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LATEMODELRACER >> DRIVER PRESS RELEASES >> Chub Frank Not Happy After Controversial Ruling Costs Him
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Message started by LMR on 10/05/11 at 3:45pm

Title: Chub Frank Not Happy After Controversial Ruling Costs Him
Post by LMR on 10/05/11 at 3:45pm

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 4, 2011
________________________________________

Chub Frank Not Happy After Controversial Ruling Costs Him Shot At Brushcreek Motorsports Complex Victory

BEAR LAKE, PA – Oct. 4, 2011 – Chub Frank was in position last Saturday night to capture a big victory for the second consecutive week, but a controversial ruling ended his hopes for glory in the first of the two 50-lap features that comprised the ‘Billy Bob Classic’ at Bruchcreek Motorsports Complex in Peebles, Ohio.

And not surprisingly, the hard-nosed veteran driver from Bear Lake, Pa., wasn’t happy about his fate.

Coming off his richest win in two years one week earlier at Pennsylvania’s McKean County Raceway, Frank had his bright-orange Corry Rubber/Hino Toyota/Horton Equipment Rocket No. 1* back in the fast groove during the two-day show at Bruschcreek. He won a heat race on Friday night and on Saturday evening needed just a handful of laps to move from the third starting spot to the lead in the first 50-lap feature, which offered an $8,000 top prize.

Frank found himself in a tight battle for the top spot with Eddie Carrier Jr. and Jacob Hawkins while racing through lapped traffic on lap 39. That’s when ‘Chubzilla’ made an aggressive move to split two lapped cars in turn one but made contact with Ron Davies – the lapped car on the outside – that sent Davies into a spin. Frank maintained control of his car and continued on without stopping as the caution flag flew, but during the slowdown period track officials sent him to the rear of the field, citing the event rule that penalizes drivers who spin out another car.

While Frank eventually restarted at the back of the pack and managed an eighth-place finish, he strongly disagreed with the track’s call.

“I understand that the ruling there is that if you spin a car out, then you go to the tail,” said Frank. “But that’s if you go spin him out on purpose. Now, I did spin Davies out, but common sense would tell you that I didn’t do it on purpose – there was three guys racing for the lead, and stuff’s gonna happen. I didn’t go in there and spin him out like they apparently thought I did.

“We were racing for the lead, Davies was on the outside going two laps down, and there was another lapped car on the inside. The second- and third-place cars were all over me, so I had to go. If I lift, I get passed, so I tried to split (Davies and the other lapped car) and I caught Davies with my right door. Behind the right tire is where I hit him and what spun him out…it was just racin’.”

Frank noted that in his three-plus decades of racing, he had never been banished from the lead for causing a lapped car to spin. He doesn’t understand why that type of ruling would be made.

“I guess they don’t want you to race,” Frank said of the Brushcreek officials. “I guess they just want you to get passed instead of trying to make a move. There’s no move-over flag (for the lapped cars when the leader approaches), and then they expect you to get by lapped cars without ever touching them when you’re racing for the lead in traffic.

“That just seems crazy to me. It wasn’t like it was a position car that I went in and just spun out to take the lead. I made a move in traffic that I had to make to try and keep the lead and there was some contact with a lapped car. That kind of hard racin’ is supposed to be the whole point of why people come to see the races.”

Frank also wasn’t happy about an inconsistency in the officials’ application of the ruling that he noticed during the night.

“O.K., I’m mad about it, but I can deal with the rule to a point…except that in the B-Main, the second-place guy spun the leader out on the last lap and they didn’t do nothing about it,” said Frank. “And that was for position to make the race, so I don’t know what to think.

“It’s not a problem, though, because I’ll never go back there. Not with those kind of rules. The person who takes care of the racetrack (surface) there does a helluva job – I’ve got to say that – but on the officiating end, they just seem to have no clue about what racing’s all about.

“It was just a bad deal,” he continued. “It cost me a lot of money. It took food off my table. I feel like the worst we were gonna finish was probably second, so that was a tough deal to take.”

Frank did come back strong in the second 50-lap ‘Billy Bob Classic’ feature, which paid $12,000 to win. He marched forward from the 10th starting spot to place third.

“The car actually was better in the second one, but the problem was it just got hard to pass in the end,” said Frank. “The two cars ahead of me, Greg Johnson and Jackie Boggs, were good, and it was just too hard to clear them.”

Frank will return to action on the World of Outlaws Late Model Series this Thursday night (Oct. 6) at Rolling Wheels Raceway Park in Elbridge, N.Y. A winner at the five-eighths-mile oval in 2005, Frank plans to debut a brand-new Rocket Chassis machine with a Roush-Yates engine under the hood on Thursday evening as he seeks to maintain his fifth-place position in the WoO LMS points standings.

For more information on Chub Frank, visit his Web site at www.chubfrank.com.

Chub Frank Racing receives support from many valued sponsors, including Corry Rubber, Lake Shore Paving, Hino Toyota, Sorbera Family Chiropractic, Horton Equipment, All-Star Performance, Slavic Corporation, Custom Race Engines, GW Performance, Integra Shocks, Hoosier Tire and Roush-Yates Racing Engines.