Finding Balance, Hard Crashes Define Derby Practice Day

For most of the Super Late Model garage, Snowball Derby Practice Day was a successful exercise in preparation for the rest of the weekend at Five Flags Speedway in Pensacola, Florida.

The usual cast of characters spent time on top of the speed charts, led by Kyle Busch Motorsports youngster Christopher Bell, who posted the fastest time of the day with a 16.390 (seconds) during the sixth and final session of the afternoon.

“Every time we hit the race track, we’ve been top-2 or top-3 on the speed charts,” Bell said. “You can’t complain about that. I know we have a really good race car.”

Chase Elliott, Daniel Hemric and Preston Peltier also paced different sessions which collectively started at 10 a.m. and ran through 4 p.m. It’s hard to read too much into practice times, however, as teams were utilizing a mixture of strategies and aged tires.

The most important thing to accomplish, according to 2010 Snowball Derby pole winner Bubba Pollard, was to simply find an agreeable balance in cars heading into Pole Day on Friday.

“I thought today was a pretty good day to make some adjustments for qualifying,” Pollard said. “We had good cloud cover all day and it stayed cool. I think it will be warmer tomorrow but once it cools down for qualifying it will be about the same.

“All in all, a good balanced race car will go fast so as long as you have good balance, you’ll be fine.”

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Big Hits Derail Burton, Eckes

There were two notable incidents during the day in Snowball Derby practice and they involved a pair of talented youngsters in Christian Eckes and Harrison Burton.

Eckes was fastest in second practice but reached the other end of the spectrum before that session ended, making contact with the wall in Turn 4 and backing his No. 15 LFR Super Late Model into the frontstretch wall.

The 15-year-old New Yorker says speedy dry was the cause of his incident.

“Basically, we got into the speedy dry on top of the track and spun around and hit the wall,” Eckes said. “I’m really frustrated to see that. We had such a fast car in practice — long run and short run and we just ended up in the wall.

“I feel really bad for the LFR Chassis guys who worked hard all weekend. We were up there all day and we just ran out of luck.”

Meanehile, Burton appeared to break a steering arm in the middle of Turns 3 and 4, sending the second-generation driver hard into the outside retaining wall. The 15-year-old son of NASCAR veteran Jeff Burton said his Super Late Model gave no indication that it was about to snap loose.

“I drove into three, about to make a mock run, and something broke,” Burton surmised. “I just went straight into the wall. There was a lot I could do there. I was just along for the ride at that point.

“It’s a real bummer because we don’t have a back-up car and that’s our only Super. We’re probably going to be up all night trying to put it back together, but if not, so be it.”

The Burtons took their car to the Johanna Long shop just 10 miles down the road from Five Flags Speedway while the Eckes team spent the evening working on their car in the infield at the track. Both drivers are hopeful that they can repair their machines prior to Friday qualifying.

Complete practice times for the Snowball Derby can be viewed below.

Session 6

Session 5

Session 4

Session 3

Session 2

Session 1