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Rob's Ramblings for July 21, 2009
Commentary by: Rob Staley/RACE22.com Contributor
Danville, VA(July 21, 2009) -- Due to some family health issues, I was away for a while, but now I'm back and ready to talk a little racing!!!
Last Saturday night I made the trip out to Orange County Speedway and witnessed some fine racing action. By now you probably already know that David Triplett, Jr. and Tripp Massengill split the twin wins in the Late Model Stock Car division. In the first race Triplett, Craig Moore, and Ryan Gray waged a furious battle for the top spot with all three drivers sharing the lead at one point or another. The finishing order was Tripplett, Gray, and Moore. However, Gray was later removed from the finishing order because of an engine rules infraction, which was unfortunate for the veteran driver.
In race two, Massengill won easily over Stacy Puryear and the surprise of the night was a third place finish for Tracy Chambers, who scored her first podium finish in a Late Model Stock Car. Chambers has been
progressing steadily throughout her career and finally broke through for that first top three finish and a win for the female driver is hopefully right around the corner.
To me, the big story at this track is the unique schedule for the 2009 season where rather than run every Saturday night or even every other Saturday night, the track staff has chosen a few random dates to run their events on. The local classes will not run again until August 29. It's not that big a deal for most of the classes that run at Orange County as other tracks run Late Model Stock Cars, Limited Late Models, Pure Stock Fours, Legends cars and Bandoleros. But, the class that gets hurt the most by the slim schedule is Grand Stock division as the drivers in this division have no place else to run when OCS sits idle.
"We've got at least five cars in the Lynchburg(VA) area that want to come down here and run," stated defending Grand Stock division points champion, Ray Ellington Jr. Ellington hails from Madison Heights ,VA and feels that there a lot more cars out there that would like to run. "I hate it's gonna be so long before we can run again."
Tommy Chandler ended up with the latest win in the Grand Stock division when apparent top finisher, Keith Edwards was Disqualified for a tread width violation.
Undoubtedly the most popular driver at Orange County is Vinton, VA area driver, Michael McGuire. The 13-year old is leading the Limited Late Model points and finished a close second to Joey Throckmorton last weekend. The youngster, who is a third generation racer being the son of 1988 New River Valley Speedway(now Motor Mile Speedway) Champion, Tim(McGuire) and the nephew of two-time Bailey's 300 winner, Tony(McGuire), would not be able to run this class at a NASCAR sanctioned track until age 16. It is likely that McGuire will move to Late Model Stock Cars next season, but is expected to compete in the UARA-STARS Series.
All in all it was a good night of racing with a surprising car count in Limited Late Models and Late Model Stock Cars considering South Boston was running just up the road. Orange County has always been a favorite track of mine and I see no reason that that will change ... whenever there are cars on the 3/8 mile track.