PENSACOLA, FL :: While Daniel Hemric came up just short in his goal to win a second straight Southern Super Series championship, the North Carolina native did enjoy his best season to date as a Super Late Model driver and enters his third Snowball Derby with noticeably more confidence than ever before.
Hemric enjoyed a career year with eight victories in Super Late Model competition and did so in three different tours between the SSS, CRA and Pro All Stars Series. He won a major event in the Red Bud 300 at Anderson Speedway in Indiana and returned to the NASCAR Camping World Truck Series last month for a one-off start at Homestead Miami Speedway.
He admitted that nervousness may have gotten the better of him during his first two attempts at chasing down the Tom Dawson Memorial Trophy but that this year is the first time that he has felt totally confident and comfortable heading into qualifying on Friday.
“I’ve told people leading up to this week that the hype for this race gives you goosebumps,” Hemric told Race22.com on Thursday. “And it definitely still does but I feel at ease this year. I’m calm and really excited for this week to be here and to do this deal. The last half of our season went really well and I’m really excited to see what we have.”
Hemric has been fast at the Snowball Derby over the past two seasons but has been unable to avoid crashes and mechanical failures relegating him to finishes of 29th and 20th.
In the 2012 race, Hemric cut a tire on the backstretch, turning his car sideways and collecting eight other drivers including Nelson Piquet Jr. and Steven Wallace. The contact bent the steering wheel on Hemric’s Carswell Motorsports No. 98 and eventually sent Hemric to a local hospital for concussion-like symptoms.
Last year, it was a broken top link in the rear suspension that ended his run at contention. So after two runs of bad luck, Hemric is simply hoping to find a place on the track to settle down for the first 200 laps so he can race for the win by the end of the afternoon.
“In all honesty, you talk about attrition and I haven’t finished this race in the past couple of years,” Hemric admitted. “It’s one of those deals where I want to just ride wherever I end up after the first 15-20 laps. The way this race works is that you have a chance to win if you can just get to the end of this deal. So that’s the primary goal — just finish first and then try to win the race if we accomplish that first goal.”
Hemric says a victory in the Snowball Derby would be “astronomical” for his career. Having just earned his NASCAR speedway license and working towards making additional starts in the Truck Series, the 23-year-old believes winning on Sunday would place him alongside some of the best in the discipline.
“For one, it is the Snowball Derby,” Hemric said. “Anyone who is anyone has just about won this race — or at least come close — and it would be huge honor to have my name on that trophy. Like I said, when the checkered flag falls on Sunday, I think everyone will at least know that I gave it everything that I had.”
