Lernerville Speedway
Notes: Ruffled Overton solid 4th at Firecracker
By Kevin Kovac
DirtonDirt senior writer
Brandon Overton (76) rallied to fourth in the Firecracker 100. (heathlawsonphotos.com)
SARVER, Pa. (June 29) — Brandon Overton was pretty satisfied with his come-from-behind run to a fourth-place finish in Saturday's Firecracker 100 at Lernerville Speedway.
But when the race was over and he was approached in his Riggs Motorsports team's trailer for an interview, reviewing his feature performance wasn't the first thing on his mind. He shifted back to an episode from earlier in the program.
Overton, 35, of Evans, Ga., addressed accusatory comments made in a postrace interview on the FloRacing broadcast by Ricky Thornton Jr. of Chandler, Ariz., who contended that Overton had fired early at the start of the program's first prelim. The two Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series regulars shared the front row for the heat, which Thornton led from flag-to-flag after an opening-lap scrape that sent Overton over the turn-two berm and ultimately to a fourth-place finish.
"I'm tired of the 76 getting to jump the start," Thornton told FloRacing's Ben Shelton after the heat. "I think that's the fifth time this year. I guess if his crew guys wanna get mad they know where our trailer's at."
Overton brushed off Thornton's charges with his typical combination of humor and frankness.
"Yeah, that was a dumbass remark," Overton said. "I think he was just mad. I mean, which I should have been mad. Like, if somebody's gonna be pissed, it should be me. Really, he knocked me off the track, and I really wasn't mad, but then he's talking s--- in his interview.
"I mean, I don't understand it, but whatever. I mean, it is what it is."
There were no threats of retribution from Overton. He wasn't thrilled to hear what Thornton had to say, but he also understood it came in the heat of the moment.
"Te heat race, we were both going for it. That's for the front row in the feature," Overton said. "Like, if he knocked me off the track, I'm not even mad. I get it. We're racers and we're racing.
"But … if anybody wanted to do a smartass interview, it should've been me, but it's OK. I get it, because, like I said, we all try so hard and this s--- is so hard. You know what I mean? So, I'm just good."
Snapping a three-race top-five drought in full-field Lucas Oil Series features gave Overton a reason to move on from Thornton's. He scrapped to earn his $8,000 payoff from the race, starting 13th but slipping backward as far as 18th by lap 17. He didn't even crack the top-10 until lap 53.
"I run 100 laps and I was tight as s---," Overton said. "I was way back there for a long time. And then once the track got slick where I could do my thing, I started kind of rolling around, kind of using the bottom, using the middle."
After sliding into fifth on lap 84 and gaining one more spot with a lap-94 pass of Sarver, Pa.'s Michael Norris, Overton gave himself a thumbs-up for surviving his early fade.
"It's hard when you're back there in like 18th," Overton said. "You want to go, but it's hard to go without tearing your tires up. Like (Kyle) Bronson had a good car, he got way up there (advancing from 18th to seventh at mid-race), but I think he was driving it … he's doing what he's gotta do to get up there, but once you get up there, then your tires are shot and he fell back (to finish 13th). So I was just trying to pace myself for as long as I could."
A Firecracker 100 winner in 2017 and '21, Overton recorded his fourth top-five finish in nine career starts in the race. He left feeling good about the outcome.
"I'm always loose. That's my big thing — I'm always loose," Overton said. "That's the first 100-lapper in a long, long time that I've been tight. I was way too tight. Like I could barely go around the track at the end.
"But that's what helped me hang around. When everybody else started slipping, I was able to kind of come back up through there, so I'm happy about that."
Step forward
Long-distance races aren't Josh Rice's forte. Not yet, anyway.
The 27-year-old driver from Crittenden, Ky., has a resume that includes about 30 career starts in 100-lap features. He's gone the distance in roughly half of them, so he's clearly still learning the black magic of setup and conservation that leads to success.
A fifth-place finish in the Firecracker 100 might have been a turning point for the Lucas Oil Series rookie. He called his run "fun" because something seemed to click as he navigated his way through the century grind.
"I think we know what direction to go for these 100-lappers," said Rice, who made his second career visit to Lernerville after retiring early from last year's Firecracker 100. "We always start way too tight, and then once that (hard) 4 (right-rear tire) comes in, it just makes me even tighter."
Rice still had that handling problem with his JRR Motorsports Longhorn Chassis in Saturday's headliner, which he started from the seventh spot but at the race's midway point was running just outside the top-10. But he "just figured out something that was working there at the end" to hustle forward to reach fifth with a lap-96 pass of Michael Norris and, after analyzing his outing, realized what he needs to do in the future.
"When that 4 (right-rear tire) came in, I almost felt like it was flat because it just pulled the whole car down," Rice said. "But I just need to … it's so hard to make yourself start 'free' (loose) and let the car come to you, but the next 100-lapper, I'm doing it. I don't care if I'm terrible at the start. I'm starting free and just gonna see what happens."
Rice nearly matched his career-best 100-lap finish of fourth, which he achieved in the 2022 Jackson 100 at Brownstown (Ind.) Speedway. He fell just short of taking the spot at the finish line from Brandon Overton, who was parked alongside Rice in the pit area.
"I crushed the wall coming to the checkers," Rice said. "I wanted Brandon's ass bad. I thought it was for third actually. I didn't know it was for fourth."
Good view
Hudson O'Neal of Martinsville, Ind., spent the entire second half of the Firecracker 100 running in third place. He just couldn't summon the speed to deal with the battling frontrunners Devin Moran of Dresden, Ohio, and Brandon Sheppard of New Berlin, Ill.
"I was about a half-straightaway back and just kind of watching them," O'Neal said. "I wish I could have got up there and mixed it up with them. I was trying my best to get to them, but just didn't quite have what they had."
The 25-year-old star did have almost a front-row seat for the titanic showdown between Moran and Sheppard, which ended with Moran taking the $50,000 top prize by 0.700 of a second over Sheppard. With no one really threatening O'Neal from behind, it begged the question of whether he could actually be a fan from the seat as Moran and Sheppard went at it.
"I'm not a fan of them beating me, no," O'Neal said, brushing off the suggestion that he could enjoy the action ahead of him. "You just try to watch and see what they can do that I can't do, where our race car lacks and their's doesn't. You're trying your hardest (to catch up), but at the same time, you're trying to learn so we can get better so when we come back next time maybe we'll be good enough win."
O'Neal was very pleased with his performance, saying his SSI Motorsports team "gained a lot tonight" with their setup on a slick track surface.
"They probably just had a little bit more grip than we did," said O'Neal, whose career-best finish in five Firecracker 100 starts is second in 2023. "We'v e been working really hard trying to get to where we're flowing through that black (slick) and where we could steer and not be, you know, sheer and tight or whatever, so, yeah, this is what we needed. We needed to get to this point and then we can start tuning and find a little bit more grip.
"Last year we ran sixth in this race, but whenever we came back for the Hillbilly and ran a 100 laps here (over Labor Day weekend), we ran like 20th. We were terrible. That was kind of the kind of the story of our year, at the end of the year, at these types of places.
"So we're a lot better," he added. "We won't run into a ton of races like this until we get into the fall, whenever we start going to Brownstown and Pittsburgh and Eldora and those kinds of places, so that's whenever we need to be better."
Odds and ends
Dan Ebert of Lake Shore, Minn., ran as high as second for portions of the Firecracker's first half before fading late in the distance to finish eighth as his 2-compound right-front tire gave up, but he couldn't have departed Lernerville in a better mood. "This is the best weekend I've ever had," said Ebert, who finished in a Friday semifeature. "I ran fourth at Batesville last year as far as a finish, but to be able to win a heat race (his victory Saturday was his first-ever in Lucas Oil competition), set fast time … it's an incredible weekend. We've come a long way. Just got to keep digging. I really do feel like we're in the right direction now." … Brian Shirley of Chatham, Ill., finished 12th in his third career Firecracker 100 start. Interestingly, all of his appearances have been separated by a decade's time; he finished 12th in 2007 and 23rd in '16. … Mike Marlar of Winfield, Tenn., pitted his 2-weekend-old Rocket Chassis on lap 31 because of a problem with the return spring on the carburetor. He returned but rose no higher than 18th before retiring on lap 71. … Ken Schaltenbrand of Sarver, Pa., brought out the Firecracker's first caution flag on lap 16 when he slid over the turn-two berm. The veteran driver then headed to the pit area in a unique manner: rolling backwards down the backstretch and the turn-three exit road. "I had a right-front flat," he said. "It kept digging in when I tried to go forward." … Two drivers made first-ever Firecracker 100 finale starts: Dillon McCowan of Urbana, Mo. (finished 15th) and teenager Brock Pinkerous of Ellenville, N.Y. (17th).
