Forum: HoseHeads Sprint Car General Forum (go)
Moderators: dirtonly  /  dmantx  /  hosehead

“There were some classless people getting lapped and trying to take the leader out when they were getting lapped, but that’s no excuse,” said Madsen. That's what Kerry Madsen had to say in his interview after running second to Sweet and after leading much of the race. If it's not an excuse, why bring it up? After all Sweet got through the lapped traffic well enough to pass Madsen and win. A good number of the fans that heard his remark didn't care for it. In my opinion, he's the one that was being "classless", but that's just my opinion. I know it was in the heat of the moment, and I don't dislike Madsen. So no one needs to go there. The real problem Madsen faced was that he had a one groove mindset and a one groove car.....the cushion. Sweet on the other hand wasn't stuck in one mode. Lapped traffic has been criticized in the past of course by other drivers, but I'm not sure if it's ever been a topic on Hoseheads, or not. Your thoughts, anyone? My thoughts are that every driver is racing for money and or points, and "owns" the track as much as anybody out there. The key if a driver knows he is going to be lapped is to not be eratic and stick to the line he's been running. It should be the job of the leaders to get by.

Lap traffic can fight for their spot but as you said shouldn't drive eratically and stick to the line they've been running when the leader comes up on them. I haven't seen what Madsen may have been upset about yet but once it's up on dirtvision I'll be able to tell better if somebody actually did give him a reason to be a mad man (pun intended)

Heard this in victory lane and watched the video on YouTube - gotta think he's talking about Brent Marks.

Marks was just racing hard - I don't think he intended to hold Madsen up. At one point though, I know he moves up to the high line and really bottles the 2 up. I think that's what Madsen was upset at.

It's part of racing, I would agree with you that Madsen sometimes gets too married to the top, I am not sure I've seen him win a race on the bottom (I'm sure he has, just not often). 

Kerry seems like a good dude, he was probably just frustrated about losing out on the 25k. On a good note for him, he seems to be one of the faster cars in the country, and certainly the top midwest guy at the moment. 

Brent Marks was certainly my guess too.  The track was just fast on the top and the bottom so if you get a fast lapper who decides they want to race the leaders this is going to happen.  I think it raddled Madsen and that is probably what cost him.  He started  worrying more about Marks then just hitting the cushion and let Sweet get by. 

I highly doubt that any lapped cars are trying to take out the leader. When you get to the caliber of cars that were in the A main here and at most WOO races, you don't just drive past the cars at the tail as easily. Maybe Kerry forgot that since he's not running the WOO anymore.

A

Lapped traffic is what makes "follow the leader" races get interesting, takes some real talent to get thru that mess, separates the men from the boys

Not so interested in the "he said, she said" soap opera aspect. Let your driving do the talking....

I agree.  I never understood why cars were supposed to move over in that situation.  How do they know they won't be freight trained by 2 or 3 cars fighting them for position should they just move out of the way?  This is especially true when two cars on the tail end of the lead lap are fighting for a spot and the leader is fast approaching.  No reason one of them (or both) need to give up their spot to allow the leader to pass.  As far as I'm concerned the flagman can keep that flag in the stand and never bring it out.  Fast cars should be able to pass slow cars without special consideration

There was no lapped trafic the last 10 laps. All he had to do was pass Sweet but he couldn't thats why he got second. The Madsen brothers are a bunch of A holes.

Watched the replay. Don't expect them to get out of the way, but Marks passed him back. I think ppl in their first year of racing know you're not supposed to do that. lol 

I would blame his comment on heat of the moment getting passed for a big payday.  Ouch.

really the guy that can give the direction on the track is the flagman. IF he shows the move over flag it doesn't mean move, it means stay in your lane lead cars are coming up behind you. If after a couple laps he then may hold the flag open and motion for you to get on the bottom or top dependent on what he see's the faster car doing. If madson passed marks then marks repassed. Well, that tells me your car was going away and marks was getting better. Game on. He had every right to go back around you.

Wonder if Marks will have the same opinion when it happens to him lol

Marks did absolutely nothing wrong if memory serves me correctly. And it wasn't only Marks that Madsen had trouble getting past. Marks was catching and passed Lynton Jeffrey......Madsen ran up on Jeffrey who was running the cushion and wasn't prepared to slide him, run under him or even ry to slide him and race on. Madsen also had a failed sliide job on Marks I think the the lap before.....completed the slide but lost so much momentum that Marks ran the middle and went under Madsen and got ahead of him by quite a ways.....it wasn't as if Marks all of a sudden found a burst of speed and became racy, he simply managed the track better and raced to stay on the lead lap. He was not in the way. Both of those incidents with Marks and Jeffrey happened in turn four. Madsen also missed the cushion in turn one after one of those deals. Both times Madsen lost too much momentum and both Schatz and Sweet closed in a hurry. In the end of course it was Sweet who got them both. The current replay doesn't show the entire events, but I think I remember it pretty accurately. As I stated in my first post, I think Madsen was stuck to the cushion and because of that he had a problem with lapped traffic. Whether it was his inability to run any where else or the car wasn't set up to do so, it's hard to say.

Amen to the first 4 words!  "IT'S PART OF RACING".  Period.  End of story.

Attempting to be a voice of reason in a world full of
irrationality. 

Sounds like Sweet passed them both. Faster car won. Thought that's what racing was about.

Madsen whining about how someone else races him.....now that's funny. Be like his brother whinning about someone pulling a shitty slide job on him.

www.harleytrikes.com

Yeah I didn't see anything in the video highlights that would have pissed him off. Just looked like racing to me. There was a race at Grandview a couple years ago where McFadden was leading and Heimbach put an aggresive slider on him after he was lapped. McFadden had to check up and subsequently lost a big lead and the race because of it. Now that I can understand the leader being upset about. I didn't see anything like that here unless they didn't show it in the highlight video.

A

So Marks has a faster car but he's supposed to throw out an anchor & potentially get passed by other cars while potentially losing points & money just so he doesn't pass the leader? Doesn't make any sense. If Kerry was fast enough to win, Marks shouldn't have been a problem. I like Kerry and Marks both but what's right is right.