RD Smith and Josh Oakley appeared to have transferred into the Old North State Nationals CARS Tour event at Orange County Speedway.  They crossed the stripe after the second heat race of the evening in first and second and appeared to be starting seventh and 10th respectively in the feature tomorrow.

The cars still had to go through post-race technical inspection and that’s where Smith and Oakley ran afoul.  CARS Tour officials only checked a few select items following the heat races but one of those was the fuel cell height.  Both Smith and Oakley failed inspection for the height of their fuel cell being too low.

CARS Tour Late Model Stock Tech Director, David “Lightning” Saunders says the two cars weren’t even close to passing.

“The fuel cell height was a good bit low,” Saunders told RACE22.com. “We try to use common sense, if it was close we’ll make it but when it’s say two inches off we got a problem.”

Smith was surprised that the officials checked any height after the race given that they hadn’t checked it all day.

“They just said the fuel cell height was too low when we came in off the track,” Smith told RACE22.com.  “They hadn’t checked it all day.  They typically don’t do any heights after the race.  Cars still on the ground, they wouldn’t let us jack it up or anything.  They said mine and Oakley’s were too low, so they disqualified us.”

Oakley was on the same page and didn’t know how they could check it when the shocks hadn’t come back up from racing.

“We rolled through there and I guess they had a new guy that just started working with the tour, an official, he had an issue with RD’s when he rolled in front of me,” Oakley told RACE22.com.  “The fuel cell height checker wouldn’t go under the fuel cell.  I didn’t know you were supposed to check as soon as the car comes off the track after a race.  Because the shocks and springs we run once the car gets sucked down and it pretty much takes a jack to get it back up to get the shocks to let back out.”

“So we roll up there and the same thing we’re about a 1/8″ or maybe a 1/4″ low on the fuel cell.  We ask them if we can just jack the car up and let it settle back out and recheck it and they were like nope, can’t do it.  They made us move over to the side and then told us we had to fix it, which is nothing to fix.  We’d just have to jack it up and let it back down and we’d check right no problem.”

Both drivers decided not to compete in the last chance race and will not compete in the 200-lap race tomorrow. Smith and Oakley both felt like they had cars to win the race and that they didn’t get a fair shake from the officials.

“You can’t talk to anybody here,” Smith continued.  “I hate it for my guys, I think we had a car capable to win.  I missed the drivers meeting and only had one lap to qualify and qualified seventh.  I think if I would have had a second lap we would have sat on the pole.  It’s just unfortunate, I think we had a car to win tomorrow.”

“I had a brake line that was busted and between that and just I felt like the car was too good to try to mess with the last chance race,” Oakley stated.  “I feel like we had a car that could have won this $30,000.  I feel like we were definitely close and could have done it but we didn’t get treated fairly.  Personally, that’s what I feel like.”

“I feel like we just got a bad hand here you know,” Oakley continued.  “It is what it is but I can’t do nothing about it.  Like I said if they’d just let me jack my car up and let my shocks stretch back out and let it back down and it’d have been no problem.  I promise you it would have passed because we barely failed the way it was. It wasn’t like we were off but just a hair.  If they’d have checked it like they checked theirs after the last chance race it would have passed anyway.”

Smith and Oakley both stated that they felt like they didn’t check the rest of the finishers from the other races the same way.

“They haven’t checked anybody’s all day,” Smith said.  “Our guys went down there for the last heat and they didn’t check them until my guys mentioned something.  And then the first three of them didn’t go through.  They were wedging the gauge in there and having to lift the car up.  They wouldn’t let us jack the car up to let the shocks release to recheck it.”

“If they take the winner tomorrow straight from victory lane tomorrow, the same way they did us and there’s probably a 50/50 chance the winner will be called wrong on this,” Smith continued.  “They need to check them all.  They need to check the top five tomorrow right after the race and they don’t need to let them jack up the cars or touch the cars.  We’ve seen them check right now 10 and right now they’re batting .500.  Half of them we’ve seen have been wrong.  They’ll wedge them in there and the official told us he wasn’t going to check anymore.  They didn’t check the first heat race.  The guys who won the first heat race told us they didn’t check theirs.”

“We went down there and some of RD’s team went down there and watched them check some of these cars after the last chance race,” Oakley stated.  “They basically just stick the checker at an angle and raise it up under the fuel cell and raise the back of the car up to make it pass.  I talked to some of the guys that actually qualified in the top five and they didn’t have to run a heat race at all and they said they didn’t even get checked on their fuel cell after qualifying.”

Saunders addressed the qualifiers not getting their fuel cell getting checked and says everyone in the heat races and last chance race was checked.

“The top five, I went into the engine on in qualifying,” Saunders stated.  “The fuel cell was checked on everyone in the heat races and the last chance race and everybody else passed.”

CARS Tour Series Director Chris Ragle said that checking the fuel cell was due to Saunders suspicion that at least one cars height wasn’t right.

“You can’t check everything in the rulebook,” Ragle told RACE22.com.  “You have to pick a handful of things to tech and it could be something he chose to check.  It’s up to my officials to choose what they check. It’s our freedom to decide or if we have a suspicion to check.  It was something that you visually saw.”

Saunders confirmed that’s exactly what happened.

“I noticed on the race track that I had one of them that was almost dragging the race track,” Saunders stated.  “Of course, that kinda opens up an officials eye of something and that’s the luxury of working with the CARS Tour because I can watch the race and then decide what I’m going to tech.”

Smith feels that they need to let the competitors know if they’re going to alter the way they check the cars.

“If that’s the way they’re going to check it, we need to know that,” said Oakley.  “They don’t check heights on any other part of the race car after you come in.  Heights are always checked you know it’s a pre-tech item. I think if they check everybody’s heights tomorrow, I think you’re going to have half the field wrong.”

Oakley was just disappointed by the way things went given the money he spent and thinking they had done it all by the book.

“It’s a bad deal, I hate it for everyone who came and helped me. All the people that sponsor me.  We spent a lot of money to come try and do this deal and we done it to the best of our ability.  I felt like we might not win but we would have had a shot to win if things worked our way.  We didn’t get that chance.”

Neither driver will compete in the Old North State Nationals but a field of 28-cars strong will take to the track for 200-laps with $30,000 on the line for the winner.  RACE22.com will have RACEDAY LIVE updates of the event from start to finish beginning at 2:00pm with driver introductions.  The green flag will fly at 3:00pm.

Brandon White contributed to this article.
Cover Photo by Jaden Austin.