The first race of the New Brunswick Short Track Challenge was certainly entertaining. It had two or three long green flag stretches, a couple of clusters of cautions and a dramatic finish! With ten to go the Martin’s Home Heating 100 didn’t turn out the way most of us thought it was going to and as Yogi Bera is famous for saying: “It ain’t over till it’s over”.

 

 You don’t have to lead the whole race to win!

Everyone was pretty excited about the Sportsman car count last Saturday night. Twenty-seven cars arrived in the Geary Woods for the first of three races in the NB Short Track Challenge. The other events will be at Petty International Raceway, the long weekend in August, and Speedway Miramichi in September.It was great to see visiting drivers last weekend including Dylan Blenkhorn. Dylan won the first two Maritime Pro Stock Tour races of 2015 and a major Sportsman event down at Scotia Speedway. But Saturday wasn’t Dylan’s night – he finished a disappointing 17th. 

A couple of cars broke during qualifying heats and that left 25 to start the big race. Lonnie Sommerville was on the outside of row number one and Drew Greenlaw was on the pole! Sommerville jumped into the early lead and Drew followed in his footsteps and stayed up front all night long.

After 18 laps of green flag racing a series of three, maybe four cautions in a row came out. And that caused us a few problems because our electronic scoring system developed a glitch that we battled all night long. At times it took longer than usual to determine the line-up after the cautions and the cars ended up parading around under yellow. This caused a bit of frustration for drivers, fans and race officials!  Lonnie Sommerville (#27) was able to hold off all challengers including Matt Rodgers (#42) until he ran out of fuel as the caution flag waved on lap 92. Matt finished 2nd while Lonnie rallied to fourth before running out of laps! 

I’ve been around this sport all my life and that’s a long time. All I can say is once you think you’ve seen it all, something unexpected happens. And that’s what we had to deal with Saturday night, but Speedway 660 officials will have that issue rectified before the green flag flies this weekend.

The extra caution laps likely contributed to Greenlaw and then Sommerville  running out of fuel, something unheard of in a 100 lap Sportsman race. Both ended up with top four finishes, but Sommerville certainly would have been better than the fourth he had to settle for. Interestingly enough and for argument’s sake, no one else ran out of fuel.Drew Greenlaw won his heat race and started on the pole for the Martin’s Home Heating 100. Drew ran out of fuel, during a caution, but got back on the track and finished in third place. And that’s why he’s my Raye’s Mustard Saturday Night Hero!

Dave O’Blenis battled an ill handling race car early on, but his crew waved it’s magic wand during a series of pit stops, under caution, and by lap 65 or so he started roaring his way to the front. It was easy, well at least it looked that way to me, for Dave to get to second place.

With about 15 to go he was on Sommerville’s back bumper, putting pressure on the race leader. It was going to be an incredible finish but it kinda looked like the leader would be able to hold off the challenger, but we’ll never know for sure. With eight to go Lonnie ran out of fuel and O’Blenis claimed the lead and the win.

As Dave said in the Riverview Ford Victory Lane: “It’s not the way you like to win, but we’ll take it.” Remember a couple or three years ago when O’Blenis looked like a sure winner in a SpeedWeekend race? Well that night he had a late issue and a “sure win” turned into a disappointing finish.Sometimes, early in a race, you don’t think you’ve got a chance to end up in the Riverview Ford Victory Lane. But if you keep working hard sometimes you catch a break. Dave O’Blenis has won lots of big races in his career, but perhaps none were quite like the win we saw last Saturday night!

You’ve got to feel for Sommerville, but he’s been down this road before too. Lonnie knows he had a great car and he knows he’ll pick up his fair share of victories before the 2015 season is over this fall.

We did have some great news on Saturday night. We were able to tell our fans and race teams that the Irving family of companies has stepped up to be the lead marketing partner for the entire SpeedWeekend. Details will be coming in the weeks ahead, but it’s awesome to have the biggest New Brunswick company hooked up with the biggest racing event in our region!The folks from Irving have sponsored the SpeedWeekend Saturday nights Sportsman 150 for several years. This year they have become the major marketing partner for the whole weekend!

I want to thank the fans for hangin in with us on Saturday night. They saw a great race with a strange finish. I also want to thank Tim Terry, from www.TimsCorner.ca, for helping me out in the announce booth. Tim, who is also the voice of the Martime Pro Stock Tour, will be back for another visit on July 4th when the tour strolls into the Geary Woods.  Get ready for a busy weekend. On Saturday night we’ve got Weekly Points racing and on Sunday afternoon “hold on to your hats” because the first ENDURO 200 of the season takes center-stage!  

This weekend promises to be a special one at Speedway 660. We’ve got our first two-day even of 2015 with Weekly Championship Point racing in five divisions on Saturday night and the Capital City Auto Parts ENDURO 200 on Sunday afternoon. Be prepared to see some hard-nosed racing on both days, particularly on Sunday when those wild and crazy ENDURO drivers bring their act to the Geary Woods!

Since we started this Weekly with a Yogi-ism, perhaps we should end it with one too. “You wouldn’t have won, if we had beaten you.”

We`ll see you at the races!