Story by: Corey Latham ~ [email protected]

Halifax, VA(March 17, 2011) — After a long winter, most race fans got their initial taste of racing in the Daytona 500, the first chance for people in Late Model Stock country to see some kind of racing. That meant the juices were flowing as everyone looked forward to opening weekend on March 12th, with South Boston Speedway kicking off the racing before anyone else locally. And they were not disappointed, the racing was furious and resembled Daytona in many ways with their own version of the “Big One”. SoBo just had theirs for 150 laps, it was wild to say the least.

Race day at South Boston turned out beautiful as the days leading up to it had been filled with heavy rain. With the saturated ground, the track had been experiencing the problem that has plagued it and many older tracks for years, “Weepers”. Small cracks in the asphalt were letting water rise to the top of the pavement, making Friday practice a challenge in itself, Saturday was better, but the track would still play a factor for the 26 Late Model Stocks on hand.

Of those 26 cars, it looked the same as usual after qualifying with Lee Pulliam putting his beautiful blue number three on the pole for the 150 lap event. Veterans Frank Deiny Jr. and Peyton Sellers followed, with CE Falk and Bruce Anderson rounding out the top five. One car NOT at the front was Philip Morris, The Clearance’s Steakhouse car had electrical issues in qualifying and ended up a disappointing 16th. The team would make repairs and start shotgun on the field. Eddie Johnson broke a valve in his engine and missed qualifying all together as the team made an engine swap, and Nick Smith who had been one of the fastest cars in practice broke a sway bar bolt and timed in at 23rd. Smith and Morris would not stay in the back for long though.

At the green it instantly got wild as the usually calm Peyton Sellers makes a daring move off turn two under Pulliam and Deiny to make a three-wide pass for the lead. Pulliam and Deiny get trapped to the outside as CE Falk and Bruce Anderson move by for second and third. Deiny is fighting hard to get by Pulliam and Pulliam wants by Anderson. All the intense driving would finally come to an end on lap 15 when Pulliam gets under Anderson and makes contact off turn two with Anderson going headfirst into the inside wall. Anderson cranks back up and heads the wrong way on the track and looks as if he is thinking about retaliation on Pulliam but thinks better of it and heads to his hauler.

As in the Limited race beforehand, we get our first look at a “Cone” restart with the Late Models with Deiny and Pulliam being the first two to try the outside. Sellers jumps out front quickly with Falk and Pulliam falling behind. Deiny takes fourth and the one to watch has become fifth spot Natalie Sather. Sather had been coming on towards the end of last season with great runs at South Boston and Motor Mile and had been fast in practice all day. She was now to the top five in her HC Sellers prepared machine and was looking for more, she had a car that could win on this afternoon.

We make it all the way to lap 40 before we have our next break in the action when Brandon Brown spins harmlessly to the inside backstretch wall when all of a sudden Sam Hunt swerves directly down the track into Brown doing extensive damage to both cars. Hunt said as he slowed the car behind him picked his rear tires up and sent him down the track. Before that Pulliam had gotten around Falk and was starting to put pressure on Sellers for the lead. Deiny pits under the caution from the top five to pull off tape as his water temp was about to go through the roof, he rejoins the field and takes the cone to the outside behind Sather and a host of others including Nick Smith and Morris.

The cone has became quite the story of the weekend, as many drivers had mixed emotions about it heading in, they either thought it would wreck cars or help them if they got behind, turns out they were all right. Nick Smith is one of the few drivers that looked forward to it as he tends to run the high line at every track he attends anyway. Smith had made repairs from his sway bar issue in qualifying and was now thundering into the top ten as he ducks into seventh behind Jeb Burton. Sellers and Pulliam are comfortably up front, but they have a new player with them in the form of Sather who pulls away with them.

As we approach the halfway mark, Micheal Hardin sees his day come to an end as he looses his clutch and comes to a stop. He had a problem with it in qualifying as there was no fluid in it, and once again the fluid is gone during the race. Nick Smith takes off on the restart from the high side of course and gets by Josh Oakley for fourth as Oakley has his hands full with Sather who has dropped back. Sather gets through the corner much better and seems to not have a brake as she gets into Oakley hard each time lap after lap. Oakley looks to tire of it quickly and slams the brakes in turn two after Sather gave him another shot. The contact tears away the right front fender and buckles the hood of the Sather machine as the caution flies. At this point most of the cars are seeing some sort of damage as the racing his been wild all through the pack.

In a move that should earn any fans respect, Pulliam does the unheard of in racing, he takes to outside on the restart…….from second. It doesn’t work for him and he and Falk battle hard for second with Pulliam pulling a strong move to go ahead from the outside. Falk’s day would suddenly get worse as he gets smith to his inside, they run side-by side for two laps and then down the frontstretch it all goes bad. Falk moves up just as Smith is moving down and Falk is along for the ride. Falk goes hard into the inside wall numerous times topping it off by getting hit by David Latour at the end who got pushed into the accident by Kyle Hall. Falk’s car is destroyed, both front and rear clips and Latour is done for the day as well. Latour starts to head down pit road under the red flag to invite Hall to dinner but is stopped by the NASCAR officials before anything goes down.

Well, for the 70 laps still to be run it turns into a demolition derby. Caution after caution and some big wrecks to boot. One of the bigger ones was on lap 85 when Hall gets into the back of Burton getting him sideways and the rest of the field simply runs over them. Ronald Hill literally ran over them, as his #74 machine goes over the top of Hall’s car destroying it and breaking some of the safety bars on the Hall machine’s roll cage. Matt Bowling also gets some damage and continues as does Tommy Peregory.

The next restart was even worse, as Pulliam, Smith and Deiny go to the outside. As they go down the backstretch after green, Smith sticks it three-wide at the front of the field and, well, let’s just say it didn’t turn out well at all. Sellers and Smith make it into turn three but behind them become a mess with Shanon Morano, Pulliam, Morris and Deiny getting totally destroyed and numerous others getting a piece of it. Deiny would actually get his car back on track but not before looking like a Bowman Gray Modified after repairs. Smith came out smelling like a rose but other drivers were quite angry with the young driver including Pulliam, who said his day will come soon.

As we get down to 40 laps to go, we all realize that is has become a two car race……….the only two cars left that haven’t been wrecked. That’s right folks, we started 26 and wrecked 24 of them with Sellers and Smith looking to settle his between themselves. We weren’t done wrecking though as we have numerous more cautions with stuff falling off cars, wrecked cars wrecking again, and just general craziness. Between the nonsense we did have a great battle for the lead as Smith was working hard on the back bumper of Sellers as he got through the corners better but Sellers was stronger off the turns.

We get to ten laps to go and smith is really putting the pressure on, lap after lap hounding the rear bumper of Sellers. Seven to go and Sellers is driving sideways through the turns as smith makes contact, Sellers holds on and keeps the top spot. After that it looked as if Sellers had hit another gear and started to inch away. Sellers would take the checkereds by 4 car lengths, followed by Smith then the beat to death cars of Burton, Oakley and Terry Carroll.

It was an interesting day at South Boston, lots of good racing, some terrible crashes and lots of hurt feelings. A lot of drivers were fuming about the cone restarts, swearing up and down that little orange piece of plastic wrecked their cars and they would not return. Usually the ones barking the loudest are the first one in the gate the next weekend, and for the ones that actually don’t come back because of a cone…….well, what the late Dale Earnhardt said about “kerosene rags around your ankles” comes to mind. See ya at SoBo in two weeks.

Results:
1. Peyton Sellers
2. Nick Smith
3. Jeb Burton
4. Josh Oakley
5. Terry Carroll
6. Tommy Peregoy
7. Justin Johnson
8. Spencer Gallagher
9. Frank Deiny Jr.
10. Natalie Sather
11. Matt Bowling
12. Eddie Johnson
13. Philip Morris
14. Lee Pulliam
15. Shannon Marano
16. Kyle Hall
17. Ronald Hill
18. CE Falk
19. David Latour
20. Mark Wertz
21. Michael Hardin
22. Rusty Skewes
23. Brandon Brown
24. Sam Hunt
25. Bruce Anderson
26. Dennis Holdren