Kevin Kovac's Take Five
Take Five: McDowell not bitter as his streak ends
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: Moments after Dale McDowell’s amazing streak of World 100 feature starts at Eldora Speedway in Rossburg, Ohio, came to an end at 18 after a Saturday heat-race accident, I was standing alongside him behind his wrecked Team Zero machine. Of course I asked him about his first DNQ since 2007 in Dirt Late Model racing’s most prestigious event, and of course the 60-year-old standout from Chickamauga, Ga., answered in his usual graceful manner. “I don’t even count” the number of consecutive starts, McDowell began as he leaned on his car’s rear spoiler, but he conceded “it has to happen and end at some point in time. We’ve been blessed for a long time.” Then he added: “I’m blessed tonight … I didn’t get hurt.” There was no bitterness from the respected veteran, whose World 100 consistency is well documented: Saturday marked just the third time he’s failed to qualify for the finale since he made the first of his 25 overall feature starts in 1997, and his ledger shows a 2005 victory among 11 top-five and 18 top-10 finishes, including a streak of 12 top-10 runs in a row (and three straight podium finishes) that concluded with his Saturday DNQ. “It will be different watching,” he said, “I’m a race fan, man. I’m staying. I’ll watch.”
No. 2: McDowell might have had a cool, calm reaction to his rare World 100 demise, but he still displayed frustration with his fate. He noted he was done in by a combination of the heat inversion that started him sixth in Heat 5 and Dalton Cook restarting ahead of him with a left-front flat, which he felt led to the turn-one tangle that ultimately eliminated him. While McDowell has been dealing with the dreaded Eldora invert for decades, he believes the ever-closer nature of modern Dirt Late Model racing makes the maximum six-car inversion an even bigger factor. “What the deal is, is the competition is so tight now, so now when you do (the inversion), you feel like everybody’s taking chances (on restarts) that they wouldn’t take, because they know once it gets strung out, everybody's going to be in line,” he said. “So that’s what happens on these starts … it’s just a product of it.” McDowell also wasn’t pleased to see Cook restart ahead of him with his left-front tire clearly down. “I was afraid it was going to end up something like that there,” he said. “You can do that on a short track, but you really can’t do that in a big half-mile. But just one of them deals, just racing. … victim of circumstances.”
No. 3: After McDowell crashed into Cook’s sliding car, discussion ensued over whether officials should have sidelined Cook with his flat left-front tire. Cook, a 33-year-old from Columbus, Ga., seeking his first World 100 feature start, had his decision to remain on the track widely questioned, but he defended himself in a Facebook post addressing the situation. He wrote that an early scrape cut his left-front tire but he “was able to still maintain a good speed to stay in the transfer spot until the late-race caution with two to go. Considering the fact tire had been flat up until that point and was sustainable, we stuck it out.” Cook argued his flat tire didn’t cause the incident. “Entering the corner on the final restart I checked the fuel (throttle) for a possible dirty-air situation, which is always normal to happen,” he wrote. “Almost in the same sequence as I did that I had contact from behind in the (left-rear) that resulted in a wreck. Unfortunately one of the most popular drivers that we all root for ends up in the situation. Hate it for them guys, but didn't matter if that tire had 30 pounds of air or zero — I was entering that corner the same way and there just was an accident. I will catch some heat for being ‘that guy’ for playing a role of a competitor of his magnitude having misfortune; I can take responsibility for that. But Dale always keeps it classy and I respect it and choose to leave it like that.”
No. 4: Nick Hoffman’s first public racetrack appearance since his World 100 victory came Tuesday at Millbridge Speedway in Salisbury, N.C., the micro- and junior-sprint track promoted by his sister, Ashley Hoffman Burnett, and her husband. The 34-year-old breakout star from Mooresville, N.C., brought his race-winning Tye Twarog Motorsports Longhorn Chassis — still marked by the mud-splattered left-side door from his low-side lane choice — and World 100 globe trophy for display during Millbridge’s regular race-night action. Neat moment for the fans and many young racers at Millbridge who had a chance to meet Hoffman and pose for pictures with the car and trophy.
No. 5: The cancellation of this weekend’s Knoxville Late Model Nationals at Knoxville (Iowa) Raceway was certainly frustrating — for the track, the Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series, race teams and fans — but the deluge of early-week rain and forecasts for lingering precipitation through the weekend made it a sensible call. Another factor: travel costs continue to soar into the fall, so having so many teams and fans make the haul to Iowa facing the likely prospect of, at best, an abbreviated weekend of racing was an expensive proposition. According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration, the country’s average price for a gallon of regular gas Monday was $4.31 (up from $2.80 back on Jan. 19 just as Georgia-Florida Speedweeks began) and was even higher for the diesel fuel that fills the big tanks in race haulers: a U.S. record average high of $6.28 per gallon Monday, up 32 cents in a week and $1 higher than one month ago. Go back to when teams headed to Speedweeks in mid-January and the average diesel price was $3.53 per gallon — that’s a hefty increase for traveling teams.
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