was hard at work after Friday’s feature leading the repairs on the car driven by Overton, who will make one start in the No. 16 on Saturday to close Speedweeks at Golden Isles. Holkesvik was also sipping from a bottle of Michelob Ultra Lime, a beer that I could take credit for providing him. Earlier in the night as I walked by the Skyline Motorsports pit stall I noticed that a six-pack of the Ultra bottles was laying on the ground near the team’s pit box. Apparently some driving by on a golf cart or side-by-side (there are plenty of them in the Golden Isles pits) had unknowingly dropped it. I pointed it out to Holkesvik and suggested he should claim the beers — there were five cold, unopened bottles in the box — and he did. “I took ‘em back in the trailer, cleaned ‘em up and put them in the fridge,” he said. But Holkesvik did joke that I had given him beers that were bad luck because of Overton’s feature fate, but I told him that my spotting of the bottles actually gave him something to drink his sorrows away after the DNF.
No. 4: What was the closest call a driver experienced during Friday’s program at Golden Isles? It might have come during the fourth heat when Ross Robinson of Georgetown, Del., bounced off the turn-four wall, shot to the left and clipped the right-rear corner of the Rocket Chassis house car piloted by Brandon Sheppard of New Berlin, Ill. With Sheppard throttled up on the homestretch the contact could have turned him straight into the wall, but he did a great job maintaining control and went on to finish third. Robinson felt bad about hitting Sheppard — he runs a Rocket Chassis and is parked alongside the Rocket1 team in the pit area — but it appeared the contact didn’t cause any damage to B-Shepp’s car, though it did leave a distinct mark of rubber on the left-front corner of Robinson’s nosepiece.
No. 5: Freddie Carpenter, the 55-year-old veteran from Parkersburg, W.Va., who’s attempting to chase the Lucas Oil Series for the first time in his career, used a provisional on Friday to start the feature. It was just the second A-main in 10 tries that he’s started during Speedweeks (he finished 24th in Feb. 27’s headliner at Florida’s Ocala Speedway after being knocked out in an early crash), but, even with the track surface slowed down slightly to give his underpowered engine a better chance, the race didn’t go well for him. He lost his motor halfway through the 50-lapper, which will force him to pull out his second car to run Saturday’s finale.
