By Jeff Oswald
eldovision@ibm.net

Here's the deal...your humble web guy gets cryptic e-mail form Kathy Ward Friday night asking me if I had any interest in going to Greenville-Pickens Speedway Saturday night. I reply that I could be convinced to go if there was good reason. So at about noon on Saturday I log on and she spills the beans in e-mail. Steve Hatley is going to do his engine builder a favor and race there. The crew left White Cross at 6 am. They will be short-handed and will need some help. I blast into action...

I grabbed my Mechanix (TM) gloves, newly acquired 50 dollar-does-everything-stop watch, scanner, throw on my SHR paraphernalia and head south. 2 hour drive.

There's nothing happening when I get there and I find the boys more or less hanging out doing nothing in particular. Greg fills me in on the deal. It seems their engine builder also builds engines for the Winston Racing Series national points leader Dexter Canipe. The way the points system works in the WRS, higher car counts mean more points. It's a relatively convoluted system that you can read more about at NASCAR ONLINE. So I ask Steve "What if you beat him?" Steve says "That's not part of the deal."

So the engine builder's brother is our host for the night. I didn't get his name, but he keeps us pretty well informed about the competition. He tells us Dexter pretty much owns the joint and the rest of them run for second. He explains that the Late Model Stock Division is replacing the Late Model Sportsman Division this year, and although the cars look similar, they are extremely different in weight, horsepower etc. Most of the current LMSC drivers made the transition from the sportsman series this year and are still on a learning curve.

Cool. We have a chance to show `em something tonight...

I ask Greg what they're going to do in the set-up department. He replies "Ace...Caraway..." Sounds good to me, I guess...Our host tells us what we should be looking for in the lap-time department. 20.50's, but it's probably too hot for that. I keep track of Steve's times. First session: 22.80, 22.10, etc. It could be a long night. Second session: 21.80, 21.60 etc. I time some other cars at random: 21.30, 21.40. We're not too far off.

Meanwhile...down the line they're unloading Dexter's rig, or I should say "rigs". First they unload his #5. Then they unload his back-up #5. Then they unload his OTHER back-up #5. Jeez...3 cars for a 35 lap Saturday night shoot-out...

Somewhere down the line, Steve runs a 21.18, the fastest lap I timed all day. The boys are startin' to grin a little bit. Steve took to the track like a duck to water. All of a sudden there are mumblings of "we can win this thing..."

Then...from out of turn 4 comes the 18-wheeled Hunter's Specialty Busch Grand National Transporter of Mike Laughlin Jr. A hush falls over the speedway as the behemoth slowly makes it's way down pit road passing the open trailers and tag-alongs, and slips into an open pit stall. You could have heard a lugnut drop...They roll out a shiny new Laughlin-built Late Model car, and yes...it will be driven by young Mr. Laughlin.

Steve is having a fit. He calls Greg over to the left front. "I reached up under the fender to check the lock ring on the coil-over and it just spun like a top!" Now, you've seen Winston Cup guys crank in several rounds of wedge during a race...but Late Models use "coil-over" springs in which the shock absorber runs down the inside of the spring, hence the name...Greg has explained to me in the past that just a quarter of a turn of adjustment wildly changes the handling of the car. What has happened here is that the lock ring came loose and allowed the adjustment to change an unknown quantity, and Steve says it "spun like a top"...This is not good. Greg adjusts it by sight, locks it down, and now all anybody can do is hope for the best. At the track, there's no way to put it back exactly where it belongs.

Steve draws a high number in the second 10 lap heat race and starts inside row 4. At the conclusion of lap one he's running ninth. A lap later, he's seventh. He's picking them off left and right. With 3 to go, he's in sixth, and they're racing heavy in front of him. He's looking for a place to go, but he can't do anything but sit and wait for things to play out in front of him. He finishes fifth.

Now everybody's really pumped. Steve's got a huge grin on his face.

New tires are purchased. The ritual begins with draining the air the tire guys fill the tires with, and replacing it with nitrogen from the tank they have on the truck. I'm helping Greg check the stagger.

Everything's pretty much set to go and all we can do is wait for the never-ending heat races of all the other divisions. Super stock, street stock, pure stock, Woodstock, soup-stock, over-the-counter-stock, livestock...jeez...there were too many to count...they just kept coming. I was imagining a line of race cars down I-85 waiting to get in...

For the race, Greg assigns me to be "Pry-bar-boy". I immediately begin hoping I'll not be performing said duty during the race. We're still waiting...

During the last street stock feature before the late model race, I see Greg fumbling with the left rear tire. He's spraying soapy water on the "bleeder valve" on the inside rim of the wheel. A bleeder valve is an air valve set to let air escape from the tire as it heats up and expands. Thusly, over the course of a race, as the air expands, it is released, maintaining a constant air pressure and stagger regardless of the heat. The soapy water is bubbling at the base of the valve. It's leaking. So is the one on the right rear. I get Greg a wrench, but it's spinning freely. The nut inside the wheel is loose. The only way to fix it is to dismount the tire. Greg runs to see if the Hoosier guy has time to do it. I run to find an official to see how far out from the Late Model feature we are. Official tells me "This is a 15 lap race, after this there's a short Late Model warm up, and then the feature..." I look up at the scoreboard and they're on lap 11...

Greg decides to do it. They run the tires over to the Hoosier trailer as the street stock feature ends. It's a quick dismount, tighten the nut, and re-mount the tire. The late models are doing their warm-up laps. The tires are back on the car just as the warm-up ends, but there's still the task of bleeding the air out, replacing it with nitrogen, checking the stagger etc.

Somehow, despite the last minute frenzy, Steve made it to the grid.

Laughlin has the pole with Dexter on the outside of row 1. Steve is starting 9th on the dreaded outside row...

Dexter and Laughlin take off nose-to tail, leaving everybody in the dust. I looked over to Dexter's pit for some reason or another, and his back-up cars were gone. I'm thinking they loaded them up. As the green flag fell, two of them came screaming down pit road and parked in the pit. Each of them had his #5 on the side, but were altered with a duct-tape-made number"1", making them the #15 and the #51.

So that's how you win the championship...

I suppose there's no harm done...they finish dead last and don't take positions from the guys who race. And I doubt they make up their entry fee in the payout. Besides, if Dexter's doing it at Greenville-Pickens, I'm sure other contenders for the national title are doing it at other tracks...

The rest of the field is side by side. Nobody's giving an inch. Steve is stuck on the outside. Lap 3, lap 5, lap 8...Christ! it's only a 35 lap race! Finally Steve ducks down to the inside around lap 10 in about 14th. Then the fun begins. Steve has figured out a way to slide loose through turns 1 and 2 to get a monster bite down the backstretch. It must be the dirt-tracker in him. He's losing a little ground in the turns, but he's shooting past them like a bullet on the inside as they hit the straightaway. It's an awesome thing to watch. We're grinning and shaking our heads. He lost a lot of distance to the leaders in the first 10 laps, but he's picking off 2 cars per lap. I'm thinking "we need a caution". It's about 15 car lengths to the next cluster, and he's slowly gaining on them. "We need a caution!!!". Lap 25, still no caution. They're going at it in front of him. He's stuck behind this cluster, sometimes thinking about going 3 wide, sticking his nose down low, but then thinking better of it...

The race ran caution free, with Laughlin winning, Dexter a distant second, and Steve 7th. The race was over in a flash. I looked at my watch: "10:30". Jeez! Let's run another 50 laps! The night is young! What the heck is a 35 lap feature?!!

Steve climbed out with the biggest grin I've ever seen, and everybody was high-fivin'. 10 more laps would have been a guaranteed 3rd place. 20 more laps? Who knows...

As the announcer runs through the finish and says "7th place, Steve Hatley" one lone whistle pierces the darkness...somebody noticed the new guy...

Meanwhile, down in the pits, a regular's crew chief is asking Greg "what gear were y'all runnin'?" Other crew guys are walking by, eyeing the car and driver. Dexter makes the scene and thanks us. Kids are getting Steve's autograph. Dad is buying T-shirts. I'm hoisting kids in and out of the driver's seat...

Yeah...ME...

How cool is that?