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

I saw Dave has a photo of Ryan and his new ride on his site ,does he have any plans to run sprintcars this year?

He was definitely a welcome site last year.

Dave is here practicing at Volusia Speedway tonight, and will be racing here this week. 

I would hope its a Ford under the hood.  His best days were Ford powered.

Luna's Ford engine style that won 2 WoO titles and 3 
Kings Royals before a weight rule against the best EVER
in their prime and now DOMINATES super dirt late model
racing is no longer allowed/wanted in a WoO sprint
car.... Was Luna a miracle worker?

I wish he would  leave crapcar land and return to real racing. 

Really, his best days were in a Ford?  He won the WoO Title and Knoxville Nationals with a Chevy under the hood....

But, he was very consistent with teh Ford with lots of runner-up finishes in the points to Steve Kinser.

IMO, it was Dave's driving talent and Kenny Woodruff's wrenching ability that made them a force to be reckoned with, the engine under the hood had nothing to do with it.

Please tell me how he won the 1995 championship driving the Casey Luna Ford car? Am I mistaken or is that who he drove for then?  If I am correct why downgrade the fact he had  a Ford. I believe Bobby Davis  Jr won with a Ford as well, or was it just great driving and all of the Chevy guys took the year off.

If I remeber right some of them did take the year off when Bobby won the Championship because they were running the USA tour.

I remember Wolfgang kicking both series butts on a regular basis in the 8D

Why would he want to take a massive cut in pay to come back???

And what exactly is "real" racing???

Forgot he was still running for Luna in 95. 

When he took over ownership (along with USPrint) of the car in 96, they immediately went to Chevy, still finished 2nd in points (to Mark Kinser), and argueably had their best year in 97 when they won the 2 biggest races on the schedule (the Historical Big One and the Knoxville Nationals) and again finished 2nd in Points (To Sammy Swindell).

I stand by my assertation that Ford had nothing to do with their success, it was hard work by the driver, crew chief, crew and owner.  Doesn't matter what's under the hood, you can have the best engine $$$ can buy, if you are a terrible driver, you'll still never be competitive.

Dave, Kenny Woodruff and the crew were great at what they do, that is what made them successful (same as what makes Schatz successfull today IMO).  Running a Ford, Chevy, XXX Chassis, Gambler, Maxim, Toyota, etc., etc. doesn't matter if you don't have talent.

To get back to the original question, Dave Blaney is racing sprint cars in Florida and in fact raced last night at Volusia.

I followed him in NASCAR through the Quickest Lap message board but is shut down last year without any advance notice.  Last year he had a limited Cup ride that fell apart and the board and his website shut down not long after.  The last I read was that he was going to step up the Sprint Car racing and hang around the Cup races to help Ryan.  It doesn't sound like he's interested in touring the country anymore but he could be hitting a fair number of races.  Hopefully one of these Sprint Car media sources will interview him and find out what his plans are.  Preferably Winged Nation, one of the podcasts I load on my MP3 player and listen to during the work day.  Steve, Kendra, are you out there? 

Stan Meissner

PS, Dave Blaney was one of the great Sprint Car drivers before he moved over to NASCAR.  Reading some of these posts whenever his name comes up shows me how quickly people forget.  I'm guessing that some probably were too young and never saw him race in Sprints.  You younger folks, don't make the mistake of judging Dave by his last few years in NASCAR.  He was one of the top Sprint Car drivers in the country and a regular with the Outlaws.

Stan Meissner

The Quickestlap messageboard was running on an old server and everything was lost when they were forced off. They tried to get it up and running through a new server, however the board continually crashed and it was decided to just give it up. They have actually recreated it through a private Facebook group under the name Quickestlap. There you can get all the latest info on Dave, Dale and Ryan. There is also a page on facebook called Team Blaney, which is a page dedicated to the Blaney family being run by a sports reporter out of the Ohio area. He keeps up very well on the families exploits and races.

After the part time deal fell through last season, Dave had basically had enough of the NASCAR world and grew tired of the limited funding rides and has all but given up on NASCAR. As a matter of fact, he ran a few races afterwards for Tommy Baldwin Racing in the 37 car and he had to be coaxed into even running the cars because he just didn't really want to but Tommy asked him for a favor. He had stated that he would still be at the tracks to help Ryan and watch him race, but that his NASCAR days were all but finished. Maybe the Mudsummer classic or a few shows hit or miss, but nothing concrete is planned in the NASCAR world. He said he was looking to add to his sprint car schedule, but a lot of it would depend on results and Ryan's schedule with the Cup team. Last he'd said, maybe up to 40-50 races if things went well. He's well funded and actually also got a patent last year for a new carbon fiber chassis and was working to introduce it to the sprint car worls. He seems to be focused a lot of the R & D Side of sprint car  racing and I think you'll see him trying a bunch of stuff out that could be potentially good for the sport going forward