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Merry Christmas folks! REMINDER: You guys can put that vacation request in for the first week of June this year -- June 3rd through 8th. This will be the second annual USMTS Southern Series Speedweek and the Wednesday through Saturday have already been booked. We're planning on racing Tuesday night through Sunday night. 6 tracks in 6 nights so plan one of those vacation weeks for the first week of June!
So, how did everybody do over the weekend? Let's start with the USMTS regulars.
Kelly Shryock sewed up the Southern Series title on Friday night when his apparent 8th place finish going under the white flag of the train race, became a 5th place finish when all was said and done. I'll explain how that happened later. Kelly won $3000 at the season-ending barnburner in thrilling fashion at HRP on Saturday, December 1st but this Southern Series didn't have as many Shryock wins as one would think. After winning 4 of the first 5 So. Series features, Shryock had only one win after dominating the April 27th race at Motorama and that win came at Enid where he took 3 of the 4 race wins in all there in 07. When they went back to Motorama in October for that 3-race weekend, Kelly finished 4th all 3 nights. The competition caught up! Shryock wound up winning just 6 of the 22 2007 So. Series races or just a little over 1/4 of the events. He did however get 12 top fives though in those last 17 races and easily could have had a couple more. That's tough to beat when it comes to points! He survived the Rodeo on Thursday night with a runner-up finish.
Okie Randy Timms finished second in points, 184 behind Shryock in the final tally. He closed out the season-ending weekend at HRP with a best finish of 7th twice -- once in the Rodeo and once in the Barnburner. Timms got his first USMTS win at Fast Trax Speedway in Chatham, Louisiana where USMTS will return on June 7th, 2008.
Another Okie, Greg Skaggs ended a very succesful 2007 season with a near miss at another victory in the barnburner as he even had the lead briefly in that one with less than half-a-lap to go. He also came from 16th starting position to finish sixth in the rodeo and wound up the 11th "boxcar" of the train. All of that ended Greg up in third in points. That "barnburner" race was a real good testament to how equal the spec motors and open motors are under USMTS rules and also how strong the Skyrocket Chassis can be. Shryock won by half a car-length in a spec over Skaggs with the smaller spoilerd open package. VanderBeek was the third Skyrocket in the top 3 sweep for that brand with a spec while Hughes in a Hughes with a spec was fourth. Chris Brown who was a big part of the show (on 3 seperate occasions that night! -- more on Chris later...) was the 4th Skyrocket in the top five with an open motor package and he easily passed the most cars on the night. Timms and his Shaw was sixth while Weder in a Hughes was 7th. Both were specs.
Arkansas's lone representative in the top 25 in Southern Series points this year was Gentry's Steve Holzkamper who had a great run at Thursday's rodeo by advancing from 19th starting spot to finish 3rd. Steve's TRE Chassis passed well on the other tracks too and by the way, while we don't want to duplicate these Thursday and Friday track conditions in 2008, it was a real test of driver, car and set-up over the 3 days. Like racing at 3 different tracks. Holzkamper went from 23rd to 12th at the train race and 13th to 8th at the barnburner where he had emerged from a great 4-car battle between Steve, Howard Willis, Chris Henigan and Kevin Batterbee to get 4th in the final point standings by just 2 points over Jason Hughes. Again, Holzkamper had the spec while the other three had open motors and stayed together, with a lot of 3-wides over that last 10 laps!
Hughes ended a fabulous 2007 season ($20,000 win in California and 2nd in USMTS National points) with a top five on Saturday. The weekend started out bad for Jason and his fellow Okie and Hughes chassis teammate Tommy Weder, Jr. who had an equally great 2007 ($10,000 win in Arizona and his first USMTS wins!). They were 2 of the 14DNFs at the rodeo. It was looking better on Friday until.....
At the start of Friday's A main, pole sitter Jamie Burford and outside pole, Hughes raced hard for the lead knowing if either got to the bottom first with the lead, they would most likely win that event. They swapped the spot and grooves with Burford winning that battle but, Alan Mondus got under both of them and went on to win. It looked like Burford and Hughes would finish 2nd and 3rd until the final corner. Mondus kept flirting with getting too high especially off turn four. Some say Jamie was going for the win on the final turn while others say he was just psyched out by Alan's body on that #55, LOL!. (JM Hallas pointed out and rightfully so, that Mondus's car design does make it safer for the driver in case he ends up upside down.) Either way, Jamie lost it off four which took him out of his best USMTS finish ever and Hughes couldn't avoid him and he wound up 18th. Weder's best finish was 7th at the barnburner and Hughes and Weder ended the season in 5th and 6th in southern series points, richer and exhausted too! They had some miles this year. Kentucky to California and Minnesota to south Texas!
Kansan Scott Green in another Hughes ended the season 7th in Southern Series points and his best finish was 7th on train night. He was the 7th driver to compete at all 22 Southern Series events in 2007. South Texas racer Steve Whiteaker, Jr. drove another Hughes on the tour to a 10th place points finish after missing only one event (and he travels out of Corpus Cristi!) and Steve suffered some of the worst luck at times it seemed but the potential is there for Steve to make a splash on this tour next year!
In spite of only 17 So. Series appearances, Iowa's Zack VanderBeek ended up 8th in points and his third at the barnburner was his best finish of the weekend. He was winless in the Southern Series but did win on the national tour in 07.
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