Kevin Kovac's Take Five
Take Five: DTWC is back where if belongs
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: My initial post-weekend opinion of promoter Carl Short moving the ARP Dirt Track World Championship to West Virginia Motor Speedway in Mineral Wells: the crown jewel event is where it belongs, back in the state of its birth in 1981 at Pennsboro Speedway rather than being overshadowed by Eldora Speedway’s own prestigious crown jewels as it was at the Rossburg, Ohio, track for the past three years. It’s also quite clear that WVMS owner Mike Hurley is serious about making sure his facility is a worthy host of such a major, historic show.
No. 2: I’ll say this as well: I felt vintage DTWC vibes while walking around a WVMS property that was not only teeming with people and campers but also, with the chilly autumn air moving in, giving off that distinctive aroma of burning campfires. And I loved looking up at all those fans sitting on the massive grassy, terraced hillside, which I argue provides one of the most iconic scenes in Dirt Late Model racing. What’s more, that hillside seating serves as sort of an emotional connection to the DTWC’s years at Pennsboro, which had a hillside of its own — though Pennsboro’s, of course, was so primitive that spectators often needed to bring a shovel to dig out their own spot, as opposed to the terraced, neatly-manicured version at WVMS.
No. 3: While Saturday’s DTWC time trials were interminably long because or transponder scoring issues, as I was having a conversation while standing outside turn two during the delay I witnessed an episode that offered some comic relief. Henry Hornsby III of Beckley, W.Va., one of the drivers waiting in the staging area while Lucas Oil Late Model Dirt Series officials worked to fix the scoring problem, climbed out of his car and flashed past me in a dead sprint toward the backstretch grandstand pit area. I watched him run clear to the far end of the bleachers searching for an open Port-A-John, but he found none before he heard the sound of engines firing. He knew he had to get back to his car lest he miss his spot in the qualifying order, so he came running back without being able to heed nature’s call. “I had to go (to the bathroom) from the time I got in line,” Hornsby said later after returning to his trailer. “I didn’t expect to be sitting there that long.”
No. 4: Speaking of emergency Port-A-John excursions … when the checkered flag flew in Sunday’s 100-lap DTWC finale, I used my phone to shoot a video in the infield hot pit of the Rocket Chassis house car crew celebrating driver Brandon Sheppard clinching the Lucas Oil Series championship with a runner-up finish. As I moved around the team’s pit box and spotted Rocket1 owner Mark Richards behind it, I saw him finish a hug with someone and then furiously go to work pulling apart the metal fencing covered with sponsor banners. He finally yanked two apart to climb through it and made a beeline to the portable potty sitting behind a concrete barrier on the inside of turn three. Before Richards could celebrate his team’s first Lucas Oil title with Sheppard and seventh national championship in the last 10 years, he had to make a pit stop.
No. 5: Through all my decades traveling to races and spending nights in hotels, I never experienced what occurred during the overnight hours following Saturday’s DTWC preliminary program. When I checked into my hotel in Mineral Wells, just minutes from the track, there was a sign on the lobby counter informing everyone to expect a power outage from 1-5 a.m. Sunday morning. This was a planned blackout encompassing a wide area including the southern portion Parkersburg, Mineral Wells and other nearby towns, apparently so the power company could install new equipment. The power cutoff started about 1:25 a.m., but it didn’t come back on until after 10 a.m, nearly nine hours later. Certainly an odd situation for the many DTWC attendees staying in area hotels on a night that happened to see temperatures plunge below 40 degrees, triggering the need for heaters that were shut off by the outage.
